Gate Three: Moral and Aesthetic Judgments

From the book Like Grass by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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Moral and Aesthetic Judgments

Between Liberty and Freedom

Introduction

Up to this point we have sketched a general map of the soul and pointed out the parallel between the structures of thought and will. We saw that both of these functions operate and are built in the form of an onion, that is, as concentric circles—the layers of the onion—whose principles are derived from the principles belonging to the more internal layers.

We saw that the core of the onion of thought is composed of axiomatic principles, that is, principles that have no justification outside themselves. The core of the onion of will is composed of values. These are the most unconditional and self-evident norms, and they too have no justification outside themselves. Such norms provide explanations and reasons for secondary views and principles, but they themselves do not require such reasons; otherwise they would not be our most basic values.

The question of the validity and justification of the axioms of thought was discussed at length in the first book. We saw there that, in the absence of external reasons for axioms, only two possibilities remain for relating to them: the analytic approach, which sees them as relative and subjective principles; or the synthetic approach, which relies on the natural self-evidence each of us has regarding the correctness of our axioms, or at least some of them.

In the first book we saw that the only way to view axioms as valid and binding principles—that is, to grasp the existence of objective “truth” in its classical sense, as distinct from the postmodern sense—is to give up the sharp distinction between thought and cognition.

In the present gate we will try to examine the parallel issue with respect to the values that lie at the core of the onion of will. We shall see that the same problem exists there as well, and that the same two possibilities arise. There are, however, important differences, stemming from the distinction already mentioned above between norms, or judgments, and facts. In this gate we shall touch on issues such as the relativity of values, the meaning of commitment to them, the meaning of value-statements, and more.

These issues arise from the structure of the soul as it has been drawn in our discussion thus far. They will be examined here through a discussion of the structure of the core of the onion of will—the scale of values—the mode of reasoning of values, and their meaning. A central point in this discussion is the meaning, function, and nature of the intellectual dimension within the will, which has already been mentioned several times above. Another point that will arise as a consequence of the discussion is the existence of an additional psychic content, or psychic state, beyond the dichotomous description of emotion and intellect as it was presented in the second gate. We shall encounter mental states that lie between emotions and beyond intellectual and volitional judgment—for example, love. In light of this addition, it may become easier to understand the concept of “conscience,” which we first presented as belonging to emotion and later to moral intuition. It seems that conscience too stands outside the territories defined thus far.

The last part of the gate will deal with the concepts of liberty and freedom. As we shall see, this pair of concepts is closely bound up with our discussion.

We shall also broaden the discussion from ethics to aesthetics. Aesthetics too is a domain that contains evaluations and values, though in a different sense from the ethical one, and similar questions therefore arise there as well. We shall have to examine the map of the aesthetic onion.

At the end of the discussion we will have in hand a picture touching on our three basic judgments: the logical, the ethical, and the aesthetic. We shall attempt to sketch the similarities and differences among them in light of everything said up to this point.

To conclude the introduction, it should be noted that the present gate relates quite a bit to current affairs. It deals with moral values and our relation to them, as well as aesthetic values, art, and more. In these areas there are ongoing disputes, and there are accepted classifications of Judaism on all these planes.

Most of those classifications and attitudes are mistaken conceptually, logically, and substantively. In order to show, illustrate, and sharpen this, we shall in several places enter into polemics with specific claims, and try to uncover their ideological, conceptual, and philosophical roots. We shall examine several claims of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, whose ideas are an inexhaustible source for much of what will be said in this gate. We shall also engage here with Amos Oz, Gideon Ofrat, Adi Tzemach, Raymond Smullyan, and others. This will illustrate the relatively current implications of abstract philosophical ideas, and demonstrate the importance of discussion on the abstract plane for understanding the concrete and the contemporary—a central and fundamental point throughout the quartet, which we already discussed in the introduction to the first book.

Chapter One: The Arbitrariness of the Will

What follows in this chapter may be seen as a presentation, from a different angle, of what was already said in the previous gate about will and choice. It is brought here mainly as groundwork that will lead us to the next chapter, which will deal with the rational, or intellectual, dimension within the will.

A Slightly Personal Introduction

In the book What Is Above and What Is Below¹ lengthy dialogues take place between Tony Lavie and Yeshayahu Leibowitz. The first dialogue is devoted to clarifying the relation between will and intellect. This subject was central to Leibowitz’s thought, and it also appears later in the book, as well as in many other places in his writings.²

In the book’s preface, Tony Lavie writes as follows:

The spirit that blows through Dialogues I, and the content of what is said there, run counter to accepted philosophical and psychological thought. The picture that emerges from these remarks casts a completely different light on the systems of relationship between human beings as individuals, as groups, and as nations. Human relations have been shaped by many generations of thinking people on the assumption that the power of thought somehow influences the will, whereas here we are trying to present a completely different reality, according to which understanding has no influence on the will.

We claim that “the human will” is the most elementary thing in the human being, and that all his decisions are primary, and in that sense indifferent to any deterministic influence of whatever kind.

At the end of his introduction, Lavie adds the following:

After all the long and complex conversations between Professor Leibowitz and me, I am still especially troubled by the question of human behavior: who is the “I” that makes its decisions when the power of thought has no influence on them? In other words: if understanding, which is a basic human instrument, does not guide behavior, then who does?

The reader will find that many times and in many ways I tried, with little success, to press Leibowitz to untie the knot. My assumption is that Leibowitz’s silence hints that everything comes from above, in accordance with the view of the Sages that “there is nothing below that has no root above.”

Although Professor Leibowitz did not say this explicitly, I allow myself to cling to this assumption on the basis of his firm and declared position throughout the years of our discussions to avoid laying down ontological theses. I raise this aspect because I see in it an important instrument that can guide the reader to discover ideas that were not stated explicitly.

The basis for many of the things said in our quartet, especially in the third book, is derived from the thought of the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Although I never had the privilege of speaking with him face to face, I have often “spoken” with his writings, and at least in that sense I too count myself as his student in several matters, despite the many differences. Precisely for that reason, I think it important to state matters accurately, and to “discover the ideas that were not stated explicitly” in the dialogues with Lavie.

In my humble opinion, Yeshayahu Leibowitz never imagined, and rightly so, that the human will depends on a “root above.” Nothing could be further from his view than so bluntly deterministic and passive a description of the operation of the human will. The essential freedom within the will is the very essence of Leibowitz’s view on this issue. On the other hand, I have no doubt that he also did not see evaluative decision as an “arbitrary” process, at least not in the sense attributed to him by his interpreters.

Already in the second gate we pointed out that there is another alternative between determinism and indeterminism—that is, arbitrariness—which many people, such as Tony Lavie, tend not to notice: free choice. It is not identical with either of those two poles, and it seems to me that this too is the essence of Leibowitz’s view regarding will and evaluative decision.

Beyond that, contrary to Lavie’s claim, Leibowitz’s conception—at least as Lavie himself understands it—was not unusual. In fact, he formulates, with great clarity, positions found among many thinkers, though in more obscure and abstract forms. The unusual nature of his conception will emerge only after we understand it properly, and differently from the accepted understanding.

We shall see that Leibowitz meant precisely the description that will be offered below, together with some of what we have already seen. The reason he did not untie the knot and did not dispel the ambiguity is probably one of two things: either he did not fully sharpen for himself the mechanisms we shall discuss below, but assumed their existence implicitly—in Leibowitz, matters that are not sharply formulated are never mentioned—or else, as a committed positivist, he refused to deal with domains whose existence positivism does not recognize, in accordance with the well-known injunction of the greatest of the positivists, Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his early period, at the end of the Tractatus:³

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The appendix at the end of the book will deal directly with clarifying Leibowitz’s thought in these contexts, and will stand on several consequences that arise from it. There we shall see that almost all his interpreters, including Tony Lavie, err in understanding his doctrine, and that their basic error lies in the fact that they do not attend to the distinctions made above, and that will continue to be made below.

These distinctions point to the phenomenon we already discussed in the first book: positivism appears on its face to be a synthetic position, but in fact it conceals behind it pure analyticism. We saw there that positivism, as it appeared in the first half of the twentieth century, was spurious, a fig leaf for analyticism—which indeed emerged from it in the second half of the century in the form of postmodernism. Genuine positivism is synthetic, and it seems to me that Leibowitz was such a positivist.

Because of the clarity of his thought and formulation, Yeshayahu Leibowitz will serve us at the beginning of this gate as a way of presenting the problem and the direction of its solution. Already here one can see where the interpretive mistakes in understanding his remarks come from.

A Few Illustrations by Way of Introduction³

…

Leibowitz: What does thought have to do with choice? That is not at all clear to me.

Lavie: Do you not distinguish between “will” and the “capacity for thought”? What exactly is your distinction on this matter?

Leibowitz: Every decision is volitional, and no conclusion is volitional.

Lavie: Can a conclusion play any part in a decision, or vice versa?

Leibowitz: Certainly not. A conclusion is forced upon a person, and there is no place there for will.

Lavie: Do you have reasons that moved you to choose Likud rather than Alignment? Do not worry; this is just a random example.

Leibowitz: No. I decided by my will. “I want this, and I do not want that,” and there is no conclusion here.

Lavie: There is a conclusion! Does some external datum not influence you? The data condition you. The information you acquire about one party or another—does it not condition your thinking?

Leibowitz: In “I want this” there is no thought at all. An example from very familiar matters: smoking harms health, and you accept this information as certain for yourself, but your decision whether to smoke or not does not depend on that. You may say, for example, that although it harms health, you want to smoke. Another person will say, “I give up smoking because I want to be healthy.” You both have the same information, but you want A and the other wants B.

Lavie: A decision of this sort is the result of weighing the data according to each person’s judgment. I will take an example from myself: until today I refrained from dieting, but when the doctor told me that I had to lose a few kilograms because the tests showed that they were harming my health, I went on a diet.

Leibowitz: You want health, so you do what you want. Another person will say that he does not care about health and will eat to his heart’s content. There is no conclusion here. This is a decision.

Lavie: But when I received a warning from the doctor I reacted accordingly; I responded to the threat. That means it was a rational conclusion that was not indifferent—a common Leibowitzian expression borrowed from English, meaning not independent of, or not neutral with respect to—at all.

Leibowitz: No, you did not relate to the doctor at all. Here are two people who receive the same diagnosis from the doctor: two smokers come to the doctor, he examines them and determines, “Smoking is harmful to you.” One says: but the pleasure of smoking is what I want; and the other says: I want health, and therefore I give up smoking.

Another example: suppose soldiers are told that all the objective data show that if we go to war we will succeed in conquering a certain district, and it will be annexed to our country, but the war will cost us two thousand dead. One will say that he wants conquest and is willing to pay two thousand dead for it, and the other will say that he wants the lives of two thousand human beings, and therefore gives up that district, even though both of them have exactly the same information.

Lavie: If you claim that the decision is volitional, then what is the role of judgment, of thought—merely to know?

Leibowitz: Is knowing a small thing for you? A human being is a creature that can know something, and knowledge is not a trivial matter.

Lavie: I think, for example, that the decision to murder arises from a conclusion, from a rational consideration, and is not a blind decision of the will.

Leibowitz: What does reason have to do with this? Either I want to murder this person, or I do not want to. The matter is very simple. Let us take this example: murder. Two human beings hate a third person with deadly hatred—one murders him, and the other does not murder him. Does that have any connection with thought? Thought is common to them—their cognition of that person overlaps in both cases, both have the same understanding of that person and of his deeds, and yet one wants to murder him and the other does not.

Lavie: You claim that “I want” is a fact that cannot be justified.

Leibowitz: That is the justification. Your will is the justification. It is not the result of something, but the cause of everything. I do not understand how you find it difficult to understand this. The will is not a result, but the cause of everything.

…

The long quotation presented here repeats the same point, and this continues for much longer in the dialogues themselves. This reflects an ongoing misunderstanding that appears with many who deal with this issue. Leibowitz argues that the will is completely free and does not depend on any facts. A person freely chooses what he wants. There is no reason for this, because it does not depend on facts or on any other external factor. The will has no cause. On the contrary: the will is the most basic cause, which explains and produces other things. Nothing causes the will.

On the other hand, there seems to be a feeling that the intellect does take part in the operation of the will. Leibowitz argues that this feeling is mistaken. According to this picture, the role of the intellect is to think and understand facts, not to engage in decisions. The intellect operates in terms of true or false, according to correspondence to facts, whereas the will is not connected at all to the logical judgment of true or false. It is not connected to facts or to any kind of knowledge, but to a free evaluative decision. In other words: it deals with norms, not with facts.

As we already mentioned in the previous gate, the intellect can also engage in gathering various facts that will be relevant to the implementation of the will. For example, thought can help determine whether a certain person is poor, in order to know whether giving him money will count as an implementation of my volitional decision to give money to charity. Or, in another example, the intellect can examine how many soldiers are likely to fall in war, and what the chances are that we will win. But in the end these are data for the will, which decides independently between the various possibilities that arise in a given situation.

Another point must be added here, one we also mentioned in the previous gate and with which Leibowitz would certainly agree. The intellect can also serve as a means of deriving secondary duties—those that belong to the outer layers of the onion—from the basic duties, namely the values, which are the norms found at the core of the onion of will. On the basis of the duty to improve the economic condition of the greatest number of people, one may derive some social-economic doctrine. Although this concerns questions of value, it does not concern the decision about the values themselves. The intellect here serves a secondary function, clarifying the decisions of the will and deriving practical duties in the real situations in which we find ourselves.

We have already discussed all this above, in the second gate. There too, however, we mentioned that there is another plane of overlap between intellect and will: the intellectual dimension within the will itself. Tony Lavie’s repeated questions seem to be groping toward it, and Leibowitz himself also seems, in one way or another, to accept its existence. We shall address this in the next chapter.

Generalization and Abstraction of the Problem of the Arbitrariness of the Will

The picture that emerges from the dialogues we have cited is a clear presentation of several philosophical discussions that revolve around the same point in more abstract and general forms. We shall present it here, as briefly as possible.⁴

The point of departure is David Hume’s argument,⁵ known as the “is-ought problem.” Following a similar argument raised later by George Moore in his book Principia Ethica, known as “the naturalistic fallacy,” Hume’s argument too is sometimes called by that name.⁶ Hume’s basic claim is that one cannot derive an evaluative, normative, or judgmental claim from a factual premise. Such a derivation is “naturalistic,” that is, it derives value-statements from something given in nature, or from a fact. Although Hume’s argument dealt with moral or evaluative judgments, we shall generalize it to aesthetic judgments, and indeed to every act of judgment.

For example, if we assume that the sky is blue, one cannot derive from this the conclusion that it is beautiful. The premise is factual and the conclusion is judgmental. Likewise, from the assumption that when an elderly person is taken out into the snow at the North Pole he will die, one cannot infer that such an act is immoral, or forbidden. In both cases the premise is factual and the conclusion has a judgmental character, aesthetic or ethical. In both cases there must be a bridging principle connecting facts and norms. For example: everything blue is beautiful, in the first case. Or: an act that directly or indirectly brings about the death of a person at any age is forbidden, in the second case.⁷

At the base of Hume’s opposition to naturalistic arguments stands a distinction between statements of fact and statements of value, or judgment of various kinds. Ethics deals with moral judgments, and aesthetics deals with judgments of an aesthetic kind. The logic in the two cases is very similar, though we shall discuss below, in Chapter Five, whether there are differences.

In analytic philosophy, following Hare’s book,⁸ this difference is described in terms of a distinction between descriptive statements and prescriptive statements—that is, statements prior to description, a priori.⁹ Statements of fact are descriptive statements. These are neutral statements, lacking charge and direction. They describe facts,¹⁰ and our relation to them takes place on the plane of true or false. By contrast, judgmental statements are prescriptive, because they are loaded with moral or aesthetic charge. They carry within them a practical orientation, and therefore they are not intended merely as neutral descriptions of factual reality. In the moral context, such statements contain a command or instruction as to what may or may not be done. In the aesthetic context they contain a judgment, though here they usually do not contain dimensions of command.¹¹

In these terms, Hume’s argument states that a prescriptive conclusion cannot be inferred from a descriptive premise. In fact this is virtually a tautology, that is, a logical identity, since one cannot infer a conclusion that is prior to description and experience, a priori, from a factual description. Hume’s distinction therefore appears necessary and self-evident.

Moral Relativism

The problem that arises from this distinction is the problem of the validity of value-statements, or their objectivity. If one cannot ground the moral, or aesthetic, value-claim on facts, then in what sense can it be true or false? Is it not merely an expression of a subjective and non-binding feeling, since it has no objective external source? If so, the moral command becomes relative, and there is no room for meaningful moral judgments with respect to the actions of others. I may judge their actions out of my own feelings, but clearly there is no place to demand from them, as such, different behavior, or to judge them morally for those acts.

According to this view, moral principles are subjective, and certainly culture-dependent. Empirical evidence is also brought for this: different societies adopt different moral principles. See the entries “Eskimos” and “snow.” In fact, it follows that ethical judgments, and value-claims in general, fall outside the domain of truth and falsehood.¹² It is clear that no substantive moral judgment can exist in such a picture, and that social-legal judgment is merely an interested means of persuasion, coercive enforcement, or prevention, intended to preserve the values in which the majority believes, or to prevent harm to others. At the basis of legal judgment there is no deeper layer of genuine evaluative criticism of the accused.

Another conceptual formulation of the conclusion that seems to follow from the Humean picture concerns the meaning of the concept “good.” According to some philosophers, the justification of some act formulated as follows—“You ought to do X because it is a good act”—is empty. The meaning of the concept “good” is nothing other than “what ought to be done.” In that case, the argument above takes the form: “You ought to do act X because it ought to be done.” More bluntly, though not entirely equivalently: “You ought to do act X because you ought to do it.”

The emptiness of such justificatory statements is, from the conceptual angle, an expression of the impossibility of justifying moral duties and commands. This is, to be sure, a different argument from Hume’s, but it too expresses the absence of a rational-cognitive dimension in values and in judgments generally.

Back to Leibowitz

We can now understand why Hume’s argument is nothing but a more general expression of the same phenomenon we encountered above in Leibowitz. As emerges from Leibowitz’s dialogues, when we say that there is no rational dimension in choice, in will, or in values, we are in fact saying that they cannot be inferred from knowledge or from facts. This is precisely the expression, or the result, of the Humean fallacy: values cannot be inferred from facts.

On the other hand, if the will were arbitrary, and the values it chooses lacked objective validity, then there would be no place at all for moral demand. In other words: if there is no intellectual or rational dimension in the will, then there is no place to regard values as valid, at least not in the sense in which we regard statements of fact as valid. Consequently, there is no place to criticize someone who does not act according to those principles, but adopts different principles or different values.¹³

The picture that emerges here, then, is a generalization of the Leibowitzian picture, as it emerges from the dialogues we cited. Values are arbitrary, and contain no dimension of objective knowledge; consequently, evaluative decision contains no intellectual or rational dimension.

The difference between the Leibowitzian formulation and the common philosophical formulation is that Leibowitz deals with the question of how a human being arrives at his value-decisions, whereas analytic philosophy speaks of value-statements as opposed to statements of fact. This is a difference on the plane of reference, but the connection between the two positions is fairly clear, and will become even clearer below.

That is why we remarked above, against Tony Lavie’s assessment, that Leibowitz does not in fact present a picture that is unusual by the standards of the philosophical world. It may be that his remarks simply produce a louder echo because they are formulated with great clarity, and are therefore accessible to a wider public than the abstract essays of analytic philosophy.

Critique: Some Challenges to the Humean Picture

The picture Hume presents, despite its apparently necessary and compelling character, raises several problems. Beyond that, there are quite a few nuances that attempt to argue against the Humean severance between values and facts. As far as I can see, none of them by itself offers a real answer to Hume’s claim. Later we shall see that, together with an additional theoretical element, these arguments do have value in the search for a solution. To illustrate this, and also to prepare the ground for the next chapter, I shall mention only a few central examples:

1. Some philosophers have raised the claim that certain concepts are already loaded with evaluative content, and yet ostensibly only describe. For example, the concepts “cowardly” or “coarse.” It is clear that these concepts describe a definite situation, and it is hard to dispute the fact that the Knights of the Round Table did not behave coarsely toward ladies, even if they were not noblewomen, or that they were not among the greatest cowards. Yet the terms “coarse” and “cowardly” also carry evaluative charge, or connotation—negative, in this case. It therefore seems that the value-judgment in such a case is derived solely from objective facts.¹⁴

This argument is nothing more than formalistic coyness. Clearly, the evaluative charge that accompanies the term “coarse” is not of the essence of the term. The objective situation does indeed describe a state of coarse behavior, but the negative value added to the description is an additional assumption implicit in that description. The fact that the evaluative charge is packaged together with the factual description in one term is merely a logical-linguistic shortcut, and has no essential significance with respect to the gap between facts and values.

A similar analysis may also be applied to terms such as “murder,” as distinct from “killing” or “execution,” which, at least in some cultures, do not carry negative connotations. This is simply the embedding of the bridging principle, between the factual and the normative, inside the conceptual description itself. The judgment is inserted into the conceptualization, and therefore the concept itself is created against a very specific cultural and subjective background. In the final analysis, there is no real way out here.

2. Some have proposed a distinction between value-statements and binding instructions. For example, Philippa Foot and Anscombe suggested that one can distinguish between “right” and “good.”¹⁵ The claim that a given act is right is objective and valid. But it is only descriptive, nothing more. By contrast, the claim that it is a good act already carries evaluative, even imperative, charge, and as such cannot be derived from facts.

Here too we have a proposal that may be correct, but by itself does not solve the problem. In the end, obligation still cannot be derived from facts. The question is now translated into the problem of the validity of the move from “right” to “good.” There may be a certain theoretical innovation here, namely, that the property of certain events and behaviors by virtue of which they are described as right has objective significance. But one still cannot derive from it a practical instruction. As we shall see below, this is a hint in the direction of the correct solution, and its expansion and development can lead us toward a non-relativistic conception of morality.

3. The main problem, which seems to underlie all the others, is the mismatch between the Humean picture and our intuition.¹⁶ This may be divided into two types of argument:

a. Problems of social order. We would like there to be moral demands, and binding moral norms.

b. This description contradicts the intuition of all of us, according to which there really is moral demand, and there is a substantive and principled place to compel all members of a given society to obey these rules.

We should note that the first type of problem is basically dissatisfaction of a need, or concern with what is desirable. The second type, by contrast, is a genuine philosophical problem, at least from a synthetic standpoint, which assigns important status to intuition. Raising problems of the first type itself falls into the naturalistic fallacy, in reverse, because the argument calls on us to change the moral facts in light of needs.

Let us sharpen this final point a bit. If this distinction between the descriptive and the prescriptive is indeed correct, then it itself is only a fact, a descriptive claim. The assumption that there are no moral or evaluative facts in reality is itself a fact. By contrast, the desire and need for moral rules is, in principle, a prescription—a claim of value and need, essentially directional in nature. We are therefore proposing to change objective facts on the basis of considerations of need and value. This argument itself suffers from an inverted naturalistic fallacy, inferring factual conclusions from values or judgments.¹⁷ Therefore, the raising of problems of the first type points to one of two things: a. In fact the speaker means the second type, and only the formulation is not careful. In other words: someone who says “we would like there to be moral rules” really means that our intuition points to their existence, and that we would “like”—that is, we think and demand—that the proposed theory conform to our intuition. b. This is an analytic position that subjects truth, and values, to needs. In the sixth gate of the first book we saw that this is the essential characteristic of pragmatism. Pragmatism as a whole is nothing but an inverted naturalistic fallacy. It is like a child who says that he would like to have a car, and therefore his scooter is a car. Children do not distinguish between what is and what is desired, but from adults, even if they are philosophers, one may expect a more mature capacity for distinction. In the first book we already discussed the absurdity of pragmatist views, which are very widespread, and so we shall not dwell on it further.

4. In Leibowitzian terminology, the argument from intuition can be raised as follows. There is a clear feeling that when a person stands at a crossroads of evaluative decision, he sometimes engages in what we call deliberation.

There is deliberation in the intellectual-thinking context. There we weigh facts in order to build a theory or draw conclusions from them. But deliberation there is nothing more than a process of thought, and of assigning weight to the evidence in favor of each of the alternatives that arise in the discussion. The conclusion of that deliberation is factual. The concept of “deliberation” in the evaluative context—see also the second gate in the discussion of choice—has another meaning. Deliberation in the context of choice indicates hesitation between evaluative options.

For the sake of clarification, let us again take an example from the dialogues of Leibowitz and Lavie, on p. 13:

Lavie: Let us take, for example, an evaluative hesitation. A beggar appears before me. The question I ask myself is whether to give him something, how much to give him, how to give it. This is one of the phenomena that point to a person’s hesitations.

Leibowitz: I do not know what that hesitation is.

Lavie: What is the hesitation? It seems to me that the hesitation is in consciousness: am I acting in accordance with my will, or is this means that I am taking not suited to it?

Leibowitz: What is there here to think about? What sort of thought? You have to decide what you want—to give him the thing, or not to give.

Lavie here describes an evaluative hesitation in which a person finds himself. Ostensibly this is an act of thought, even though the context is evaluative decision. This stands in complete contrast to the severance advocated by Leibowitz, or to the naturalistic fallacy. If there is no rational dimension in the will, what place is there for thought and hesitation? In other words: what is the meaning of the feeling of evaluative deliberation?

One could attribute the hesitation before giving to thought that analyzes either my basic desires, that is, my values, or the actual situation—my knowledge of the poor man’s needs, the state of my bank account, the other practical consequences that will follow from whichever decision I make—and thereby infers what I ought to do in the given situation. These are the two trivial dimensions of rationality within the decisions of the will that we discussed above.

It is possible that the process is not a process of thought at all, but of evaluative decision-making. That is, in real time I determine the basic values themselves, and their hierarchy, and my conduct in that situation is merely a logical derivative of that evaluative decision.

It is also possible that this is a confrontation with impulse, that is, a struggle against weakness of will. See the second gate. In the moment of hesitation I am engaged in a second-order decision: whether to choose or to be dragged along. We saw in the second gate that there is a choice whether to act by choice, and that this choice is made in real time, that is, while one is actually in the practical situation.

But all of these do not exhaust the intuitive feeling that there is a dimension of a thought-like character that takes part in the deliberations and decisions of will, or of value, themselves. It is true that the hesitation appears not to concern facts or any sort of knowledge, but the values themselves. Yet it is quite clear that it is not concerned with the most fundamental decisions, namely the choice of the values themselves, nor with the struggle whether to act “properly,” that is, in accordance with my values, or to be dragged along. There is a kind of deliberation regarding the character of the desired decision, and it contains a dimension very similar to thought.

There thus seems to be a problem here. On the one hand, the Humean analysis appears valid. On the other hand, intuition protests sharply and argues against it that there is an objective and valid dimension in moral values, and a dimension of thought and deliberation in moral decision. This is the second problem we raised above. The first is nothing more than empty and meaningless pragmatism. In the next chapter we shall try to sketch the direction of a solution to the dilemma, and propose a scheme that allows the objectivization of moral principles, and of judgments in general.

Chapter Two: The Intellectual Dimension within the Will

In this chapter we shall try to sketch a framework that makes possible the objectivization of evaluative judgments. Although most of what follows can also be applied to aesthetic and other judgments, here we shall deal mainly with morality. The relation to aesthetics will be the subject of Chapters Five and Seven later in this gate.

An Analogy Between Morality and Thought: Hume, Kant, and a Synthetic Position

We are thus in a difficulty. On the one hand, Hume’s distinction appears reasonable, perhaps even logically necessary. On the other hand, it leads to moral anarchy, and in that sense it contradicts the simple intuition shared by all of us.

Here too, exactly as we saw throughout the trilogy, we are confronted with a dilemma between intuition and analytic-formal analysis. We should therefore expect here too two principled approaches: the analytic approach, which will reject intuition in the face of analytic analysis; and, opposite it, the synthetic approach, which will seek a solution that leaves intuition intact, while not ignoring the genuine logical problem raised by Hume’s argument.

Giving up intuition leads to a conception of value-statements as claims that do not touch reality, and are therefore not valid in the ordinary sense. Their validity is at most subjective and culture-dependent. We arrive at moral relativism, which says “each person and his own good,” exactly as we saw on the plane of facts, where analytic postmodernity says “each person and his own truth.” This is moral anarchism, or a postmodern expression on the moral plane.

On the other hand, if we are to establish an adequate synthetic alternative, we must think about how to get out of the embarrassing Humean loop presented in the previous chapter.

Let us now examine an interesting analogy to this problem. The situation here is entirely parallel to the one we saw in the first book, which dealt with thought and cognition. There too David Hume was the one who raised a real problem, and there too the problem concerned the inability to infer conclusions from reality. There Hume argued that one cannot learn from any real event about causality or causation, and therefore about laws of nature in general. At most we can observe with our eyes the temporal succession of two events. If so, the conclusion that there is a causal connection between the two events cannot be inferred from reality. This is the problem Hume posed to naive empiricism.

There too one could go in the analytic direction, and accept the argument itself, as Hume himself did, and say that when we speak of a cause we mean only temporal succession. This is the analytic solution to the embarrassment. We saw that Kant’s solution too, usually classified as the antithesis of the analytic direction, actually belongs to the same sector.

With regard to the problem we are discussing here as well, a similar direction arises. Here too we are dealing with the inability to infer conclusions—evaluative conclusions, in our case—from factual data. Here too there is an analytic option, which makes use of a semantic change in the meaning of concepts such as “good” or “moral.” These receive an empty formal meaning in place of the objective directional content we tend to find in them.

In the discussion there on thought we proposed a synthetic alternative, which gave up the distinction between thought and cognition. Only from such a position can one accept the existence of synthetic a priori propositions. Our claim was that a synthetic position, which wants to preserve belief in causality in its accepted, intuitive sense, will be forced to assume the existence of a component in the intellect that engages in “cognitive thought.” Once this direction is raised, despite its initial strangeness, one can see that it is nothing more than a simple and necessary interpretation of the intuitions that exist within each of us.

This move gives us a hint, or a possible direction, for solving the current dilemma raised by Hume. We may think of a move fully parallel to the one we made in the first book with respect to the onion of thought, and apply it here in the context of the will, or of evaluative judgment.

If we continue the analogy made in the previous section, we may put it as follows. In the discussion of thought we presented the problem as an unexplained fit between our intellect and the world. We saw that there are three possible solutions to this problem: either the world determines the content of the intellect, which is empiricism; or the intellect determines the content of the world, which is rationalism; or there is a synchronous fit between them, through the mechanism called “auditory reason,” or “the eyes of the intellect,” “a thinking sense,” “eidetic vision,” and the like. We then noted that Hume rejected empiricism, while Kant adopted rationalism in the justificatory process he proposed for synthetic a priori propositions. We rejected Kant’s solution and saw that it is nothing but hidden analyticism. In the end, only the third solution remained, the solution of fit.

Let us try to follow the same path in the context of will and values, or judgments in general. Already at the first stage of the description we encounter a problem. Here there is no partner to the fit. What is our basic problem? Apparently it has no Kantian formulation at all. In the context of thought, we saw that our thought correctly describes the world, and we inferred a fit between them. But in the context of values there is nothing to which our values “fit” or “do not fit.” Thus, despite the similarity between the two contexts, this problem does not appear to be a problem of fit.

The problem in the evaluative context concerns another sense of objective truth. The objectivity here is not a matter of correspondence to objective facts, but of universal evaluative validity. The question is how such objective validity can be grounded, if not on correspondence to facts.

Step One: The Existence of Evaluative “Facts”

There is nevertheless a feeling that some sort of ontological dimension exists here. As though there are moral facts. The correct judgments, or correct values, those that are valid or universal, stand in correspondence to a different kind of facts, and therefore they are correct and objective. If that is indeed the case, then once again we find ourselves in a situation parallel to the one we went through in the discussion of thought, and we can try to continue thinking in the same direction.

In fact, we already encountered such a direction of thought in the proposals presented in the previous chapter. Philippa Foot and Anscombe suggested that there is moral factuality, but that it does not have the power to provide a sufficient basis for command or duty. In other words, one may accept that there is judgmental or evaluative factuality, and the problem concerns only norms, especially moral ones, because they contain a commanding dimension. This is already a step in the direction we are proposing here. In this section we deal with that step itself, namely, the existence of moral, or evaluative, facts in objective reality. What is needed to complete the synthetic proposal will be discussed in the following sections.

Evaluative factuality, then, is not a baseless idea. Indeed, our intuition, which accepts moral duties as valid and binding, points to it implicitly.

An example that sharpens the claim about the existence of moral facts may be found in the discussion we conducted in the first book regarding the concept “good.”¹⁸ Here we shall present only the main lines of the argument.

Moore argues that ethical statements deal with a certain kind of moral facts. He explains that if ethical statements were no more than statements about the feelings of the speaker—this is “the naturalistic fallacy,” as Moore calls it: grounding morality in feelings and experiences—then there would be no room to argue about them. For example, if one person says that thrift is a good quality and his friend disagrees, there would be no room for argument, because the matter simply reflects the different feelings each has toward thrift.

Ayer objects to this argument, claiming that disputes over value-questions concern only the factual background that serves as the basis for the ethical evaluation. According to Ayer, it follows that disputes between people never arise from moral disagreements, since with regard to those there is complete unanimity among all human beings. But this is a completely absurd claim.

It is obvious to everyone that there are disputes that do not concern facts. With regard to the very same situation, as described in Leibowitz’s dialogues, and without any informational deficiency, bitter evaluative disputes take place. This also shows that the scale of values is not an agreed objective fact. True, we have seen that behind every ethical evaluation there is an act of thought and decision about the factual basis, but we have already seen above that there is also a dimension of thought in the ethical hesitation itself. Ayer’s claim is nothing but another strange analytic attempt to escape the required conclusion, and a flight from the threat of subjectivity and moral relativism, or from the synthetic alternative—an even more threatening one—proposed by Moore.

Exactly as we saw with respect to concepts, in the second gate of the first book, the very existence of disputes about values, which is usually brought as evidence for evaluative relativism, points to the fact that values too have some objective dimension. And that is precisely Moore’s argument.

In the first book, see note 8 there and the footnote in the introduction to the fourth unit, we proposed a different variation on Moore’s argument. There we pointed out that when an evaluative dispute takes place, it revolves around the meaning of the concept “good.” One person claims that it is good to save and not to dance, and the other claims that it is good to dance and not to save. There is therefore a dispute about the meaning of the concept “good,” and about the practical instructions derived from it. But according to the relativists there is a basic problem in this dispute. The problem is not only the one Moore raises, namely, that it makes no sense to argue about subjective feelings, since each person has different feelings. The deeper problem is that the concept “good” itself, which serves as the foundation of the dispute, is not shared by the two sides. If indeed there is no shared meaning to the concept “good,” then there is a simple solution to the dispute: each of them should adopt a different linguistic term to express what he wants to express. One will say, “It is good to save and not to dance,” and the other will say, “It is boot to dance and not to save.” There is no place for a dispute between them, because they are dealing with different concepts. The dispute over the meaning of the concept “good” is illusory. They are dealing with two different concepts, and it is not worthwhile to obscure this by using the same linguistic term for both of those concepts.¹⁹

Beyond that, one may ask how each of them even knows that he understands what the other is saying. If the concept “good” is used by them in two different senses, how does Reuven know that Shimon even recognizes the concept he is talking about, even if he calls it by another name, “boot,” as in the previous example? How does he know that Shimon understands the other concepts used in the discussion? How can this dialogue take place at all?

The fact that both sides continue the dispute indicates that the intuition of both hints to them that this is indeed a dispute about one concept, and that the conceptual systems of both are largely similar. If that is the case, then there is no room for the linguistic-technical solution of the sort suggested above. If it is indeed the same concept, and not merely the same linguistic term, then this is a real dispute, and therefore they must conduct it in order to try to clarify the positions, and perhaps even resolve the matter.

In the first book we presented this argument in the context of the discussion of the objectivity of concepts in general. Our claim there was that a dispute about concepts points to a single meaning assigned to them. If so, the dispute takes place on the basis of some underlying agreement.

For this purpose we distinguished between the essence of the concept—its “matter,” in Aristotelian terminology—and its characteristics or properties. The concept itself exists, and it has an essence. It is part of the ontology of the world. Plato’s world of ideas is a good example of this. The objective meaning of the concept “good” is the positive evaluative connotation that accompanies its use. True, the “observation” of this concept may yield disputes about its characteristics and its definition; one may call these too part of the “meaning” of the concept. The disputes take place in the domain of the form of the concept, that is, over its characteristics, but they presuppose the objective existence of the concept itself. The dispute concerns something that exists somewhere “outside,” and that has some meaning that the disputants are trying to discover.

Such a phenomenon also occurs in the material domain. For example, if we try to define the concept “table,” or “state,” disputes may arise over the definitions of these entities, even though no one disputes that tables and states are entirely real and existing entities.

The concept “good” as such—its “matter,” or its essence—is therefore the positive, evaluative, directional connotation that accompanies its use. The disputes always concern the question which commands are entitled to shelter under the wings of this term, that is, to characterize it or be characterized by it, and thereby to enjoy the positive connotation and attitude just mentioned. Some will say that taking old people out into the snow is an act worthy of the title “good,” and others will say that placing them in a nursing home is a “good” act. This is a dispute about the properties of the concept “good,” not about its very existence.

It follows from what we have said that both sides in every ethical dispute agree implicitly that there is in reality something that is “good.” There is such a concept as “good,” and there is a positive connotation that accompanies it, what we previously called directionality, or the prescriptive commanding dimension that accompanies it. The disputes concern the contents of the commands derived from it.

Evaluative disputes thus arise from an “empirical observation” of the concept “good,” and an attempt to fit its characteristics into logical patterns, by means of definitions and the derivation of behavioral instructions or different evaluative attitudes.

It is important to understand that the argument raised here, which is based on agreement concerning the objective existence of the concept “good,” differs essentially from Moore’s argument. This consideration is an argument in favor of the objective existence of the concept “good” as an idea, but unlike Moore’s argument, it does not necessarily point to the objectivity of the contents we attach to it—the moral “facts.” The existence of a concept does not prevent disputes about its characteristics and its definition. As we have already mentioned, this is also true of material objects.

It is true that there are probably “real” characteristics of that concept, but these are not necessarily in the possession of any of the disputants, or of anyone at all. In analogy to what we saw in the second gate of the first book regarding concepts, we must distinguish here too between the properties that are in the object or concept as it is in itself, and the way we see them. There is an atomic structure to some material, such as wood, and this is a property of the object itself. This structure has consequences for the absorption and emission of different wavelengths, and therefore in our cognition different colors are formed in relation to different materials. The colors exist only in our cognition, but they are the product of the atomic structure that characterizes the material as it is in itself.

A very similar picture emerges from our argument concerning morality. There may well be right and wrong in ethics, and there may be real characteristics of the concept “good” as it is in itself. But the dispute concerns the way we see and apply them. Such a dispute is certainly possible. The main conclusion is that the moral dispute can be conducted at all, and that it makes sense to conduct it. This stands in contrast to relativism, which renders debate about evaluative questions entirely pointless, or confines it solely to the factual background that serves as the basis for the ethical decision.

Another point must be understood. Ayer’s counterargument against Moore does not attack this argument at all. On the contrary, it itself constitutes a proof to which even Ayer would have to agree. Even if Ayer were right that disputes in evaluative contexts concern only the factual basis of the ethical decision—and, as stated above, he is not right about this—it would still have to be clear to both sides that the decision itself has the same meaning for both of them. Otherwise, even the dispute about the factual basis would be pointless and worthless. If they are not dealing with the same kind of “good,” or with the term “good” in the same shared meaning, why should they argue at all about the factual basis that underlies the correct decision as to what is “good”? On this point, therefore, even Ayer would certainly agree.

Our conclusion is that in reality there exists a kind of “fact,” even “entities” in some sense, that are relevant to evaluative decisions. The situation here is fully parallel to that of concepts, or even physical objects. The concept “good” itself is a kind of objective being. When one observes it, disputes may arise regarding its characteristics and definition. It is therefore clear that the commands and values that constitute the characteristics of the concept “good” may also be disputed. But there is meaning in the dispute, and there is some chance of making progress in that clarification, and perhaps even of resolving the matter.

A Note on the Objectivity of Moral Principles

Many philosophers bring the fact that there are disputes about moral duties, both regarding their content and regarding the degree of their validity, as proof that they lack any objective foundation. There are also those who claim that because we cannot justify our evaluative claims to others, they have no objective validity.

Both criticisms are mistaken. The claim that we cannot justify them is simply false. There are disputes that lead to persuasion. Alternatively, can one convince someone that the chair standing before us really exists there? The argument of persuasion would be to point at it and say that we simply see it. In light of our remarks above, one can do the same regarding evaluative arguments. Admittedly, it is a bit harder to point to them, but nonetheless we sometimes succeed, and the proof is that discussions do take place and there are even situations in which someone is convinced. See below the discussion we shall conduct on rhetoric and its meaning.

According to the picture described here, the first argument too has no basis. The fact that there are disputes is also true of actual objects. Would anyone doubt their existence merely because there are disputes over their definition?

Here precisely lies the difference between Moore’s cognitivism and the picture proposed here. Moore, in fact, held a picture quite similar to the one described here. He was an intuitionist in all fields of philosophy. When he wanted to demonstrate how we know that there is a world outside us, or that we have a body, and so forth, he simply raised his hand and showed everyone that he had a hand. Here he does something similar, something primitive, and apparently naturalistic, although he makes the effort to distinguish his position from naturalism. He simply points to the objectivist intuition. Moore places the basic values outside the sphere of philosophical discussion, says that we cannot analyze them or their validity, and is content with that.²⁰

Rauch, in Philosophy, p. 329, says the following about Moore’s doctrine:

The impression left by Moore’s approach was powerful. On the one hand, it points in the direction of abolishing an entire group of ethical questions. We are no longer troubled with inventing definitions for our basic terms—and thereby, it seems, we place them forever beyond the activity of reason. On the other hand, their “meaning” becomes more immediate, since they are now given to the grasp of each and every person’s intuition, and to direct apprehension. It may be that this approach reflects the stable Edwardian society of that time, 1903, in which one could rely on every Englishman to identify a good thing the moment he saw it, even if the words of definition failed.

Moore describes an approach in which there is direct perception of moral principles, and in that respect his view parallels the picture proposed here. But one must recognize that evaluative disputes remain, and so too does the feeling that there is a dimension of deliberation in the evaluative domain. We must explain the very possibility of disputes and of deliberation, that is, leave room alongside Moore’s extreme objectivism. It therefore seems that the variation on Moorean intuitionism proposed here is more complete, precisely because it does not require full objectivity of the evaluative content itself, and allows dispute and deliberation about it.²¹

As we said at the outset, finding and defining moral facts is the first step in building the parallel to the move we made in the first book regarding thought. Once we have seen here that there are “moral facts,” we can speak about Hume’s argument concerning the gap between facts and values exactly as we spoke about the problem of causality that Hume raised. The search for a synthetic framework for the understanding of judgments and values can therefore proceed in parallel to the search undertaken in the first book with respect to the onion of thought.

Step Two: A Moral Sense

The first step we have taken thus far led us to the conclusion that there are moral facts, in some objective sense. This brings us back to the next question: how can one discern them? It seems that none of our five senses can discern facts of this sort. With respect to thought as well, we asked the same question: how do we discern causality, or the relation of causation that exists between two events?

It therefore seems natural to continue our move and assume, parallel to what we did in the context of thought, that there is a moral “sense.” Such a sense can discern concepts such as “good,” analyze them, and derive from them specific norms or values. This sense parallels the auditory sense we defined with respect to thought. The moral sense is a kind of cognition, not of thought. It is moral cognition, whose objects are moral facts. This cognition brings to our awareness the moral fact that a certain act is good, or that a certain value really has value.

According to the picture proposed here, the hesitation described by Lavie in the dialogue quoted at the end of the previous chapter is an attempt to discern the relevant characteristics of the concept “good,” and to derive from them instructions and commands for the specific situation in which we find ourselves. This is the intellectual, or cognitive, dimension within the will.

The auditory sense, or Husserl’s eidetic vision, constitutes part of the intellect, its synthetic part. The sense we have defined here is part of the will. Figuratively speaking, one may say that this is the synthetic part of the will. Just as the synthetic part of thought saved us from the analytic analysis that led to the relativity of scientific facts, at least the comprehensive ones or the theoretical entities, see the second gate of the second book, so too the synthetic part of the will saves us from the analytic analysis that leads to moral relativism. The synthetic rescues intuition from the conclusions of analytic analysis. It allows us to leave our intuitive pictures standing, rather than reject or ignore them.

Both steps required a concession. The recognition of auditory reason required us to give up the distinction between thought and cognition, whereas the recognition of moral cognition requires us to give up the distinction between will, namely the choice of values, and cognition. Alternatively, as we defined it above, we must recognize that there is an intellectual, or cognitive, component that takes part in the operation of the will, as well as in the cognition of moral facts.

Step Three: Norms and Duties

Even so, one more layer of moral cognition still requires explanation. In the first step above we saw that there are moral facts. In the second step we saw that there is also a sense that can cognize them and analyze them. But everything done thus far remained in the factual realm. The result of such a process is that, according to the best cognition available to a given person, there is a moral fact from which one may derive the evaluative judgment that act X is a good or just act.

But this argument leads us, at most, to the possibility of judgments. There is an objective determination that act X is just. At this point we have freed ourselves from the burden of moral relativism. But even a judgment, in this sense, is still only a fact. There is an evaluative fact that a certain act is just. The question is how one can derive from it a practical instruction or command. How do we get from this objective and valid fact to the normative-evaluative conclusion that we are obligated to do the just act? Here we have returned once again to the problem of prescription.

Let us sharpen this by citing the formulation of A. H. Prichard, who in 1912 published an article entitled “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?”²² and argued as follows: the answer to the question “Why ought I to be moral?” must rest either on moral foundations or on non-moral foundations. If it rests on moral foundations, then the theory is circular and superfluous—for why should I obey the moral principles that ground the duty? If it rests on non-moral principles, then it cannot be valid.

We must note that this is no longer the problem of the naturalistic fallacy. The fallacy presented above describes a logical embarrassment: one cannot derive an a priori, prescriptive statement from an empirical fact, for whatever is derived from experience is necessarily neither a priori nor prescriptive. But at the stage where we now stand, the facts are not ordinary scientific facts but facts of a different kind. Therefore the difficulty is not logical, but at most one of lack of understanding. We do not understand from where moral obligation springs. There are moral facts, but the connection between them and the moral obligation that rests upon the human being is unclear.

Yet precisely the distinction of Foot and Anscombe may help us here. Once we have reached the conclusion that the statement that some act is just, or good, is valid and objective, all we need to add is the principle that we are obligated to do the just act. The fact becomes a norm through what we earlier called a “bridging principle.”

The principle that every person is obligated to do the good, or the just, is a general principle. Its various applications are merely different results of different moral cognitions. One may cognize that act X is good, or that act Y is good. The obligation to do both acts derives from the same principle itself: the obligation to do what is good.

There is therefore no derivation here of a normative principle from facts. The facts are given to us by moral cognition. The obligation exists in us a priori, not as something derived from facts. This obligation is parallel to the synthetic a priori propositions we encountered in the realm of thought. The obligation to do the good is a synthetic proposition, because it imposes an obligation that is not analytically contained in the meaning of the concepts appearing in the proposition. On the other hand, it is a priori, because it is not derived from any factual datum.²³

The existence of synthetic a priori propositions is a fact whose existence we were already forced to acknowledge in the realm of thought and cognition. It was this that led us to abolish the distinction between thought and cognition. Now we have completed the circle: in the realm of the will too there are synthetic a priori principles.

It may be that we cognize this principle too by means of some kind of sense, but it is clear from the move we have made here that our intuition attributes absolute validity to it. As we have already remarked, the fact that it is not entirely clear to us how such validity is generated is not a logical problem but at most a lack of understanding. We do not know how to give a scientific description of the emergence of such validity, but there is no logical problem in that. Do we know how to validate the evidence of our eyes, or of any other sense? We simply see, and it is clear to us that it is true. The same applies to moral cognitions.

There is therefore no obstacle to adopting the intuitive picture, which sees values as binding and objective. There is no necessity that things or processes we do not understand, or do not know how to describe, do not exist. If we look at an example from science, electromagnetic fields existed even before anyone knew how to give an exact scientific description of them. Only events or processes that involve logical inconsistency, or paradoxicality, necessarily do not exist.

Back to Leibowitz

The solutions proposed by different philosophers to the problem of the objectivity of morality point to the existence of an intuition, as may be inferred from the meaning of different linguistic utterances. Yet they offer no plausible explanation for it, because such an explanation already touches on metaphysical speculation. The claim that there is a moral sense, or that there is a synthetic a priori principle of a substantive kind and not merely a linguistic one in the Kantian sense, appears speculative. We have no independent basis for it.

But we must note that our intuitions are precisely what lead us, necessarily, to such speculations. Even someone who ignores their existence cannot deny that he offers no explanation for intuitions whose existence he himself has demonstrated.

A moderate positivist, one who does not deny what lies beyond the senses and logic but merely remains silent about it, see the quotation above from the Tractatus, generally tends not to address these layers. He is silent about them. But silence is of no help, because merely pointing to a linguistic phenomenon is not a proof.²⁴

Therefore, a positivist who points, on linguistic grounds, to the objectivity of morality, but refuses to discuss the reasons for it, still assumes them implicitly. This brings us back to Leibowitz’s position.

Let us now consider two quotations from the dialogues between Leibowitz and Tony Lavie.²⁵ Later in the first conversation, on p. 29, we find the following passage:

Lavie: You did not understand. I mean questions of value. In one of your letters to me a few years ago you distinguished between a person’s appeals in matters of value and his appeals in matters of need. There you claimed that one must distinguish between evaluative, ethical choice and the choice of need. The question is: what is this distinction between evaluative choice and the rest of a person’s choices? If I choose to eat an apple rather than a pear, that is not a matter of value!

Leibowitz: Usually morality is a value for human beings, but perhaps there are human beings who see the great value in eating an apple. Such a thing is possible.

Lavie: But from an evaluative standpoint this is not a value in the accepted sense of the term. Eating the apple is meant to satisfy a need. Without the need, the apple would remain where it is.

Leibowitz: In my eyes eating the apple is not a value, but it may be a value in the eyes of another person. It is like Trumpeldor’s saying, “It is good to die for our country.” Why is that good? That really is a good example. For him, that was the good…

And in the second conversation there, on p. 35, another key sentence appears—one among several like it elsewhere in Leibowitz’s writings:

Leibowitz: I therefore claim that the volitional decision is not dependent on knowledge.

Lavie: Last night I looked through your book Judaism, the Jewish People, and the State of Israel²⁶ and by chance I found there, on p. 313, that you say something like this: the decision of a person who has a religious interest and who is in a certain situation is given over to his judgment and to the judgment of his understanding. That formulation contradicts your view that understanding has no influence on the will.

Leibowitz: What I mean to say is that a person’s volitional decision is an expression of his rational thinking, yes, but not of his knowledge. That is where we disagree.

Leibowitz insists in a number of places on distinguishing between needs and values. This is a very fundamental distinction in his doctrine. The entire religious significance of the service of God, according to Leibowitz, depends on its being a value and not a need. That is, it depends on the fact that the person does not serve God for the sake of satisfying some need of his own—health, security, convenience, reward in the world to come, the coming of the Messiah, and so forth. It is therefore clear that Leibowitz too recognizes values as a category distinct from needs. At times a person may decide that what functions as satisfaction of a need for one person will be a value for him, as in the case of eating apples, but in any case it is clear that a different kind of functioning is involved. A value differs from a need.

Beyond that, in the last passage Leibowitz says that an evaluative decision belongs to rational judgment, and is an expression of rational thought. This is in contrast to needs, which are usually the result of instincts, desires, the psychological layer.

If so, why does he insist over and over again that the adoption of values is an arbitrary act of the human being, and that such an act has no reasons and cannot have reasons? Seemingly, that is precisely the characterization of needs. What, indeed, is the difference between needs and values according to Leibowitz?

The explanation apparently lies in Leibowitz’s positivism. As we have seen, Leibowitz is aware that values carry a rational charge. He is probably also aware that there is a dimension of cognition in evaluative decision. But, as a positivist, he focuses only on the description of the facts. The facts are that there is such a thing as values, that a person is sometimes prepared to die for their realization, and finally that this has no connection to facts or knowledge, as he explicitly says.

For the positivist, however, genuine justification exists only against a background of facts or prior knowledge. This means that values have no justification, and from his point of view no thought is involved in adopting them.

The cognitive dimensions that exist in the operation of the will do not belong to the domain that a positivist is prepared to discuss; he simply ignores them. But, as we have seen above, ignoring them does not eliminate the need to recognize the existence of these processes as the justification and grounding of what can be observed empirically, or proved linguistically.

This is similar to the way science, and even the philosophy of science, ignores the context of discovery—that is, the context in which scientific theory arises—and concentrates on the context of justification, that is, the testing and confirmation or refutation of the theory. What is of interest and open to discussion are the empirical facts, not the hidden processes that lead us to discover them. On this see at length in the second gate of the second book.

Even in the passage quoted at the end of the previous chapter, we see that Leibowitz does not deny Tony Lavie’s hesitation. He simply does not know what sort of thing it is. It belongs to the plane about which a faithful positivist insists on remaining silent. See also our remark above, in Chapter One, on Leibowitz’s positivism and Wittgenstein’s “injunction.”

It thus seems that Leibowitz himself accepts, at least implicitly, the picture we have described so far. The arbitrariness of values according to Leibowitz does not mean that they are chosen by random lottery. Leibowitz, as he expressed more than once in his well-known extremity, was prepared to kill for his values. A person does not kill just like that for principles that came to him through a random and arbitrary lottery.

The concept “arbitrary” in Leibowitz’s doctrine should be interpreted to mean: lacking dependence on facts or prior knowledge. Its justification belongs to the “mystical” domain, from the positivist’s perspective. We shall continue to elaborate on this in the appendix.

To conclude this section, let us note that failure to distinguish between the two meanings of the concept “arbitrary” fully parallels the failure to distinguish between indeterminism and free choice. In the previous gate we saw that there are those who prove determinism from the principle of causality. We saw there that they assume that it is impossible for human action to have no cause, that is, for it to be indeterministic, and therefore conclude that the human being himself acts deterministically. At least in that sense, he forms part of the material world.

But we already saw there that the assumption of free choice first and foremost denies that identification. The most basic claim of the theory of free choice is that there is a third state between determinism and indeterminism: free choice. In such processes the action is caused by the goal it seeks to attain, whether an evaluative goal or some other goal. In other words, an act of choice is not an indeterministic act, even though it has no cause in the deterministic sense. We saw that it is the result of deliberation, and the concept of deliberation does not exist in a deterministic world, nor in an indeterministic one.

An exactly parallel process occurs in the discussion of will and the choice of values. As we shall see in the appendix, Leibowitz’s interpreters understand “arbitrariness” in the indeterministic sense, that is, as a random and chance decision, a kind of lottery. But a decision of that kind carries no responsibility, and cannot be judged in terms of truth and falsehood. Clearly, there is also no justification for killing on its basis and on its behalf. These interpreters fail to understand that his intention was a different concept of arbitrariness, one parallel to free choice. A person chooses his values, in contrast to his needs, which are usually forced upon him, and therefore he is sometimes prepared to kill and be killed for them. He therefore also assumes responsibility, and bears responsibility, for his free evaluative decision. A person does not bear responsibility for his needs and instincts, but only for his autonomous choice.

Back to Kant

In the discussion of thought in the first book, we saw that Kant proposed solving the Humean problem by grounding the concept of the transcendental. His claim was that synthetic a priori principles are derived from transcendental considerations, that is, from the very fact that they constitute a necessary basis for all thought or cognition.

We saw there that the Kantian picture accepts Hume’s critique, albeit implicitly, and that Kant’s solution is analytic at its root. He did indeed accept the claim that one cannot derive general concepts from observation, and that such concepts have no validity with respect to the world as it is in itself, and therefore he grounded them on their necessity for thought. As we saw there, he assumed what needed to be proved, and did so quite explicitly.

Above we pointed out that the course of the discussion regarding the will parallels the discussion in the first book regarding thought. Here too the beginning of the discussion, and the basic difficulty, is Hume’s fallacy, according to which one cannot derive norms or judgments from facts. We would expect Kant to proceed here too in the same way, and derive evaluative obligation from its being a necessary condition for judgment. That is, here too he would assume what needed to be proved. Had Kant in fact done so, we would once again say that he had not helped us at all. In other words: he implicitly accepted the assumption that underlies the Humean fallacy.

Weiler, at the beginning of his article, see near the start of p. 137, already remarks that Kant himself probably believed in the gap between facts and values. The discussion of these matters is conducted in different books: Critique of Pure Reason was intended to present the conditions of validity of factual claims, and Critique of Practical Reason was intended to present the conditions of validity of moral commands.

It is therefore no surprise that Kant derives his well-known moral principle, the categorical imperative, a priori, from pure reason. Moral duty is thus not derived from facts, and yet it is certainly objective and binding.

But here too this is an illusion. Many have already criticized Kant’s doctrine, see, for example, Weiler at the beginning of p. 136, and likewise Hare, arguing that their moral theory, even if the process of derivation were valid, does not make it possible to derive concrete duties. These theories do not deal with the content of the moral command, but only with its principled existence, the reason for the obligation to it, and its formal structure. It therefore seems that one cannot derive concrete moral duties a priori, and probably not transcendentally either. Kant himself probably believed that concrete duties too can be derived from pure reason, that is, a priori, but that is probably an illusion.

Here too, the only way out left is to derive concrete duties from moral cognition. Hume’s fallacy obligates us to conclude that there is an independent moral cognition, a moral epistemology.

The general moral duty that Kant tries to ground, the categorical imperative, is in fact the principle we mentioned earlier, that we are obligated to do the good. The cognition of what is good is a kind of sense. But the obligation to carry out what we have recognized as good and to act accordingly is, for Kant, an a priori principle. The content that Kant pours into that principle remains on the formal plane alone, and, as noted, one cannot derive concrete commands from it.

I very much doubt whether Kant in fact succeeded in presenting an a priori grounding for that principle, but that is already another matter.

In the next chapter we shall deal with another implication of the claim that there is an intellectual dimension in the operation of the will. There we shall discuss the possibility and the manner of determining a scale of values.

From the book Like Grass by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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Moral and Aesthetic Judgments

Between Liberty and Freedom

Chapter 3: A Scale of Values

Introduction

As we mentioned in Gate Two, the structure of the onion of the will parallels the structure of the onion of thought. Both are built from a core that contains the fundamental principles — axioms in thought, and values in the will — and from outer layers derived from the fundamental principles in the core, and from those that lie within them.

There is, however, a difference between thought and will, and this too was mentioned in Gate Two. In the context of intellect, every conflict requires a resolution. There cannot be a genuine conflict there; if one appears, it is necessarily a paradox stemming from an error. One cannot live with contradictory axioms. By contrast, values can certainly contradict one another, as in any conative conflict, and this does not necessarily indicate an error. I can want to be healthy and at the same time want to eat tasty things. Of course, a conative conflict also creates a problem, but it arises on the practical plane. There I must act in a way that chooses only one of the two paths.²⁷

Therefore, in order to decide conflicts among values, we must construct a scale of values. Such a scale is a hierarchy of importance among the different values found in the core of the onion. It is obvious that there is neither any need nor any meaning in creating a hierarchy among the axioms found in the core of the onion of thought.

We have seen that all fundamental values are located in the core of the onion, and the outer layers derived, directly or indirectly, from those fundamental values are no less important than their “parents.” The relation among the various layers of the onion is one of logical hierarchy, not hierarchy of importance, and this exists both in the onion of thought and in the onion of will. By contrast, the hierarchy expressed among the values within the core itself is a hierarchy of importance, not a logical hierarchy. They are not derived from one another — for if they were, the derived values would not be in the core but in one of the layers — yet one is more important than another and takes precedence over it. This hierarchy also determines, of course, the relations of importance among derived values in the outer layers, according to their source in the core. For example, from the standpoint of halakha (Jewish law), a value realized through desecration of Shabbat yields to a value realized through the preservation of human life. The reason is that human life ranks higher than Shabbat observance in the halakhic scale of values.

Thus, the onion of the will contains a scale of importance, entirely located in the onion’s core. In the onion of thought there is no such phenomenon, since, as we have seen, what is required there is not a hierarchy of importance but only a logical hierarchy. This is a fundamental difference between these two onions.

The question we will discuss in this chapter is how one establishes a hierarchy of importance among fundamental values. As we shall see, several substantial problems are hidden within this issue and require clarification.

The Fundamental Problem

The fundamental problem in constructing a scale of values — that is, a hierarchy of importance among the values in the core — arises precisely from the fact that they are located in the core.

Each of the value-principles found in the core of the onion cannot be derived from a prior value, for otherwise it would not be a basic value but a means to another value. Clearly, no value in the core can be derived from other values found there, for then it would belong to a more external layer, not to the core.

Admittedly, it is possible that deriving a certain value requires several different basic values. But this does not essentially alter the picture. In such cases, the onion expresses the dependence of each layer upon all the layers that preceded it, and not only upon one isolated path from the core to that layer. A similar state of affairs exists in the onion of thought, for example in geometry, where a theorem is derived from several more basic principles, whether axioms or prior theses.

In the following note we will see a halakhic example of deriving one “derivative” from several “primary categories.” The example is relevant both to the onion of thought and to the onion of will.

Note 13: A “Derivative” of Several “Primary Categories”

It is accepted in the halakhic tradition that there are thirteen hermeneutical rules by which the Torah is interpreted. One of these rules is called “the common factor” — or, alternatively, “what is common to the two cases.” This rule allows us to derive one halakhic conclusion, the derivative, from two known halakhic premises, the primary categories.

In the first book, we discussed the internal logic of the rule of “the common factor,”²⁸ and we saw there that its basis lies in the fact that the two primary categories share a common denominator; in truth, we learn from that common denominator, not from either of them individually. See there, Gate Thirteen, Chapter 3.

Thus, the rule of “the common factor” does not really express the derivation of a derivative from two primary categories, because these are not primary categories at all. They are two different manifestations — each with its own nonessential attached properties that make it different — of one shared primary category. The derivative is also a manifestation of that same primary category.

In this note we will encounter an apparently similar but in fact different situation. We will see how one halakhic result is learned from two primary categories that have no common factor. In my article, where this method was first presented,²⁹ I called it “conceptual construction.” Here I will present only the principle, which is a general logical principle and not necessarily a specifically halakhic method of interpretation. For a more detailed discussion of its logical and halakhic implications, see that article.

In halakha there are quite a few contexts in which several basic primary categories appear, from which various derivatives are drawn. This exists in the laws of damages, in Shabbat, in the Sabbatical year, and elsewhere. For example, there are four primary categories of damages, and from each of them several derivatives are learned. Some derivatives are learned from two primary categories, and then the rule of “the common factor” is used, as discussed in the first mishnah of Tractate Bava Kamma. See the first book there, and the discussion in Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 6a.

Now, in the context of Shabbat, we find far more primary categories — thirty-nine — than in damages, where there are only four, and far more derivatives, which appear throughout Tractate Shabbat, especially from Chapter 7 onward. Yet there is a puzzling phenomenon in the context of Shabbat. We find no case there in which one derivative is learned from two primary categories. Every derivative belongs to one primary category, though sometimes it is a derivative of two primary categories in the sense that it can be learned independently from either of them. There is no use of “the common factor” in the context of the primary and derivative labors of Shabbat.

This phenomenon itself calls for explanation, and it apparently testifies to the nature of the primary categories of labor, as distinct from the nature of the primary categories of damages. It may be that the various categories of Shabbat labor do not rest upon one underlying principle, and therefore there is no room to learn a “common factor” from two different primary categories. In damages, by contrast, the mishnah itself, at the opening of Bava Kamma, concludes by summarizing the shared character of all the primary categories: they normally cause damage, they are one’s property, and their safeguarding is one’s responsibility. This claim requires clarification and justification, and it likely depends on disputes among the medieval authorities, but we will not enter that here.

There is, however, one exception in the laws of Shabbat, which appears almost incidentally. In the Jerusalem Talmud, Shabbat 7:2, the following law appears:

If one spits and the wind carries it, he is liable on account of winnowing; and anything that requires the wind is liable on account of winnowing.

The Jerusalem Talmud rules that one who spits and the wind carries the saliva is liable because this is a derivative of the primary labor of winnowing. Winnowing is the separation of wheat kernels from chaff by means of the wind. This is indeed ruled as halakha by several authorities; see, for example, the gloss of the Rema in Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim, at the end of section 319.

The problem with the Jerusalem Talmud’s law is that the primary category of winnowing concerns separating different components from one another by means of the wind. If so, it is unclear why spitting into the wind should be regarded as a similar action that can be learned as a derivative from the primary labor of winnowing. Several suggestions have been proposed, but they do not solve this difficulty at all. Some even proposed textual emendations in the Jerusalem Talmud to make it intelligible. But in Biur Halakha, in the Mishnah Berurah on that passage, the author cites Rabbi Menashe of Ilya, a disciple of the Vilna Gaon, from his book Alfei Menashe, to the effect that the Jerusalem Talmud means to hold the spitter liable under the primary labor of carrying an object four cubits in the public domain; and because this is done by means of the wind, we also require the primary labor of winnowing in order to derive this derivative.

It can be shown that this logical structure is not the ordinary structure of “the common factor”; see the article cited above. Here we have a structure that is seemingly similar, but in fact essentially different. The labor of spitting into the wind in the public domain is a labor prohibited on Shabbat, and it is learned from two different primary categories: carrying four cubits in the public domain, and winnowing. But the mode of learning is not by finding something shared by them. What could be common to carrying four cubits in the public domain and tossing grain into the wind? The connection between the two sources here is made differently: from the two primary categories together we construct a labor different from both, such that each component of the derivative is taken from a different primary category. The two primary categories join together to construct the derivative, not some shared primary category underlying them both.

The primary category of carrying four cubits in the public domain teaches us that carrying is forbidden on Shabbat. But in spitting, the carrying is done by the wind, and therefore we also need the primary labor of winnowing, which teaches us that performing a prohibited action by means of the wind is likewise forbidden. Thus, the labor of spitting is created by conceptual construction — that is, by combining the use of wind to perform an action, a component taken from the labor of winnowing, together with the labor of carrying four cubits in the public domain.

We thus encounter a procedure that derives a derivative from the composition of two different primary categories. Both are required in order to build the derivative. In the procedure of “the common factor,” in the final analysis one can learn the derivative from either primary category, while the second serves only to remove an obstacle in the learning process. Here both primary categories are essentially required, and together they create a new labor, which is the derivative.

For our purposes, let us simply add that the fact that conceptual construction appears in the labors of Shabbat does not contradict the assumption that the rule of “the common factor” does not appear there because the different labors have no shared aspect. Conceptual construction is possible even when the two primary categories have no common factor, and perhaps specifically in such cases. Therefore, the appearance of conceptual construction in place of “the common factor” actually reinforces the argument made above concerning the difference between the labors of Shabbat and the primary categories of damages.³⁰

In the context of the onion of will, or of thought, it is important to understand that when we say there are values, or derivatives, that are derived from several fundamental values, or primary categories, we do not mean “the common factor,” because that does not express derivation from several primary categories but from one common factor. What we mean is conceptual construction. For example, if there is a value of donating charity for purposes of a certain sort, and there is another value from which it follows in some way that goal X belongs to that category, then the combination of those two values constructs a third value, located in a more external layer of the onion: to donate charitable funds for goal X. This is conceptual construction within the onion of will, and the same can be seen in the onion of thought.

Thus, as we saw above, every basic value in the core of the onion forms an independent monad, something like a balloon, standing detached from the other basic values. Only in the more external layers can overlap arise, if there is a process of conceptual construction. But this very phenomenon creates the most fundamental problem in constructing a scale of values: their incommensurability.

As we have seen, every value, by virtue of being in the core, is an end, and does not serve as a means to any other end external to it.³¹ Therefore it also cannot be derived from any other value. But constructing a hierarchy between two values requires placing them on some common basis that will make it possible to measure and quantify the value of each relative to the other. For example, when we want to decide whether saving life overrides Shabbat or not, we must take two basic values — preserving Shabbat and preserving life — and examine their relation. Which is more important than which? To do this we must find a unit of measure common to both, and assign the worth of each value in terms of that unit. The higher value will override the lower one; that is, it will stand higher on the scale of values.

But assigning a unit of measurement to values is seemingly impossible, on two different levels. A. On the general level, in order to measure the “value” of any value, we must examine how good it is — that is, how necessary it is for us. But a value, by its very essence, is not something we need. If it were something we needed, it would not be a value but a need, or a means to another value. B. The previous problem concerned the very attempt to measure the “value” of any particular value. But there is an additional problem concerning the determination of the mutual relation between the weights of two values. Even if one could measure each of these values as a means toward the achievement of some goal, in order to compare the two values one would have to assume that both are intended to achieve the same goal. Only then is there a basis for comparison: whichever contributes more to the goal is the dominant value, the one that prevails over the other, that is, stands higher on the scale of values. But when the values serve different goals, they are of different character, so there is no possibility of comparing them, and certainly not of deciding which is more important.

And again, if we try to determine the scale by classifying the goals themselves — which goal is more important, weighted together with the importance of the relevant value in achieving it — we return to the initial problem, namely that values, by definition, have no goals.

The second problem is called in ethics, that branch of philosophy concerned with morality, the “incommensurability of values.” By analogy with this terminology, the first problem may be called the “immeasurability of values.”

Sometimes it is possible to establish a quantitative hierarchy. For example, in certain cases one can derive a hierarchical relation of importance between two values if one of them is merely an expression of the other. In the same way, one can construct a scale of values in ethical theories that contain only one basic value — monistic theories, in Statman’s terminology³² — so that all the other values are derived from it.³³ But these are overly simple examples of the possibility of creating a hierarchy among values. Usually the systems are more complex and contain many values — “pluralistic systems,” in Statman’s terminology — and there this is almost never possible.

In the next note we will see an example of such a hierarchy, and through it we will illustrate several aspects of the issue of a scale of values that we have discussed thus far.

Note 14: Saving Life Overrides Shabbat³⁴

In halakha there are several situations of conflict between values. For example, when parents instruct their child to commit a transgression, such as desecrating Shabbat. A conflict is created between the value of honoring parents and the value injured by that transgression, namely Shabbat. How are we to decide such a case? The sages learned the required form of decision from the juxtaposition in the verse: “Every man shall revere his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths” — from here it follows that if parents ask a son to desecrate Shabbat, he may not do so. The fact that the Torah needed to teach us this rule shows that, had the Torah not written it, we could not have decided such a case on our own. See above, in Note 8, in the discussion of an explicit scriptural decree. The reason is that we have no way to measure these two values, which are not derived from one another, and to create a hierarchy between them that would allow us to decide such a question.

The paradigmatic case in halakha of setting a scale between opposing values is the clash between the duty to observe Shabbat and the duty to save life. In other words: between the value of Shabbat and the value of life.

As is well known, halakha categorically rules that saving life overrides Shabbat. See Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 85a and following. At first glance, there is a decision here that the value of life prevails. The question is how such a determination can be justified, given the incommensurability between the value of life and the observance of Shabbat. When we examine the different arguments brought in the Gemara for this ruling, we will see that they differ in principled character.

Some arguments straightforwardly point to a hierarchy among the values. Usually such arguments are learned from verses, and this is unsurprising in light of what we saw above — namely, that determining a relation between values is not a simple matter that can be decided merely by reasoning.

The sharpest expression of this direction in the passage is the following argument:

Rabbi Yonatan ben Yosef says: “For it is holy to you” — it is handed over into your hands, and you are not handed over into its hands.

On the other hand, there is another argument in the Gemara, which follows Rabbi Yonatan’s, and is exceptional in having a precisely opposite character. It even seems from several sources that this is the one accepted in halakha:

Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says: “The children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath” — the Torah said: desecrate one Shabbat for his sake so that he may keep many Shabbats.

At first glance, Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya does not need to establish a hierarchy between the two values at all, between Shabbat and life. His consideration is quantitative, describing the conflict in terms of how many instances of Shabbat observance are contained in each possible resolution. He finds a common measure for the two values, in terms of observed Shabbats.

But this is not the whole picture. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says more than that. In his view, the entire value of life exists only because life makes it possible to fulfill mitzvot (commandments). Otherwise he would have had to add the value of life as such to the equation, apart from the quantitative consideration; indeed, he might then have dispensed with the quantitative consideration altogether. It is quite clear from his words that the value of life as such does not outweigh the value of observing Shabbat. Life has no intrinsic value whatever, and therefore the only remaining consideration is the equation concerning the quantity of Shabbats preserved.

If so, the more plausible explanation of Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s words is that the value of observing Shabbat is in fact higher than the value of life. Admittedly, on the practical level he rules that one should desecrate Shabbat in such a collision, but only because Shabbat observance itself will profit from that desecration. Of this the sages said: “Sometimes its suspension is its fulfillment.”³⁵

Beyond the reversed scale of values presented in Rabbi Shimon’s words, there is here, ostensibly, a demonstration that one can discover a hierarchy among different values and do so by force of reasoning. The role of the verse here requires separate discussion, and this is not the place. The consideration we have presented places the desecration of Shabbat on the same scale as saving life: both are measured in terms of observed Shabbats. One can therefore compare them and decide that Shabbat should be desecrated — as though the value of life prevails, but only because it is “worth” many Shabbats.

This is also an example of the kind of decision we called in the body of our discussion a “quantitative hierarchy.” There is one classificatory principle, and in fact only one value — what we called a “monistic system” — in the core of the onion. The classification and ordering in the scale of values at the core is only quantitative.

In fact, Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s argument removes the value of life from the fundamental values found in the core of the onion of will, and transfers it to a more external layer. It is a derived value from the value of observing Shabbat, which is in the onion’s core, because life has value only insofar as it makes Shabbat observance possible.³⁶ Thus, this method is of no help when we are dealing with genuine values, which by their very nature are independent, as we explained above.

For comparison, let us cite another argument that appears there in the same passage:³⁷

Rabbi Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel: Had I been there, I would have said that my proof is better than theirs: “and he shall live by them” — and not die by them.

Rava said: All of them can be refuted except for that of Shmuel, which cannot be refuted.

Rabbi Yehuda proposes a position contrary to all those of the Tannaim, and yet it is specifically his view that, according to Rava, is superior to all the others. Rabbi Yehuda’s proposal does not deal specifically with the laws of Shabbat at all. It establishes a general principle: the value of life is preferable to the value of Shabbat, just as it is preferable to the value of the other commandments.

At first glance, this is an all-encompassing determination, clearly pointing in Rabbi Yonatan’s direction: the value of life overrides the value of Shabbat. But now let us ask ourselves why the verse says “and he shall live by them,” and not simply “and he shall live.” Who are “them”?

The meaning becomes clear as soon as we look at the entire verse, Leviticus 18:5: “You shall keep My statutes and My ordinances, which a person shall do and live by them; I am the Lord.” That is, the goal is to live by them — by the commandments — not merely to live as such. If so, we may again ask: do we have here a ruling in favor of the dominance of the value of life, as Rabbi Yonatan maintained? Or is the ruling actually in favor of Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, according to whom the value of Shabbat prevails, since all life is intended in order to live “by them,” through performance of the commandments, such as Shabbat observance? This rationale even extends Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s approach to all the commandments, not only to Shabbat, as Rabbi Shimon’s own words might perhaps imply.³⁷

To conclude, let us return once more to the case of parents who instruct their son to desecrate Shabbat. The sages indeed derive the rule of decision from a verse, but the formulation of the exposition also says something: “‘Every man shall revere his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths’ — all of you are obligated to honor Me.” In other words, there is a logical inference here that reverence for God takes precedence over obedience to parents, since the parents themselves are also obligated in honor and reverence toward God, and therefore He takes precedence over them. There are several ways to understand the logic of this inference, but we should note that the sages are not using the verse merely as a formal source for the rule of decision; they learn from it a form of logical thinking. It seems that the decision rests fundamentally on logic, namely: there is a unit of measure by which we compare the two values set against one another in the conflict, namely honor of God. When one measures the two values against that standard, one obtains the result that honor of God takes precedence.

If this is correct, then this example too, like the example of saving life, does not actually reflect the establishment of a scale of values, but a determination that one of the values is derived and does not belong to the fundamental onion. Such a situation allows a decision, because there is a unit of measure common to the two values.³⁸

This is not the place to elaborate further. The goal of the note was only to illustrate several of the phenomena that arose in the discussion in the main body of the chapter.

Let us conclude the section with a formulation that sharpens the problem. See Moral Dilemmas, p. 83. Reuven and Shimon are discussing whether a certain person should be compelled to provide the sum of money needed to save the life of a particular patient. The circumstances are that the rescue requires a modest expenditure, and the person in question is wealthy. Let us assume that Reuven is a utilitarian and Shimon an extreme liberal. Reuven’s moral theory is utilitarian: one should act so as to maximize overall happiness in the world, or in humanity. Shimon, by contrast, regards liberty and property rights as supreme.

In such a situation, Reuven and Shimon are actually discussing two different questions, and that is why they reach different conclusions. Reuven asks whether the act of coercion will increase the amount of happiness in the world or not, and he can decide either way. Shimon, by contrast, asks whether this action infringes the liberty and rights of that individual, and therefore he will likely oppose coercion. They will examine the matter from different angles: Reuven will examine the patient’s condition, whether there is another patient in more urgent need of help, whether the coercion will in fact be most beneficial, and so on. Shimon, by contrast, will examine only whether the wealthy person is willing to provide assistance or not.

It is fairly clear that, in general, Reuven will view such coercion as a good deed of helping another, whereas Shimon will view it as a bad deed of infringing the liberty and rights of that wealthy person.

We have presented here a moral dispute between two people holding monistic ethical theories. But usually the situation is that each of us holds pluralistic theories. In such a case, the example brought here can serve as an example of a conflict within one and the same person, torn between two values in which he believes and to which he is committed: preserving another’s liberty and rights, as against maximizing happiness. In other words: liberty versus utility. These are extremely common dilemmas, with which every individual, and certainly every society, wrestles.

This conflict describes two different value-perspectives from which the case can be examined. One cannot be reduced to the other, nor vice versa, and therefore the values involved here are incommensurable. Can one construct a hierarchy between two values of this kind, liberty versus happiness? The matter is all the more difficult because what is at issue is the contribution of the liberty of person A as against the contribution of the happiness of person B to the total happiness in the world. The usual assumption, apparently, is that from the moral point of view no distinction should be made between different persons.

This problem must trouble every ethical system, both philosophical and legal. The court and the legislators must define a legal scale of values by which society is governed. One of the problems that leads the Supreme Court in contemporary Israel, as of 2004–2006, to appear to operate arbitrarily is precisely the fact that it is very difficult to establish a clear a priori scale of values. Every case evokes different responses, and the theoretical relation among the different values is almost impossible to define and implement. In the end, the court generally uses vague and nebulous formulations that supposedly present a systematic rationale, but are in fact merely expressions of an intuition specific to the case under discussion. In most cases of this type, it is impossible to do much better.³⁹

The question with which we are now concerned is a principled one: is it possible at all to define any scale of values? And if so, how? In other words: does the intuition that guides such processes of judgment and legislation have any meaning at all, or is the matter dependent on whims and accidental feelings, and nothing more? It should be emphasized that we are not dealing here with the specific question of what the “correct” scale is, but with the question of how such a scale can be constructed at all. The discussion here is meta-ethical, not necessarily ethical.

A Solution, and an Apparent Solution

The second problem we presented, the incommensurability of values, gives rise to lengthy discussions in the philosophy of ethics, and we will not deal with them here.⁴⁰ I will merely note that I know of no satisfactorily reasoned solution to this painful problem. In this section we will present the natural solution to both problems, as it arises from the picture of will and moral choice outlined above.

Statman, in Chapter 3, section 3, argues that as a matter of fact it clearly seems possible to compare incommensurable values. He brings examples in which value A appears with enormous intensity while value B appears only very weakly. For example, Sartre’s dilemma: should the student remain with his sick mother, or should he go join the forces of Free Spain in their just war? If the mother is gravely ill and the son’s remaining with her will save her from certain death, whereas his joining the forces of Free Spain is nearly valueless — because he is disabled — then the dilemma can obviously be decided. That is, in such a case the values can certainly be compared. Put differently: whatever the circumstances, almost no one would say that there is no room here for judgment and only a lottery can decide.

But if these values are truly incomparable, this ought to be true regardless of the intensity with which they appear. The issue is not quantitative but qualitative. From this Statman concludes that one can compare even incommensurable values, even though one cannot reduce one to the other.

Here a paradigmatic mistake of analytic thought is made. The fact that one can compare these two values and decide the dilemma is a “fact” based on a feeling. But that is precisely the question of incommensurability: this feeling appears to be an illusory emotion. Logic teaches that when there is no common measure, two different values cannot be compared.⁴¹ In other words, how can one bring proof from human behavior? Is this an empirical question to be decided by factual evidence? Seemingly, we are not asking how people in fact behave, but what the justification is for this kind of decision. Is it enough to point out that it exists in practice?

Ordinarily, it is specifically the synthetic position that tends to accept intuition, but it cannot exempt itself from justification or from finding an answer to the analytic difficulty. For example, it is clear to all of us that our sight reflects the truth about the world. Yet analytically this is problematic, because it is hard to justify. The analytic thinker, especially the post-Kantian one, ignores this and says: this is my intuition. But an intuition that stands in contradiction to a logical argument is not acceptable unless one finds for it a justification, or a theoretical infrastructure that makes it possible. For the analytic thinker who treats his beliefs as relative and arbitrary, that is, conventional, there is no problem in declaring: for me this is an axiom. But one who wishes to take his beliefs seriously must seek a justification for them.⁴²

Therefore, since there is a substantive problem in comparing values or perspectives — this is the problem of incommensurability — the fact that we in fact do this is only one horn of a paradox, or at least of a dilemma. The problem is how to reconcile it with the other horn: the logical argument that denies the possibility.

This mistake is paradigmatic, because, as we saw in the intermezzo above, people of the animal-vital psyche, that is, analytic thinkers, tend to wrap emotion in the language of intellect. Those with a synthetic position do something similar: they wrap intuition in a defined and sharp analytic cloak. But in Statman, even the cloak is missing. He offers no explanation or theoretical rationale at all for the hierarchy he proposes. He does not confront the real difficulty raised by incommensurability.

To be sure, one should note that he is dealing with the question of deciding value-conflicts, and perhaps for that there is some answer in his words. But here we are concerned with the principled possibility of setting a scale of values, that is, with the very existence of a theoretical hierarchy between two incommensurable values, and not necessarily with the question of deciding concrete conflicts. To this question Statman offers no answer. On the contrary, it seems that he recognizes that there is in fact no real way to do this, except in cases where a quantitative extremity can be found, allowing a quantitative ranking between the values in question, as in the examples we presented in the previous note. His main claim is that empirically it turns out that the absence of a scale of values does not necessarily interfere with the possibility of decisions in value-laden or moral dilemmas.

The Solution

We will now explain why, in light of the picture we have proposed, this is indeed possible. This is the rationale missing in Statman, and it is what can explain the possibility of deciding between incommensurable values — that is, the possibility of constructing a scale of values.

The explanation is very simple. In Gate Nine of the first book, we explained that deciding between incommensurable values requires stepping outside the system of discussion itself; see the examples there. Within the system, those values have no common measure. Outside it, however, we may succeed in finding such an objective, universal measure. We will now continue and see more specifically what that external measure means.

In contrast to the common realist description, which sees the values themselves as existing in some sense, we proposed an alternative picture. The basic values, those found in the core of the onion — and only among them do we construct the scale of values; all the other relations are already derived from that scale by purely logical means — are nothing but characteristics, or properties, of the concept “good,” which is a kind of being that exists in some sense in the world, perhaps in the world of ideas. As we saw above, the specific values are characteristics of this concept. We also saw that disputes can certainly arise concerning them, but this is exactly like disputes conducted regarding the definitions of more concrete objects.

Thus, we have in hand an objective scale, as though monistic, even though the system is not a one-value system, for evaluating and comparing values: the decisive question is how “good” the value in question is. Its degree of goodness is the metric that provides a measure for each of the values, and thereby we have answered the first problem, the immeasurability of values. But this itself is also the instrument by which to rank them on some objective scale, that is, to solve the problem of their incommensurability. By means of moral perception, or direct moral cognition, we examine the concept “good” itself and the values that characterize it: how essential they are to the concept of good, and with what intensity the quality of goodness appears through them, or in them.

This is the movement outside the system in the moral context, and it solves the paradox of a hierarchy among incommensurable values. We step outside the entire onion of the will, to the concept “good” in itself, of which the entire onion is only a phenomenon, that is, its appearance.

Of course, such a theory assumes that the concept “good” is not merely an empty description of the fact that this act is worthy of being done, but that it has a positive connotation or direction shared by all human beings. It is a concept that, beyond its connotation, also has ontological meaning. It is to this external entity that we go out in order to find a common measure for all values in the world. If such an idea indeed exists, then there is no doubt that there will be no value that cannot be measured on this scale.

It should be noted that this description, despite sounding somewhat mystical, accords very well with our intuitions and removes the need for a further rationale for the very possibility of constructing a scale of values. When we compare two values, there is a sense that one is “better,” or “good with greater intensity,” than the other. This is the basis for constructing a hierarchical scale between them. This is further evidence for the objective existence of the concept “good,” and on the other hand it is apparently the only solution to the problem of incommensurability.

There is no doubt that a person’s liberty is more important than the size of his house, and that saving his life is more important than either of the former values. This is not dependent on questions of the extent or intensity with which the compared values appear here. It is a scale with which almost every person will agree, and this proves that in fact we do possess some common measure among the various values.⁴³

The very example that Statman himself brings for deciding a value-dilemma serves as evidence for our position. He argues that when there is a large difference in the intensities with which the values appear in a given situation, we succeed in deciding between incommensurable values. But this itself shows that there is some scale by which both values can be judged. For if not, why would differences of intensity change anything? Quantitative differences cannot create a common measure if such a measure does not already exist without them. The differences of intensity only sharpen and amplify the common measure that exists from the outset. Once such a measure exists, the differences of intensity define the hierarchy.

We again see that the concept “good” itself, even before its specific contents, is objective. We all behold it, and sometimes we disagree about its correct description, including the hierarchy of the scale of values derived from it.

It should be emphasized again that we are not dealing here with an ethical theory but with a meta-ethical theory. Our concern is to show that there is a justified way to construct some scale of values; we are not entering the question of which scale is the proper one. Clearly, it is very difficult to derive a specific scale from the consideration given here. At most, this consideration can strengthen a person’s confidence in the scale he sets for himself, that is, in his moral intuition. Exactly as the argument from intuitive reason does not dictate which truths we know in that way. It points only to a way of justifying the trust we place in our intuitions.

Such a consideration prevents us from falling into the analytic trap that claims there is no rational way to do this, and therefore we must treat our choices as merely subjective feelings. Of course, this does not in any way contradict the obligation imposed by the virtue of humility to listen carefully to the claims of others and to examine the alternative scale they propose, and only then decide whether we are right in the scale we have constructed. But such an obligation does not indicate that there is no truth here, for a similar situation and a similar obligation exist even in scientific theories, which deal with facts rather than norms.

The Degree of Objectivity of the Values Themselves

In light of the picture we have presented here, our meta-ethical theory is realist, but in a different sense from the accepted one. It is not the values themselves that are existing entities, but the good itself. It exists like all the other ideas or abstract concepts. See Gate Two of the first book.

In a realist picture that sees the values themselves as bearing objective meaning, there is in fact no room for value-disagreement at all. But in our picture, each of us beholds the same concept itself, the good, yet there is room for dispute concerning its characteristics. Clearly, there are descriptions of the concept that can no longer be considered interpretations or descriptions of the concept in question. When we encounter interpretations that depart from the essential core that defines the good — in the terms of Gate Two of the first book: the essential properties of a concept are its definition — we will say that what is at work there is already the use of a different concept. That is not a scale of values but of wickedness. Such a scale cannot be accepted as derived from “beholding” the concept of good that we behold.

At this point, of course, the question arises: to what extent must the scale be shared by all human beings, such that someone who does not agree with it is to be regarded by us as mistaken or wicked, and to what extent can disagreements be seen as legitimate? Where does the line pass for the objectivity of the values themselves, not of the concept of good as such?

This is a question about the degree of objectivity in the process of moral cognition. We will not discuss it here,⁴⁴ but we may say briefly that there is some margin open to disagreement, yet there is also an objective core, and one who deviates from it is considered wicked. As noted above, there are scales of values that cannot be considered interpretations, or reasonable descriptions, of the concept of good itself.

Such scales of values point to a choice of evil — that is, to “values” that cannot be derived from contemplation of the concept good. Let us add that actions that correspond to such scales can also be the result of weakness of will, that is, a choice not to choose, and not always an expression of a distorted scale of values, or of a different concept of good.⁴⁵

Difference Between Categorical Systems of Thought and of Values

Toward the end of the chapter, let us look again at the structure formed in the onion of the will and compare it to the other onions.

We already noted that in the onion of thought there is no value-hierarchy, but only a logical hierarchy. The truths in the core, that is, the axioms, and also those outside it, are not ranked relative to one another. There is no more truth and less truth. Every proposition is either true or false. Only regarding values, ethical and aesthetic ones, is there a graded scale: more good or less good, more beautiful or less beautiful.

Another expression of this is the fact that a conative conflict is possible, since a person can want, or uphold, two conflicting values simultaneously. He will only need to determine a hierarchy between them. The same is true of aesthetic values.

By contrast, a person cannot uphold contradictory facts simultaneously. That is a paradox. Hence there is no need, and also no possibility, to rank basic truths that we have adopted, that is, axioms. All are equally correct. Therefore, in the core of the onion of thought there is no concept of a “scale of axioms.” Hierarchical scales are possible, and indeed necessarily exist, only in the domains of value, judgment, or normativity.

In the next note we will examine this question with respect to another kind of onion: the onion of cognition.

Note 15: On the Epistemological Onion, or: The Priest, the Rabbi, and the Majority

At this point one can raise an interesting distinction between thought and cognition. Thought and logic deal with facts. There we saw that it is impossible to adopt contradictory facts simultaneously, unlike systems that deal with values or principles of judgment, where an essential conflict is possible.

But what about epistemology? Until now we have associated it with the side of thought, as distinct from the value-judgmental side, for it too deals with facts. Yet it seems that here perhaps the ways of thought and cognition part company. At least in a certain sense, cognition seems capable of adopting conflicting evidence. For example, in the legal system there are rules of evidence. Every item of evidence has a certain weight and force. If a person brings evidence in his favor of a given strength, then there is a certain weight to the claim that the fact supported by that evidence is true. We do not know this directly, but we have a solid basis for believing that this fact should be recognized.

If two witnesses come and testify that so-and-so killed so-and-so, our conclusion is that there is a solid basis for believing that he did indeed kill him. By contrast, circumstantial evidence will usually have lesser weight. There we will not tend to accept with certainty the conclusion it supports.

This is true not only of legal systems, but also of the epistemological system of the individual person. If he has clear evidence for some fact, then he believes with certainty that it is true. If he has weaker evidence, his belief is weaker. For example, a person who sees his son being beaten knows with certainty that he was beaten. If he was told about it by others, he knows it with less certainty. And if he has only circumstantial evidence, then he is not certain of it at all.

The same is true of science. When a scientist has unequivocal empirical evidence for a given phenomenon, then he knows that fact with a high level of certainty. If he has only a hypothesis, or several experimental facts that support it indirectly, then his confidence in the nature of the phenomenon is of course reduced. And if he has only a logical conjecture about it, that is evidence of very low force.

Now let us think of a situation in which a conflict arises between opposing pieces of evidence. For example, in a legal system a promissory note may indicate that so-and-so borrowed from so-and-so. This is proof of a certain strength that there was a loan. Now the supposed borrower claims that nothing of the sort ever happened, that the note is forged, and he brings one witness to testify accordingly. The holder of the note, in response, brings witnesses to authenticate the signatures on the note. We then have evidence in both directions. That is, we are in a situation where reality is one — so the claim that the person borrowed is either true or false, with no third possibility and no intermediate degrees — yet from a legal standpoint we have reasonable evidence in both directions. This is a possible legal situation. Clearly, a similar situation can arise in science as well.

This is an epistemological conflict. With regard to facts, there is only one truth. But the pieces of evidence that testify to facts can contradict one another. This does not necessarily mean that one of the pieces of evidence is substantively invalid — that one cannot rely on a note, or on witnesses. The legal determinations that allow reliance on a note or on witnesses both remain in force.

Thus, in the epistemological onion there can be a conflict of this kind, even though epistemology concerns cognition of reality, and in reality itself only one side is right. Moreover, there is also a hierarchy among the different kinds of evidence — an inseparable part of every legal system of evidence. In this sense, epistemology, although it concerns knowledge of facts, resembles values rather than facts.

One might say that this is really an onion of values, or a normative onion, and therefore it is no wonder that it resembles the onion of will, that is, the onion of values. The rule that determines that a given piece of evidence is valid is itself a norm. In this sense, what is involved is a value, not an objective fact. There is a legal norm stating that when we have witnesses, we are to act as though what they say is a correct description of reality. The hierarchy among the types of evidence, that is, which is stronger than which, is likewise a kind of norm.⁴⁶

But the similarity, of course, is not complete. What are we to say regarding science? Are the principles of confirmation there, the “laws of evidence” of science, also merely norms? Is the fact that I observe very many occurrences of the same type not real evidence — though not conclusive — that it always happens thus? Is this merely a normative convention? We have already noted that norms can exist in the world of ideas, and that we behold them and thereby become aware of their truth. In that sense, there is full similarity here. The methodology of science is a product, that is, a phenomenon, of observation of the idea of evidence and of logical inquiry. This creates a methodological or epistemological onion.

Let us conclude the note with a well-known anecdote attributed to Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz. Once a priest met him and asked: Why do you Jews not accept the principles of Christianity? After all, we are more numerous than you, and in your own Torah it is written, “Incline after the majority.” Rabbi Yonatan’s answer is known in two versions:

A. One follows the majority only where one is in doubt. Would it ever occur to us, if a piece of meat had been slaughtered before our eyes with certainly valid kosher slaughter, to declare it forbidden merely because most meat in the city is non-kosher? Only when a piece of meat comes into our possession and its status is unknown to us are we commanded to follow the majority. And since in that city most meat is non-kosher, halakha says we must declare it forbidden. So too regarding Christianity: since we know the truth and are not in a state of doubt, the rule of following the majority does not apply to us.

B. There is a well-known midrash in Bereshit Rabbah 8, in the section beginning with the words “Rabbi Simon said”:

Rabbi Simon said: When the Holy One, blessed be He, came to create the first man, the ministering angels formed themselves into groups and factions. Some said, “Let him not be created,” and some said, “Let him be created,” as it is written: “Mercy and truth met together; righteousness and peace kissed.” Mercy said, “Let him be created, for he performs deeds of kindness.” Truth said, “Let him not be created, for he is full of lies.” Righteousness said, “Let him be created, for he performs acts of righteousness.” Peace said, “Let him not be created, for he is altogether strife.” What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He took Truth and cast it to the earth, as it is written: “And He cast truth to the ground.”

The midrash describes a dispute among the divine attributes over whether it is fitting to create man: kindness and righteousness against peace and truth. The situation is balanced. The Holy One, blessed be He, acts “democratically” and throws Truth to the ground, and thus, in a miraculous way, a majority is created in favor of man’s creation.

Rabbi Yonatan asks about this: Why did the Holy One throw down Truth, and not Peace? And he answers: if Peace had been thrown down and Truth had remained above in the minority against righteousness and kindness, then the majority would not have helped. The reason is that no majority avails against the truth.

This dispute describes a confrontation between truth and various evidentiary considerations. When the truth is known, no evidence in the world can help against it. Evidence has a place only where the truth is unknown. The reason is that the entire purpose of evidence is to attain the truth. But it is irrelevant once the truth is known. Evidence is not fact, but an indication of fact. See another example in the second book, Note 24.⁴⁷

Thus, there are two kinds of hierarchy among principles in categorical systems: logical hierarchy and value hierarchy. In the onion of thought there is only logical hierarchy, whereas in the other onions, onions of judgmental principles, there is also value hierarchy. In the next section we will consider an interesting phenomenon that somewhat changes the picture we have presented thus far.

Is There a Logical-Value Hierarchy?

Up to this point we have assumed a complete separation between logical hierarchy and value hierarchy in the onions of value, or of judgment. The logical hierarchy is defined among the layers of the onion. An outer layer stands lower in the logical hierarchy than the inner layer from which it is derived. The value hierarchy is defined only among the values within the core, and this is what creates the scale of values. In the picture described so far, each of these processes is carried out independently of the other.

Despite everything said above, one sometimes has the sense that this picture does not fully reflect the character of categorical systems of value, or of judgment. Our simple intuition tells us that if value A is a means of attaining value B, then value B is more important. The end is always more important than the means. For example, if tolerance is a means for achieving peace, then clearly the value of peace stands higher on the scale than the value of tolerance. If charity is a means for improving the giver’s character, then it stands at a lower place on the scale of values than the value of character improvement.

But what exactly does the statement mean that “value A is a means for attaining value B”? Is this a logical relation, which determines positions in the different layers, or a value relation, which determines positions on the scale of values? Or perhaps something else entirely, something logical-value in nature? In other words, the relation between the claims in the previous paragraph and the two kinds of hierarchy we defined above is not clear.

Let us return to the example of tolerance as a means to peace among people. In what sense can we infer from this that peace is more important than tolerance? This should become manifest in a clash between the two values. For example, if another person has a principled objection to tolerance, and therefore, if I am tolerant toward him, he becomes very angry and the peace between us is broken. In such a situation it is clear that we will not advocate tolerance, since its entire point is only the attainment of peace.

At first glance, in such a situation it appears that one can derive the value of tolerance from the value of peace. For if peace is a value and tolerance is a tool for attaining it, it follows that one should uphold tolerance.

But one must note that there is no logical derivation here of the value of tolerance from the value of peace, but only a practical application of the value of peace in certain circumstances. Practical intellectual judgment tells us that tolerance is an effective instrument for peace. Therefore, implementing the value of peace in this case means behaving tolerantly.

If there were a logical derivation of the value of tolerance from the value of peace, then tolerance would have the same value as peace, because it would itself be an expression of peace. A case of logical derivation is one in which tolerance itself expresses peace. A value is derived from a value through a logical process, which is theoretical and a priori. But when one infers how to implement a given value from practical considerations — such as the consideration that tolerance usually leads to peace — this is not logical derivation.

For example, if greeting one’s neighbor expresses good relations with him, then there is logical derivation here. The act of greeting is itself a realization of the value of good relations. And precisely because of that, it has the same value as those relations. But if greeting is merely a practical way of achieving good relations, and beyond that has no intrinsic value — that is, if it is only a means of creating good relations — then greeting would have no value at all. It would not belong to the onion at all. Therefore tolerance too, at least as presented above, is not logically derived from peace but is only a practical instrument for attaining it, and thus it has no intrinsic value whatsoever.⁴⁸

An expression of this point was seen above in Note 14, in the discussion of the scale of values. We saw there that according to one explanation in the Gemara, life is nothing but an instrument for observing Shabbat, or commandments in general. If so, according to that conception life has no value at all if it does not lead to Shabbat observance.

There we presented life as lying in a secondary layer of the onion, but in light of the sharpening we have now achieved, this is not accurate. Life is not in the onion at all. It is only a practical derivative, that is, a clarification of the best practical way in which to realize the value of Shabbat observance, and not a logical derivation of one value from another. Therefore, as in the examples above, the value of life is not located in any layer of the onion at all.

Thus, the intuition that points to a means as having a lower value than the end it serves is not correct. There are actions that are merely a practical way of achieving a value-goal in a given situation. Such actions are not values at all, and therefore they are not located in the onion at all. They are the result of intellectual analysis of the situation and of intellectual decision — not volitional decision — as to how to realize the determinations of the will. Let us recall that we already encountered this trivial function of the intellect in value-decision, and noted that it does not constitute a genuine intellectual dimension in value-decision itself, that is, in the process of choice.

Summary

Already in the previous gate we noted that the adoption of fundamental values is a process of cognition and not only of thought. In this chapter we have also seen that this is the process that underlies the construction of a scale of values. In the next chapter we will see an example of moral cognition — that is, empirical observation of the concept “good” — in an attempt to derive from it the specific characteristics of various values. This example has value in its own right for our discussion, beyond illustrating the process with which we have been occupied.

Chapter 4: Between Liberty and Freedom

Introduction

The two concepts, liberty and freedom, appear at first glance to be similar. In this section we will see that in many respects they are complete opposites, and yet many people tend to confuse them. It is very important to understand that the discussion here is not merely semantic. Our intention is not to correct language, and it is certainly not clear that the usages we will propose here are in fact the exclusive meanings of these two terms. Our purpose is to distinguish between two concepts that appear similar, not necessarily to clarify linguistic terminology.

The distinction that will be presented here has many important consequences. In the following chapters we will deal mainly with consequences in two areas: ethics and artistic creation.

One more important remark. The characterizations we will propose here for liberty and freedom will generally be more descriptive and less demonstrative. As we saw in the previous chapters, it is very difficult to justify the characterization and validity of values, since by definition they do not serve as a means to any end external to themselves. But we also saw that value-decisions have an objective cognitive dimension. One who “beholds” the concept “good” can derive from it value-characteristics, or specific value-guidelines. Therefore, what we shall do in this chapter with respect to liberty and freedom is a kind of observation of the concept “good.” I think it is quite difficult to disagree with the conclusions to which we shall arrive, and it is likely that anyone who beholds the concept “good” will arrive at a similar picture.

Thus, beyond its specific aims, this chapter can also serve as an illustration of the process of moral cognition described in the previous chapters. We will conduct here an empirical observation of the concept “good,” in an attempt to derive from it the characteristics of the values of liberty and freedom. The reader is invited to decide whether this is an objective and convincing observation, and whether what is involved here is indeed a cognitive process, as explained above.

On Freedom and Liberty

The first similarity that can be found between the two concepts, freedom and liberty, is that both relate in some way to limitations. But more or less at that point the similarity ends. In almost every other respect these are two concepts with opposite meanings.

Freedom, as we will define it here, is a theoretical, utopian state in which no limitations are imposed on us. A situation with fewer limitations is a less free situation, but still contains some degree of freedom. In general, there are different levels of freedom, and the degree of freedom prevailing in any situation stands in inverse proportion to the number and intensity of the limitations imposed on us in that situation.

Liberty, by contrast, as it will be defined here, is not connected to the number of limitations that in fact exist, but to our behavior in a situation in which limitations are imposed upon us. For example, our aspiration to overcome the limitations imposed upon us in a given situation and to arrive at freedom expresses a degree of liberty. Put differently, liberty is the degree of autonomy of a person under the influence of limitations. It measures the extent to which he does not submit to the limitations, or the extent to which he succeeds in acting according to his understanding despite the limitations imposed upon him against his will. The degree of maneuvering within limitations is therefore a fundamental expression of liberty. Sometimes liberty consists specifically in full submission to limitations, but even then this is done from the person’s own decision to accept them. The possibility a person has to struggle within limitations for a personal and authentic form of thought and behavior of his own is what gives even the decision to submit to those limitations a dimension of liberty.

As we proceed, these definitions will take on clearer contours.

Let us now briefly consider the inversion of meaning between these two concepts. First, there is an interesting indication at the linguistic level. In the language of the Bible and the sages, we do not find an inflected term parallel to the word “free” within the system of concepts of liberty. Hebrew has no term corresponding to “libertied.” The closest expression is ben-horin. Expressions of the form “son of…” can be found in other contexts as well. For example, “a son of the world to come,” or “a son of Torah,” “a son of death,” and so on. The meaning of “a son of the world to come” is someone who has some kind of connection to the world to come, yet has not reached it.⁴⁹ Similarly, a ben-horin is someone who has some connection to liberty. This linguistic phenomenon indicates that liberty is not a specific state that actually exists, and is never fully attained. It is an aspiration toward some state, which gives the aspirant contact with that state. It is an aspiration toward an ideal state in which we are not situated — perhaps only in the world to come, which the sages call “the world of liberty.”⁵⁰ It is an aspiration to break out of the frameworks and limitations imposed upon us, and to go out into freedom. This aspiration itself expresses liberty.

As we saw above, such an aspiration is expressed in two ways: 1. bending the limitations, carefully — more on this below; 2. autonomous behavior within the limitations, even without touching the limitations themselves. Liberty, unlike freedom, is expressed in the mode of living within limitations, even if there is no desire or aspiration to destroy them.

There are several consequences to this abstract distinction between liberty and freedom. A state of freedom is indeed pleasant for those who are in it, and a state of servitude is certainly not pleasant or comfortable. But freedom as such has no value. It is a factual state, a situation that usually depends very little on us. Limitations are generally imposed upon us by various circumstances, and our ability to influence those circumstances is slight and limited — this itself is part of the limitation imposed upon us. A limitation that is within our power to remove is not really a limitation. The absence of limitations is also a state in which we may find ourselves not because of any action of our own. Therefore such a state cannot possess value as such.

Despite this, infringing someone’s freedom is a moral and evaluative wrong. Depriving a person of freedom, enslaving him, is a wrong, even though freedom as such is not a value. A good analogy is the relation to property. Ownership of property is certainly not a value as such, but taking property from someone is clearly a wrong. The same is true of freedom.

Liberty, by contrast, has clear value-significance. For liberty is entirely in our hands. No one can deprive us of our liberty, even if he wishes to do so. At most, external limitations can be imposed upon us, and in that way our freedom can be taken away. But our liberty is expressed in the degree of autonomy we exhibit in our behavior under those limitations. This liberty depends entirely on us. Therefore one cannot really speak of the evil involved in taking away someone’s liberty, for that is simply impossible, except perhaps by means of hypnosis and the like. A state of liberty, then, has value as such. Since it is entrusted to us, it can itself constitute a value.

Let us now summarize the differences. The degree of freedom is not in our hands, and is generally imposed upon us by external circumstances over which we have no control. Therefore a state of freedom has no value as such; only depriving someone of it is a wrong. Liberty, by contrast, is wholly in our hands. In fact, there is almost no way to take it from us. Therefore the state of liberty itself has value. Thus, freedom is a neutral factual state, whereas liberty is a value. Taking away freedom is an immoral action, whereas taking away liberty does not really exist, at least in principle.

Let us add one more important link to this summary: the value of liberty underlies the values of autonomous thought and behavior in every situation. In fact, it is the value of free choice. In the terms of the previous gate, the decision to be a chooser expresses liberty. To behave as a ben-horin has value, even independent of the specific content of the behavior, whether I do good deeds or not. The very free choice expressed in my autonomy has value.

Let us now continue and ask what happens when a person is in a situation with no limitations at all, complete freedom. As stated, this is a condition with no intrinsic value, even if it is probably quite pleasant. Is a person who behaves autonomously within such a condition a ben-horin? At first glance, yes. Yet it is somewhat difficult to say so. That person indeed acts autonomously, but that autonomy has no value-significance.

This resembles the relation we discussed in Gate Two between two kinds of political elections, in metaphorical Switzerland and in Israel. We saw there that elections where there are no constraints or problems may indeed be free, but they lack value. Value arises only out of confrontation with difficulties and bearing the consequences of our choices, which may be good or bad. Only where there are limitations, which define costs for the different possibilities of choice through the consequences generated by those limitations, is there value to free choices. The problems of a country like Israel are usually not generated by its will; they are imposed upon it by external factors. Elections are meant to choose a mode of coping with those external limitations.

So too in the more abstract discussion conducted here. In a state of complete freedom, if a person acts in accordance with his character and inclinations, choosing every step he takes or every position he adopts, he is not confronting any resistance from any side — neither external constraints nor inner drives. In such a situation, his autonomy has little value-significance, if any. If there are no constraints, and he is like an angel — see Note 9 on this — why should he not behave as he understands?

Our conclusion is that only autonomy appearing under limitation has value. When limitations exist and a person behaves autonomously despite them and within them, then he expresses liberty, or behaves as a ben-horin.

For this reason we noted above that the breaking of limitations by a person of liberty must be done carefully. The reason is that if we are not careful and abolish all limitations, we throw out the baby with the bathwater. Such breaking empties liberty of its content, for in the absence of limitations liberty has no meaning. This is a state of freedom, which is evaluatively neutral. This point will become clearer in the next chapter.

Emotion, Instinct, and Limitations

To complete the description here, we can return to the question with which we dealt in the previous gate. There we saw that emotion and instincts are a kind of periphery within which a person’s own activities and decisions take place. Now further components are added to that periphery, that is, further limitations and constraints within which the person acts.

The degree of a person’s liberty and autonomy is measured by the degree of his independence in his activity within those limitations and constraints — both the more internal instinctive-emotional limitations and the others. As we shall see below, the additional limitations include several kinds of things, among them ethical and aesthetic rules.

As we shall see later, these additional limitations, ethical rules and perhaps aesthetic ones as well, also serve as standards for evaluating a person’s actions and for evaluating the degree of his liberty and autonomy in acting within and from them. This is unlike the limitations of instinct and emotion, which, according to the synthetic position, serve only as a measure for evaluating his liberty, that is, the extent to which he acts independently within their framework, but certainly cannot serve as a standard for evaluating his actions as such. Acting in accordance with emotion does not indicate independence, but rather the subordination of the divine soul to the animal one, in the terms of the Hasidic intermezzo above. By contrast, activity in accordance with ethical rules in which I believe is the activity of a person of liberty.

A Brief Note on Freedom, Liberty, and Analyticity

To conclude the chapter, let us note that the values of freedom and liberty have been extremely basic in Western culture over the last generations, especially in contemporary culture. The theoretical distinction we have presented here between the two concepts does not always appear in this form in our concrete world. In the postmodern world there is a very strong emphasis specifically on freedom, not necessarily on liberty. Usually that world makes no sharp distinction between these two concepts. There are two main reasons for this:

1. In an analytic world there is no recognition of the existence of many of the different limitations imposed on a person — Torah, halakha, moral values, nationhood, family, and much else. Without limitations there is no liberty, only, at most, freedom.
2. As we have seen until now, in such a world the human being is conceived as nothing more than the totality of his emotions and sensations. If so, the struggle and choice described in the previous gate are irrelevant. A person acts on the basis of instincts that cannot be objectively evaluated or judged, and his natural inclinations are himself. He has nothing against which to struggle, and therefore the chooser and the system of constraints against which he acts are one and the same.

Below we will note that this involves several nontrivial paradoxes, expressing a process of change in the meanings of these two concepts. We will examine ethical and aesthetic aspects of this dispute, and will again see its connection to the basic disagreement along the analytic-synthetic axis.

Thus far, then, a brief discussion of the basic evaluative characteristics of states of liberty and freedom. In the next two chapters we will consider ethical and aesthetic consequences of this picture.

Chapter 5: Creative Freedom

Introduction

As we mentioned at the end of the previous chapter, one of the dominant values in postmodern culture is freedom. Already here one can see that postmodern analyticity, which does not believe in objective external value-factors, cannot digest a distinction between liberty and freedom. In fact, postmodernity itself is a state of freedom, or an illusion of freedom, since in principle it does not recognize the existence of any objective frameworks. In such a world, the only value is to preserve the condition in which such an outlook and atmosphere prevail — that is, the chief value is preserving the lack of objective values. Skepticism and nihilism themselves become the absolute and sole value, and this is the phenomenon called in the first book “Bokononism”; see there at the beginning of Gate Five.⁵¹

In Gate Six of the first book we already noted that, within the linguistic deceptions of postmodernism, the concept of “value,” like the concept of “truth,” undergoes a metamorphosis. We will elaborate further on this in the next chapter as well.

A very central aspect of this postmodern “value,” freedom, is the sacred status accorded to artistic freedom. The confusion between freedom and liberty finds very strong expression in this context, as also in the ethical context, which will be discussed in the next chapter.

Ordinarily, in such a world an artistic creation is considered to have greater value the more it departs from accepted rules. And indeed, art in its various branches has developed in directions of breaking accepted frameworks. This is in fact the essence of postmodernism, which, as I already pointed out in the first book, finds stronger expression in art than in philosophy.

In a more conservative world, by contrast, art is evaluated specifically within clearly defined genres. The rules of the genre are the standards by which the aesthetic and artistic value of the work is judged. One might say that art in such a world operates within limitations external to the creator himself. He did not determine them, but he is compelled to cope with them in different ways. The degree of his personal expression within those limitations is artistic liberty. Postmodernity, by contrast, true to its way, breaks down those standards and rigid principles here as well, and advocates creative freedom, not creative liberty. For this reason, genre-principles do not exist in the postmodern world, apart from the sacred “principle” that there are no principles.

In order to sharpen and illustrate these two perspectives on freedom and liberty in creativity, instead of discussing the matter in completely abstract terms, we will consider the arguments of Amos Oz against creativity in traditional Judaism, in our own time and in general. Through this issue we will present the synthetic theory of creativity.

An Important Note on the Relation Between False Modernism and Postmodernism

Our discussion of Amos Oz’s article will accompany us further on. In Chapter 7 we will deal with the interpretive dimensions underlying it, and in Gate Four we will encounter the logical dimensions beneath it. This discussion provides an excellent illustration of a central point made in the first book. The frequent claim in our quartet that our world is postmodern at its core arouses much opposition. Ostensibly, avowed postmodernism is a marginal sect, and many oppose it on various planes, artistic and especially ethical and political. In recent years, from the time the quartet was written until its publication, the process has only intensified. Our principled claim is that this is true only on the superficial and overt level. At a deeper level, there is an ongoing adoption of postmodern ideas — or absence of ideas. Such adoption occurs even, and sometimes especially, among those who explicitly oppose it.

We saw a clear example of this in Gate Six of the first book, in Gadi Taub’s apparently modernist ethical and artistic critique of postmodernity. Amos Oz, speaking almost innocently, gives us another excellent example of this point. He too, like Taub, regards himself as a modernist and opposes postmodernity. But in the analysis below we will see several postmodern dimensions in his arguments. Attitudes to ethics and aesthetics, as well as to science and various values, often express a disguised postmodernism of which even those who hold it are usually unaware. Such people sometimes speak quite innocently of modernism, and are even offended when classified as belonging to the postmodern world and discourse.

We must free ourselves from unqualified trust in declarations, even declarations people make about themselves, and especially in declarations given “innocently,” in every sense. In order to understand the situation properly, one must examine attitudes and contexts at deeper levels. There one sometimes discovers a picture entirely different from the overt and declared one.

Amos Oz’s Critique: Creativity as Freedom⁵²

Amos Oz, in his article “A Full Wagon and an Empty Wagon?,” writes as follows. The quotation is selective and includes only the passages relevant to the present discussion:

Israeli culture has a certain anarchic core: it does not want discipline. It does not simply obey orders. It wants justice…

The world of halakha, like the universe itself, begins with a “big bang” — the giving of the Torah, the revelation at Mount Sinai. From then until today, or from then until very recently, Jewish culture has been a culture of expanding ripples, of interpretations layered upon interpretations. But the farther one moves from the giving of the Torah, the more the interpretive space shrinks, because it becomes increasingly populated. The space keeps shrinking, because each generation adds, and no generation is permitted to subtract or consign anything to oblivion. The house fills with furniture, the furniture fills with objects, nothing exits, and very soon nothing else can enter because there is no room. In the world of halakha, learned expertise, or punctilious adherence, or sharpness, or fervor of heart keeps intensifying, while the space for creation becomes increasingly clogged.

Self-esteem also keeps shrinking, for “if the earlier ones were like human beings, we are like donkeys.”⁵³ The farther one moves from Mount Sinai, halakhic Judaism preserves more and creates less. At most: “Jephthah in his generation is like Samuel in his generation.” Certainly the later authorities are not allowed to change the words of the earlier ones. True, spiritual clocks showed different hours in Spanish Jewry and in Ashkenazic Jewry, in Eastern Europe and in Salonika and Baghdad and Yemen — but all the clocks showed that the revelation at Mount Sinai is increasingly wrapped in a pillar of cloud made of interpretive texts upon interpretive texts. Hence the feeling of suffocation…

Faced both with the Nazis and, by contrast, with the Zionists, halakhic Judaism was for the most part incapable of taking a religious stand. specifically in modern Hebrew literature one can find deep religious stances in response to the murder of the Jewish people and to the establishment of the state. In fact, several writers and poets took upon themselves what the halakhic authorities fled from… It is a startling fact that theological confrontation did not disappear, but in large measure passed from the hands of the commandment-observant to the most creative force in the Jewish people in recent generations — modern Hebrew literature, in poetry, prose, and thought… If you wish to know, these and the like are the wells of living water, the ever-strengthening springs of the last generations, whereas halakhic Judaism has become at most a sealed cistern that loses not a drop, but also adds not a drop. It seems that in the last hundred years most of the dynamic and creative revelations in Jewish culture have taken place outside the kingdom of halakha, though in a dialectical relation to it, or a shattering relation…

The deep and wonderful idea in Jewish culture, the idea of multiplicity — “these and those are the words of the living God,” “Elijah will resolve difficulties and problems,” “the jealousy of scholars increases wisdom” — this idea is not truly accepted by halakhic Judaism, and in this, more than in anything else, its petrification is expressed…

This article by Oz presents many arguments against halakhic Judaism in general, and against its creativity in particular. Oz’s image of the house filling with furniture seems to be the central point in the controversy. It touches on the meaning and essence of creativity, and especially of creative freedom. Oz argues that absolute commitment to the interpretations of previous generations restricts freedom of creation, and therefore also the creativity of halakhic Judaism. The basis of creativity, according to Oz’s assumption, depends essentially on freedom and the absence of limitations on the creator, beyond those he imposes on himself. Hence, in his view, modern Hebrew literature takes the place of halakha — or so it seems — in creatively confronting what happens in our own time.

Most of the claims in the article, though not all, are utterly unfounded, substantively and especially logically. To see Hebrew literature as a substitute for halakhic confrontation is, at best, a statement that testifies to ignorance. To evaluate and judge so categorically an entire world whose texts and ideas Amos Oz and his friends are not even capable of reading is a ridiculous and arrogant presumption. The religious and theological confrontation of a secular person — even if he is a poet or novelist — with theological problems is empty postmodern foolishness, though admittedly very typical. These things would not require comment were it not for the fact that many people, including religious people, are led by Oz’s impressive writing ability, not necessarily his argument, to agree with some of his conclusions.

The Synthetic Position: Creativity as Liberty

Let us begin with an important and fundamental point that touches the roots of the discussion in this chapter. Oz’s basic position on petrification and creativity stems from a mistaken conception of creativity. There is significant creativity in contemporary Judaism, and it is made possible specifically by adherence and commitment to the framework’s rules. Not only does the existence of a framework not restrict creativity; it is actually a necessary condition for the existence of genuine and valuable creativity. As we shall see, the fact that the room fills up and we are not free to remove from it whatever we wish not only does not contradict creativity, but is a necessary condition for it. The main claim we wish to illustrate here is the synthetic claim that the basic value underlying creativity, and indeed making it possible, is precisely liberty and not freedom.

But let us begin specifically with a brief word of Torah.⁵⁴ In the Book of Exodus, four portions are devoted to the description of the work of the Tabernacle. This is ostensibly the summit of Jewish creativity and art. Bezalel and Oholiab, the builders and architects of the Tabernacle, are the model of the “wise-hearted” person, the paradigm of a divine creator in the Jewish tradition.

Yet, rather surprisingly, the first two of those four portions deal with a divine command that includes a highly detailed plan for every detail of the Tabernacle and its vessels. In addition, these portions repeatedly stress — and the sages sharpened this in their midrashim — that Bezalel did not deviate one whit from the instructions he had received. What kind of creator behaves this way, and what artistic value can such a creation have? At first glance, this seems to be a somewhat Stalinist model of creativity.

It seems that the Torah places before us, through Bezalel, a different model of creativity. It can be described as creation out of liberty, not out of freedom. An interesting symbol for such an approach is found in the Ark in which the Tablets were placed.⁵⁵ The Ark was actually made of three different arks, placed one inside another. The outer one was of gold, the middle one of wood, and the inner one again of gold. It is not clear what the point was in doing this, apart from perhaps saving gold while preserving an appearance of wealth and splendor. It may be that the reason is that the wood, a living and growing material, symbolizing creativity, is enclosed on both sides within the limitations of inert matter — gold. Life enclosed within an external framework has greater potential than free wood. It is a creature of liberty, even if it is not free. According to the Torah, creation is done out of liberty and not out of freedom.

This is the model of creativity that Bezalel places before us. There is wide room for personal expression within fidelity to a system of principles that at first glance appears rigid and detailed.⁵⁶ If we consider the detailed commands in the portions of Terumah and Tetzaveh, we can see what a difference could arise between two different creators, each of whom would carry out precisely this same plan.

A good example of this, in our own allegedly “petrified” generation, can be seen in the different ways religious and commandment-observant people find to worship God. There are different ways, quite distinct from one another, and the common framework does not hinder this process but rather defines and enables it. Difference acquires meaning specifically where a framework exists. The framework does not draw its meaning from considerations of practical necessity, in order that people can live together, but rather provides the measures and criteria by which those differences can be examined, judged, and made meaningful.

Without principles there is no meaningful creation at all. Two creators who work toward different goals and are not constrained by any external rule or binding instruction cannot even be evaluated on the same scale. The supposedly “external” principles and rules are the very scale and measure within which creation occurs. This is contrary to the postmodern illusion that one can, and perhaps must, create in a vacuum, or within a framework the artist builds for himself.

In fact, this is not a uniquely Jewish thesis. This insight has long existed in the world of art, even if in the last few decades, the postmodern era, it has been seriously undermined. We have already noted that the different fields of art operated with genre rules. These rules determine for each kind of work several basic principles within which it is created, and from which it is interpreted.

From the perspective expressed by Amos Oz, this is a puzzling phenomenon. Why restrict the artist’s creative freedom through rigid and arbitrary rules? And indeed, as we have already mentioned, in recent decades there has been a major loosening of generic boundaries and classifications, out of rebellion against the unnecessary petrification they supposedly impose on the creator.

But, contrary to the postmodern outlook, there are several good reasons for the existence of genre rules:

1. A work cannot be interpreted in an aesthetic vacuum, that is, outside any framework of rules. Therefore its contribution to the broader human culture surrounding it depends on the existence of genre rules and some interpretive framework.
2. The degree of creativity revealed in a work increases the more genre rules there are, or in general, the more limitations within which it is made.
3. The third reason, which is perhaps a summary of the first two, is that the measure of creativity is liberty, not freedom.

Let us elaborate and justify this. If you are not a deconstructionist, who does not even try to understand the creator’s intention, but want also to receive something from him through his work — in today’s climate, to look for “messages” in a work of art is almost a dirty word — then there is no choice but to insist on a common language, at least at some level, that will allow such communication between creator and interpreter. See below, in Chapter 7, on this and on its relation to the analytic-synthetic issue.

A postmodernist who does not believe in any objective statements, and therefore sees nothing shared between himself and the creator, indeed makes do with a subjective and personal interpretation of the work, without any attempt to understand the creator’s world and messages. He contents himself with the feelings and experiences the work arouses in him, without attempting to descend to its objective emotional, experiential, or intellectual meanings. In such an approach there is no need for interpretive rules. Each person operates within the system of rules he creates for himself. Thus was born the approach of deconstruction in artistic interpretation and in hermeneutics generally.

In contrast to this analytic-postmodern picture, one who holds the synthetic approach comes to interpretation and artistic contemplation differently. For him there is an objective layer that ought to be shared by him and the creator. In order to try to interpret the work and reach that layer, one must use a common conceptual system. In order to communicate, judge, and evaluate, we must use agreed standards that define the discourse between viewer and creator. A work not created within a clear context cannot reflect or convey anything from the creator to the viewer.

A fitting analogy would be a person performing in a certain language before an audience that does not understand it at all. Nothing can pass from him to the audience if there is no meaningful means of communication between them. The audience may, of course, be impressed in some way by the performance. But such an impression is independent of the consciousness and intention of the actor or director. Anyone who conceives of art as a medium, a conception based on the existence of an aesthetic substrate shared by creator and audience, must conduct this transmission of meaning within a context or language common to the different parties.

From this point of view, genres are not an arbitrary limitation imposed on the creator, but a condition that enables the work to be placed in context. Even the most postmodern work cannot shatter all genre rules; if it did, it simply would not be understood. It would be regarded as an incomprehensible and bizarre hallucination, and no artistic value could be discerned in it at all.

In the first book, Gate Two, before Note 7, we explained that even a mystic must operate within some kind of genre rules; otherwise he will be seen as merely bizarre. Gershom Scholem writes in several places that this is a condition for the meaningfulness of mystical teaching. Someone who studies such teaching must find something of it within himself; otherwise he cannot derive anything from it. That is, even mysticism must have some objective dimension in order to possess meaning and value.

This is described in a passage Scholem himself cites from Agnon, in which Agnon testifies about himself that when Samaritan writings were brought before him, writings “that had been offered to him in the depths of his being,” he felt as follows:⁵⁸

I read them and marveled that I was reading and understanding, and I marveled that everything written here was already known to me: some of the things were things I myself had written and they had been copied into their script, and some were things I had wished to write but had not written because the pen had not captured them.

To sharpen this important point even further, let us deal specifically with the most common message in the postmodern world: the postmodern message itself.

A message of rebellion and anarchy, such as the one Oz himself seeks to convey, can also be understood only through interpretation within a certain context. Even in order for the creator to break rules, there must be such rules in his world. Moreover, those rules must be meaningful in his eyes; otherwise there is no rebellion. See the next gate, in the discussion of the definition of reform and value-innovation. For example, in our day, when the provocative exposure of actors’ bodies on stage no longer impresses anyone, the ability to express sharp protest has become drastically narrowed. Nothing is provocative enough relative to the norm, because there are hardly any norms left. If this process continues, before long there will be no possibility of artistic provocation at all. As stated, without rules there can be no breaking of them either. Against this background one must understand the absurdity and comic element in Oz’s claim that secular artists can express religious stances and confront theological problems.⁵⁷

A message of rebellion and anarchy is only an extreme case. Every message and every judgment depends on the existence of accepted standards within which it is made. As we already mentioned in the previous chapter, even if a creator decides to test accepted normative and generic boundaries, he must do so cautiously. If he breaks them completely, there will be no way to evaluate, judge, or even learn from his work.

In the next note we will consider one implication of this point for the relation between modesty and art.

Note 15: On Modesty, Art, and Understatement

In this context it is worth examining a proposal concerning the concept of modesty. It is often argued that in Scandinavia, where permissiveness prevails with respect to pornography and drugs, the consumption of both declines. Some therefore propose changing the halakhic approach to modesty, which imposes limitations on relations between men and women and on what may be seen, and replacing it with an approach that permits everything. In such a situation, it is argued, indifference would arise and would ostensibly increase modesty.

But this is a distorted conception of modesty. The aim of modesty is to preserve the force of life, to direct it and prevent it from dissolving, not to neuter and sterilize it. Through permissiveness a person loses some of the forces that drive him. According to Freud, sexuality is our primary engine; according to everyone, it is one of the important driving forces of human life. Such an approach neutralizes the force of these human motors, and that is not the aim of the laws of modesty. Their aim is to preserve those forces, perhaps even intensify them, but to direct them in positive directions. A person ought to act at the height of his energy, not knowingly waste his life-energy with his own hands.⁵⁸

In the artistic context, this distinction is no less important. The exhibitionism described in the body of our discussion is destructive in its effect on human energies generally, and artistic ones in particular. Art must know how to protest with understatement, leaving room for the imagination of the viewer, listener, or reader to remain active, instead of presenting everything visually and bluntly. Rules must be bent gently, not broken, so as not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

For example, it is interesting to compare the force of the protest and the experience of an ultra-Orthodox audience sitting before an actress — could such a thing happen? — who merely moves her head covering slightly upward. The uproar that would ensue would be far more effective than total lack of clothing, as is common in today’s theater. That no longer causes even an eyelid to flicker among the dulled connoisseurs sitting there.

On Israel’s Independence Day in the jubilee year of the state, the Batsheva dance company performed at a central public jubilee celebration. As in other similar cases, this performance aroused criticism from the religious public, mainly from the standpoint of insensitivity to its feelings. But the more basic criticism, the one pertaining to the artistic domain itself, was not heard there. Synthetic art is “auditory,” in Rabbi HaNazir’s terminology; see Gate Eleven of the first book. That is, it is less visual, and therefore leaves more active room for the viewer. Protest in such an approach is made in the British manner of understatement. Such protest has a force several times greater than direct, blunt visual protest. But this is true not only of protest. Understatement is almost always a stronger and more effective form of expression.

A powerful one-time experience subsides as quickly as it arises. Long-term influence comes specifically through appeal to deeper and more intellectual layers. Emotion is stormy and dramatic, and it operates powerfully, but it also passes quickly. Intellect is cold, restrained, and measured, but its influence is more enduring.

In Gate Two of the first book we mentioned that spiritual experience in Judaism is connected more to the faculty of thought than to the imaginative faculty. Therefore it has very little connection with artistic experience. Jewish art, too, does not excel in its visual aspects. When there are Jewish artists, they usually engage in narrative, poetry, music, and the like, and less in plastic arts and performing arts. From this derive some of the phenomena Amos Oz criticizes in his article.

Until now we have dealt with the question of communication between creator and audience. But beyond communication and the ability to understand the work, genre rules have more essential dimensions or functions.

In physics it is well known that in a world containing only one particle, motion would be impossible. Every motion is relative to something else. Every change must be measured and interpreted relative to some coordinate system, some scale, otherwise it has no meaning. To say that setting up the coordinate system restricts the capacity for change is absurd. It is a necessary condition for the occurrence of change itself, and certainly for noticing it and interpreting it.

Every creation contains something that expresses activity or relation. These processes, like the motion of a particle, require standards in order to be meaningful. These standards are needed not only for understanding, interpretation, and judgment, but for the very existence of the processes of change. Thus, even from the standpoint of the meaning of creation, and not only from that of communication and understanding, limitations are necessary, at least in order to enable creativity to appear. There is no creation without a cultural-social context, which itself is not created by the artist, and certainly is not under his control. The conclusion is that without limitations there is neither creation nor creativity. We will return to this point later in the chapter.

Back to Amos Oz: Liberty, Creativity, and Creative Freedom

Let us now return to Amos Oz. Someone who does not believe in God cannot rebel against Him or conduct with Him a rebellious dialogue, as Abraham our father did. Abraham, precisely because he was a great believer, could also rebel against God. The anarchic core that has always existed in Judaism, as Oz describes it, always operated while preserving the basic framework. The principle that “these and those are the words of the living God,” cited as a basis for pluralism, never referred to positions outside the framework. Within the framework there is indeed a certain liberty, by no means a small one. But Amos Oz tries to turn liberty into freedom, and this is an absurd interpretation of the Jewish tradition, and also of the concept of creativity itself.

The “rebellion” of Amos Oz and his friends against God and tradition also does not indicate creativity or liberty. It is a farce of freedom. One cannot rebel against something that, by one’s own account, does not exist. Someone who does not believe in God cannot confront Him in any way. This is the limit of interpretive freedom, or the minimal framework mentioned earlier. Someone who allows himself to adopt or reject any of the framework’s rules cannot be called a rebel against them or their critic. He simply denies them. See the next gate for more detail. As a commandment-observant Jew, for whom the Buddhist world is utterly foreign, at least in any authoritative sense, I cannot be regarded as a creative force within Buddhism. I stand outside it, because I do not accept its rules.

Here one can sharply see the third reason given above for the importance of a framework: it provides the basis for the expression of the creator’s liberty, not his freedom. As we saw above, action in a vacuum lacks value and meaning. In a world that does not believe in God, it is impossible to confront difficulties of faith. Sometimes specifically the confrontation reveals a deeper faith, though not always a conscious one. Like the woman who heard her husband blaspheming toward heaven, turned to him in horror and said: “How can you speak to God that way?” When her husband answered in astonishment and reminded her that they had long ceased to believe in Him, the woman replied: “But the God I do not believe in is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in kindness, not the wicked monster you describe…”

Let us return again to Amos Oz’s example of the house filled with furniture, with which we began. When it is up to us to choose as we wish which furniture to keep and which to remove from the room, then the room is already empty even now. Even the furniture in it is there as a result of our own decision. The collection of furniture represents the system of limitations or constraints only within which creatures of liberty can act. But limitations we ourselves created are not limitations in any meaningful sense. Oz recommends freedom as a substitute for liberty, but he errs — both in his interpretation of the Jewish tradition and in his understanding of the essence of creativity.

Oz’s proposal to evaluate the degree of creativity in terms of freedom rather than liberty is simply mistaken. Beyond the a priori conceptual level we discussed above, this can be shown and illustrated by many examples. These relate to the second reason we gave above in favor of the existence of a framework: binding principles intensify creativity rather than limiting it.

The degree of creativity required of a person to escape from a guarded prison is immeasurably greater than the creativity required to run in an open field. Autonomous action that comports with many limitations is more creative than action in a state of complete freedom. Limitations draw a greater measure of creativity out of the creator. Thus, the existence of limitations, of furniture in the room, does not contradict creativity. On the contrary, it is a necessary condition for it. As stated, without limitations there is no meaningful creativity.

We now bring a note discussing one example, among many, that illustrates the second reason in favor of a framework. The illustration will be made through a comparison between three forms of approach now common toward Torah sources, three kinds of study house.

Note 17: Midrash as Creativity — Yeshiva, Academia, and the Pluralistic Study House⁵⁹

In this note we will use a midrashic resolution of a contradiction between different biblical sources in order to sharpen the criterion for creativity we have proposed. We will examine the question of creativity in light of three forms of relating to such a contradiction. The proposed solution is taken from an article by Professor David Henshke, cited in the parallel discussion in Gate Five of the second book.

There are three kinds of beit midrash (study hall) in which Torah is studied, but each studies it in a different way.

The first is the classical study hall, the yeshiva, where the whole Torah is learned as a coherent whole. That is, it adopts an approach of maximal harmonization of the totality of Torah sources. Every contradiction is perceived in the yeshiva as a problem, and therefore there is great interest in resolving it. The solution sometimes requires far-reaching innovations, and the assumption underlying the approach determines how far we are willing to go in constructing that solution. The more disturbing the contradiction is to us, the farther we will allow ourselves to go in novel directions in searching for a resolution.

The second study hall is the academic one. In academic study, each source is analyzed on its own, and against the background of the context in which it was created. There is no problem seeing sources as contradictory, because academia does not basically assume harmony among sources. Novel resolutions of contradictions between passages simply do not arise in the academic world. At most, explanations will be proposed in terms of development, or of different sources and the relations between them, but not essential resolutions. See the second book there. As a rule, the academic world has no lamdanut in the yeshiva sense of the term.⁶⁰

The third study hall, the newest on the scene, is the pluralistic study house. It emerged over the last ten to twenty years, and its essence is pluralism. In fact, it has no declared methodological assumptions at all. Exactly like academia, and unlike the yeshiva, there is no commitment there to the observance and adoption of everything said in the texts themselves. The learners are usually varied: secular, religious, and other shades as well. The main difference from academia is that in this study house there is some motivation and commitment to learn or draw something from the texts, though it is not always entirely clear what. In academia no such tendency exists; the interest is purely intellectual and scholarly.

Another important point, related to this as well, is that in the pluralistic study house the Torah is perceived as a source of inspiration, not a source of authority. In the traditional study house, of course, the Torah is a source of authority. In academia, Torah is not a source at all, neither of inspiration nor of authority, but only an object of research.

In my article in Akdamot 9 I showed that in fact we have here three different kinds of hermeneutic approach, and these exhaust the principal possibilities. The yeshiva approach is structuralist, that is, it sees the meaning of the text within the text itself. This is a distinctly modernist approach, which in some respects does not even attempt to reconstruct the author’s intention. The academic approach is fundamentalist, striving to return to and reconstruct the past; it seeks the meaning the author intended to insert into the text at the time of composition. The pluralistic hermeneutic is deconstructionist, meaning it sees the meaning of the text in the reader and interpreter, or in the inspiration the text gives him.

As stated, our concern in this note is not the question of who is right, ideologically or interpretively, but rather the degree of creativity present in each approach, without even entering the question whether creativity is a relevant measure, whether it is positive or negative, and the like. Let us recall that the common belief, as we saw in the body of our discussion in Amos Oz’s article, is that the creativity of the traditional study house, that is, the yeshiva, is the lowest. For the sake of illustration, let us now turn to a brief discussion of a concrete example.⁶¹

The Torah refers in two places to the laws of a Hebrew slave who does not wish to go free at the end of the six years of servitude decreed upon him. In Parashat Mishpatim, within the laws of slaves, the Torah states that he is pierced and remains with his master as a slave forever, Exodus 21:5–6:

But if the slave shall say, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go free,” then his master shall bring him to the judges, and he shall bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.

On the other hand, in Parashat Behar, within the laws of the Jubilee, the law appears to be different; see Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 15a. The slave remains with his master only until the Jubilee, and then goes free, Leviticus 25:10:

And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a Jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his holding, and each of you shall return to his family.

Scholars regard this contradiction as belonging to two different sources, and therefore they are not greatly disturbed by it. Two different sources address the same law in different ways. What could be more natural? True, in typical scholarly fashion they ignore the fact that the redactor himself is likewise untroubled by a contradiction in a text he himself edited.

The sages, who were not so enlightened, progressive, and open, adopt a different, harmonizing, yeshiva-like path. The Gemara in Kiddushin 21b states that the word “forever” is to be interpreted as “until his Jubilee.” At first glance, this appears to be a choice of one of the sources, together with a strained, almost ridiculous attempt to obscure the blatant verbal contradiction. On the surface there is no resolution here, but only a choice of one source while concealing the conflict.

Scholars will say that the sages are artificially creating biblical coherence, and therefore they use twisted homiletical methods in order to present it as a uniform and harmonious text. In their view, the sages simply decided what they wanted and anchored it in very strange ways in the texts, merely in order to preserve public commitment to them. Even the “conservative” learners who have accepted this mode of interpretation of the sages without question usually enjoy little esteem among scholars.

The pluralistic study house will also confront such a contradiction in its own way. It will usually accept the scholarly assumption, but in the end each participant will choose for himself, as a source from which to draw something, whichever of the two sources he identifies with more. As stated, there are no harmonizing ambitions there, and the Torah is only a source of inspiration. More than that: in that setting they will also interpret the sages’ approach on the assumption that it is an independent approach, sometimes different from both sources themselves, and that it too deserves interpretation in its own right.

Still, one cannot ignore the fact that the sages’ exposition does indeed seem strained and problematic. First, it takes the verse away from its plain meaning. The Torah says “forever,” and the sages teach that it means only until the Jubilee. Second, it in fact chooses the source that says “until the Jubilee” and erases, at least de facto, the second source. Beyond that, the question arises why, according to the sages, the Torah did not write explicitly “until the Jubilee.” In fact, it is not at all clear why it repeats this law twice, in two different places and in two different formulations. Beyond that, it is not clear what the sages gained from the strange formulation “the forever of Jubilee.” This does not really explain the contradiction, but merely chooses one of the sources while ignoring the other. Seemingly, “the forever of Jubilee” does not really offer a convincing interpretation of the expression “forever.”

Let us briefly preface two halakhic points as background for understanding the matter. According to many halakhic opinions, permanent acquisition generally means ownership of the thing itself, which allows the owner to do with the object whatever he pleases. A time-limited acquisition, by contrast, is according to many views closer to a right of use than to ownership of the object itself. This kind of acquisition is often called usufruct-rights.

Now, says Henshke, let us see what happens with the slave. On the one hand, according to halakha, the slave is acquired by his master as full ownership of the slave’s person, not merely as usufruct. The Gemara in Kiddushin states: “the Hebrew slave himself is acquired.” The question is how this can be reconciled with the fact that he is acquired only for a fixed time, until the Jubilee. Seemingly, acquisition for a fixed time ought always to amount only to usufruct-rights.⁶²

Henshke explains that the meaning is that the slave is acquired for a fixed period, until the Jubilee, but despite this the kind of acquisition is permanent acquisition, that is, ownership of the person itself. His claim is that this is exactly what the Torah wished to teach us in these two portions. It devoted two separate portions to the matter because it meant to tell us that in one respect, the duration of the acquisition, the slave is acquired only temporarily, until the Jubilee; but in another respect, the nature of the acquisition, his acquisition is permanent.⁶³

More precisely, suppose there is an object permanently owned by its owner, but after a certain time the king comes and confiscates it from him. Clearly this does not mean that, until that moment, the ownership was not ownership of the object itself. The reason is that the ownership was not from the outset time-limited ownership; it was full ownership of the object that later lapsed. The same is true if the object evaporates after a certain time: clearly, so long as it exists one can own the object itself.

Thus, the division the Torah makes between the two portions is clarified as follows. In Parashat Mishpatim we are dealing with the laws of the slave himself. There the Torah states that he is acquired by his master forever. This is correct from the perspective of the laws of the slave himself, and therefore the master has full ownership of the slave’s person. On the other hand, there are the laws of Jubilee, according to which the Holy One, blessed be He, who is the Lord of the world, the king, expropriates from His subjects certain objects in their possession. These are laws of Jubilee, that is, laws pertaining to the relation between the king and the property of his subjects. In the language of the sages, “the Jubilee is the king’s expropriation.” They have no direct bearing on the laws of slavery, and therefore appear in a separate portion.

Thus, Parashat Mishpatim presents the matter from the perspective of the laws of the slave, whereas Parashat Behar presents it from the perspective of the laws of Jubilee. These are not two different scrolls from two different sources, as the scholars and pluralists think. They are two different perspectives, both true, and both were given to us at Mount Sinai by the Giver of the Torah. The stylistic and substantive differences between the two portions do not stem from different sources, but from a desire to present a different perspective on the issue under discussion.

In this way all the difficulties raised above are resolved. First, the Torah splits the discussion into two portions because there are two perspectives to be presented separately: the laws of the slave and the laws of Jubilee. Second, the sages’ exposition does not choose one source and ignore the other, as one might have thought. It merges these two aspects and formulates them halakhically in a way that takes both aspects into account.

True, the sages’ interpretation, “the forever of Jubilee,” does not seem to match the plain meaning of Scripture, “forever.” But their intention is not to provide a literal interpretation. Rather, they indicate in literary form how we are to reconcile these two portions and create from them one harmonious picture.

Thus, the very stylistic and legal division between the portions is agreed upon by all. In the scholarly world, this will lead to the conclusion that the portions belong to different source-documents. In the world of the pluralistic study houses, they will say that one should choose whichever of the two sources suits one better. And the traditional study house is committed to both sources, so it reconciles them with one another and adopts them both.

At this point we can ask ourselves: which of these three ways of relating to the contradiction is the more creative? Pluralism simply chooses what seems right to it. It has the freedom to remove and insert furniture into the room as it wishes. There is not a drop of creativity here, because there is no liberty here. What their approach has is freedom, but we have already seen that freedom is a valueless state — creatively valueless, in this case. Academic scholarship does not reconcile the contradiction; it attributes it to two different sources. At most, it identifies the differing substantive perspectives that emerge from those two sources. Here too there is not much creativity, except perhaps in assigning additional sources to the same line of thought.

There can be no doubt that the most creative approach is the yeshiva approach, because it explains each of the perspectives and, in addition, unifies them through a brilliant intellectual move that includes abstraction and generalization, and then synthesis, that is, composition, into one harmonious picture.

This is a typical example of the way the three study houses work. Amos Oz claims that the pluralistic or academic study house is creative, while the yeshiva is petrified. Let the reader see and judge.⁶⁴

After the example discussed in the previous note, the synthetic thesis that liberty is the measure of creativity seems self-evident. It is now clear that, contrary to the superstition so prevalent in our world, freedom merely castrates and blocks any possibility of genuine creation. The correct measure of creativity is liberty, not freedom. This is the meaning of liberty in the world of creation, not in the ethical world of moral and human values, which will be discussed in the next chapter.

The amount of furniture that has accumulated in the room, that is, the amount of limitations, only enriches the possibilities of creation, and certainly does not prevent it. A creation that successfully contends with more limitations is richer. Greater commitment to limitations increases the degree of creativity required in order to conduct oneself authentically within them. The “internal” confrontations of a poet such as Zelda or a writer such as Agnon with theological problems are in no way comparable to the postmodern farces to which Amos Oz alludes.

Amos Oz’s basic mistake is that the room filling with furniture, that is, the interpretive space, does not have a fixed volume. And certainly its volume is not identical, or even proportional, to the physical volume of the actual room. To a great extent it is inversely proportional: the interpretive space that can be filled actually grows as the number of limitations increases. The more furniture there is in the room, the more not only does the number of possible arrangements not diminish, but there is actually more room for additional forms of relation, additional arrangements of furniture and objects.

In the analogue as well, in the halakhic world earlier interpretation does not occupy space that would otherwise belong to other interpretations. It can only enrich and shape them. A mathematical analogy for this state is the addition of further axes to a given coordinate system. Such an operation complicates the description, but also enriches and deepens it.

Creativity in Science

Let us take science as another example. In the scientific context, the facts are the constraints, and the theory is the creation. In the second book we discussed the degree of creativity required to build a theory that fits all the known facts. The greater the quantity of facts, the greater the creativity required of scientists. Will Amos Oz claim that a situation in which more facts are known prevents the scientist from being creative, whereas Aristotle, who worked in an empirical vacuum, was more creative? This is a sharp example of the failure in Amos Oz’s argument. Facts only draw out of the scientist a greater and deeper degree of creativity; they certainly do not prevent it.

The study hall creates from commitment to the totality of sources. It tries to accord with all of them. Such a study hall is incomparably more creative than a creator in whose world constraints can be removed or added, furniture taken out, according to his will. This is the aesthetic Switzerland, where creation has no meaning, just as in the ethical or political Switzerland free choice had no meaning.

Furnishing a room does contain an element of creativity, but only because in the background there are genre rules, aesthetic principles — see Chapter 7 — and a given collection of necessary furniture that dictates the possibilities of arrangement. In a world with no such principles at all, there would be no creative meaning to furnishing the room. A riddle that genuinely seeks to challenge the solver places him before limitations, such as building something with a given number of basic components. Imagine a riddle without constraints — for example: write a poem, with no restriction on number of lines, rhyme, language, meter, and so on. This is perfect creative freedom, paradise for “new” writers, in the sense of “new historians.”

The furniture in the study hall are the facts with which it grapples. The reason for treating historical precedents as facts is explained in detail in Gate Two of the first book. Just as in science, so too in Torah study: the more facts there are, the greater the creativity required to develop theories and insights that fit them all. The large quantity of facts opens a much richer and deeper space for theories that will generalize them and string them together in one chain. Anyone who knows even a little of what goes on in the study hall knows that this is a constantly expanding process. Anyone who criticizes the study hall, like Amos Oz, would do well to start also visiting the study hall. I suspect that with acquaintance, his opinion might change.

It is fitting to conclude with the words of the Gemara in Tractate Hagigah 3b on the verse in Ecclesiastes 12:11: “The words of the wise are like goads, and like firmly planted nails are the masters of assemblies; they are given from one shepherd.”⁶⁵ The Gemara there expands at length on this verse, and one of its expositions is the following:

Scripture says “planted” — just as a planting bears fruit and multiplies, so too the words of Torah bear fruit and multiply.

A Few Further Remarks on Creativity, Syntheticity, and Creation Inside and Outside the Study Hall

It should be stressed that the intention here is not to claim that every synthetic position encourages creativity, or that every synthetic person is creative, though there is such a dimension in syntheticity. Our intention is only to show that syntheticity is a necessary condition for creativity, and certainly does not prevent it. It is specifically analyticity that castrates the possibility of creating and developing creative capacities.

As an analogy to this claim, in several contexts, let us recall that in Gate Four of the first book we saw that syntheticity is a necessary condition for openness, though it does not necessarily generate it. One thing is clear: analyticity and postmodernity castrate and prevent it.

The claim that appears also in Amos Oz’s article, that today there is no Torah creativity and halakha is petrifying, is heard even within the study hall, and not only outside it. There are indeed several aspects in which one can sympathize with this claim. But in general, it seems that the study hall has nothing to be ashamed of before the creativity outside it, in its various branches. Contemporary Torah creativity surpasses its secular counterpart tenfold, certainly in Jewish contexts. Secular creativity that can be called Jewish consists almost entirely of a collection of worn-out, shallow, and trite liberal clichés. All kinds of statements identifying Judaism with universal morality — “the morality of the prophets,” did we mention it already? — repeat themselves in a repellent way in the vast majority of the dozens of fashionable books constantly published in the name of humanistic-liberal Judaism. The level of creativity there — and also the level of argument, in the rare cases where one can find such a thing — is often simply ridiculous.

As for secular creativity outside specifically Jewish contexts as well, there too it is very hard to discern the exciting conceptual revolutions of which Amos Oz speaks. As we have seen, such revolutions cannot exist in a postmodern age, because when there are no rules, they cannot be broken either. As is known, breaking rules is a necessary component of revolutionariness, and where there are no rules there is no revolution. Breaking other people’s rules is not exactly the canonical definition of the concept “revolution.” It seems closer to the concept of “war.”

From the stance of analytic-postmodern ignorant condescension that characterizes Oz and his friends, one can say anything without committing oneself to anything. Without any basis, they live with the feeling that only they are creators and there are none but them. And anyone who does not write novels or other literature — certainly anyone engaged in matters about which Amos Oz understands nothing, and apparently cannot even read them — simply is not a creator. He is petrified, because he does not deal with the Holocaust, the State of Israel, or literature.

According to Amos Oz, only literature, and academic research, has the right to deal with unreal or non-actual situations and issues. Otherwise it is difficult to understand why a creation whose intellectual level and complexity are ten times higher than anything Amos Oz and all his friends together have ever created, if it deals with the redemption of a firstborn donkey, or grace after meals, or sacrificial offerings, is petrified; whereas a literary creation about life on the planet Venus, or in a children’s institution that never existed, is alive, deep, and creative. Amos Oz may solve that one for us.

When one comes to compare and judge, it is worth noting one more important fact. Those who sit in the study hall, at least some of them, are familiar with what is happening in the broader cultural world outside them. But the reverse is generally not true. Someone who does not sit in the study hall, such as Amos Oz, does not know, and usually cannot know, what is happening there. Consequently, he cannot seriously formulate any position about it, whether critical or sympathetic. It is very hard to understand how a person who is unable to read an analytic text in the Talmud or in halakha (Jewish law) can determine so categorically that no creativity is produced in the study hall, and do so in the name of pluralism and openness. There is no end to postmodern absurdities.

There is indeed ample room for criticism of what goes on in the study hall, but it cannot be denied that significant creativity is taking place there. Most of it is inaccessible to the broader public. Unlike literature, it requires prior knowledge and familiarity with distinctive methods, forms of thought, and language. Clearly, in order to judge it, a necessary preliminary condition is first of all to know it. It is important to note, to the disappointment of many, that commitment to it is also, to a considerable extent, an important condition for that.⁶⁶

Summary

In contrast to Amos Oz’s analytic-postmodern model of creativity, which hangs creativity on the creator’s freedom, there is a more coherent and plausible model that hangs creativity on the creator’s liberty, not his freedom. Limits and constraints give meaning and intelligibility to a work, and therefore constitute a condition for creativity. The absence of genre rules and a priori dictates not only sterilizes creativity itself, but also prevents it from coming to expression.

In this chapter we dealt primarily with the aesthetic context, and ethics appeared only incidentally. In the next chapter we shall see parallel phenomena and positions to all that we have seen here, but this time in the ethical context.

Chapter 6: Ethical Implications (Between Torah-Kantian Morality and Taoist Morality)

Introduction

Freedom and liberty, which in the previous chapter we encountered in an aesthetic context, also appear in the ethical context. As we already saw in Chapter 4, these concepts carry a considerable value charge, one that grows heavier with the passage of time.

Today there is a widespread feeling that the observance of mitzvot (commandments), which are imposed on a person by an external source, diminishes his liberty. The difficulty arises in light of the fact that there is unquestionably an important Torah value in human free choice. If so, it is unclear why God imposes obligations on a person that are coercive for him, rather than allowing him to choose his path freely.

We should note that the very same phenomenon seems to exist in the moral-universal context as well. Moral principles, too, are imposed on a person from outside, even if in his view this is not done by God. If so, it appears that the secular person, just like his counterpart committed to halakha, is also not entirely free in this sense—that is, free to choose which values are the correct and fitting ones.

Still, there is a sense that morality is somewhat less coercive than halakha. First, it is far less detailed and ramified. Second, it seems more suited to our personality and nature, and therefore conduct in accordance with it is more natural. Third, it appears that we ourselves choose to uphold these principles, and that they are not imposed on us in the way halakha is. The moral principles themselves, and not only the decision whether to act in accordance with them, are the work of human beings themselves. It is commonly thought that in the secular-liberal world a person chooses his own values.

If so, the comparison between moral principles and halakha is problematic. Beyond that, the very attempt to draw a parallel between morality and halakha can be made only on the basis of an objectivist position regarding morality. But as we have seen, the analytic stance cannot recognize such a conception. Such a conception turns secular morality into a kind of “religion.” The analytic position does not recognize the existence of entities that cannot be observed, or whose existence cannot be proven. In the analytic picture, abstract entities such as values, or “the good” as such, do not exist. Moral principles are found in human consciousness, and nowhere else, in any sense, outside it. This is the consistent conclusion of an analytic-secular worldview. The synthetic alternative, as we saw in the first volume, fits a religious worldview. Here too, in the realm of morality, we continue to see that the synthetic approach correlates with a religious worldview.

This is the meaning of the third difference mentioned above between halakha and moral principles. According to that difference, moral principles are determined by human choice itself, and are not imposed on a person the way mitzvot and halakha are. The meaning of this is an analytic, or postmodern, morality.

Thus it seems, at first glance, that the claim against halakha is indeed justified. Unlike moral principles, which are not imposed on us and leave us freedom of choice, Torah and halakha seem genuinely to impose norms on us, and thereby greatly restrict our freedom of choice.

A Conceptual Misunderstanding: Again, Freedom versus Liberty

But this argument rests on a misunderstanding, already at the conceptual level. In the most basic respect, we must understand that every person has free choice whether to observe halakha or not. The principles of halakha do not depend on him, but the decision whether to observe them is entrusted to him alone. The fact that punishment is imposed—by human beings or by Heaven—on one who chooses wrongly does not change that it is he who chooses. On the contrary, punishment is the price one must bear if one chooses the wrong path, but it does not prevent freedom of choice. In fact, the opposite is true. As we saw in the example of elections in Switzerland, precisely this price, which is dictated to us from outside, is what gives meaning and value to our freedom of choice.

It is important to note that the same is true with respect to moral principles. Very few people, if any, believe that moral principles are left to our choice. If each person can choose moral principles as he pleases, morality is emptied entirely of meaning. Thus, there too, the principles are not in our hands; only commitment to them is. It is true that there is usually no punishment there, but in sufficiently exceptional and blatant cases, the judgment shifts to the legal plane, and there too we impose punishments on offenders in the courts. Here as well, this is not a contradiction to freedom of choice, but a conferral of meaning.

Observation 18: A Manifestly Illegal Order and Conscientious Objection

As we mentioned in the main text, questions of meaning and liberty also arise in the legal system. The imposition of punishments on human beings is not relevant to the question of their liberty, but at most to the question of their freedom. Constraints are placed upon them, and therefore they are less free, but the degree of autonomy made possible to them within those constraints does not depend on the number of constraints. On the contrary, the greater the number of constraints, the greater the degree of autonomy and liberty—for example, the number of meaningful ways of acting.

In recent years there has been an intensive public discussion, though certainly not a deep one, about obedience to law. There are phenomena of refusal on both sides of the political spectrum, and there are also calls by various leaders for refusal in certain cases. The public’s automatic reaction is negative. But as is clear to anyone with even a little familiarity with legal interpretation and legal thought, the right to refuse the directives of law is reserved to every citizen, at least at the principled level.

It is customary to divide this right into two types. When the directive contradicts fundamental moral principles, as in the case of the Nazis, many regard it as manifestly illegal—“a black flag flies over it.” In such a case there is an obligation not to obey the law, and one who does obey can be tried for his actions. By contrast, when the directive does not contradict such fundamental principles, but does contradict the citizen’s own values, he retains the “right” to oppose the law passively—that is, not to comply with it, and to bear the consequences of his action, such as imprisonment. This is conscientious disobedience, or civil disobedience.

Similar distinctions exist with respect to military law, except for one conspicuous difference. Military law has an additional standard that does not exist for civil law: civil law itself. An order of a military commander may contradict military law, or civil law, or universal moral principles. In all three of these cases the order is manifestly illegal. By contrast, if the order passes all these tests, but contradicts the worldview and values of this particular soldier, then he has the option of conscientious refusal.

The principled difference is that in the first case, the one who will stand trial is the commander who gave the order, not the soldier who disobeyed it. In the second case, by contrast, the one who will stand trial is specifically the soldier who refused, not the commander who ordered.

The distinction between these two cases is important, and it is not always made with due care. When people on the right claim that an order to evacuate settlements is manifestly illegal, they are mistaken. It is a completely legal order, though one that contradicts their conscience. Conversely, people on the left who claim that entering civilian areas by force in a way that endangers noncombatants is manifestly illegal are likewise mistaken. It is manifestly legal; at most it contradicts their worldview and values.

The point that distinguishes these two situations is the question of the autonomy and liberty that the legal system leaves to the citizen. A manifestly illegal order does indeed demand courage and autonomous conduct from the citizen, especially when the entire governing system does not recognize his claim, as in the Nazi case. But conscientious refusal is designed, by definition, to leave a measure of liberty in the hands of the citizen in a democratic state. It stems from a principled conception of law as an external framework that cannot dictate to the citizen values different from those in which he believes.

From such a perspective, the legal system appears clearly as a liberal system that does not deprive the citizen of liberty, but at most of freedom. It coercively dictates a framework to him and fixes prices for certain of his actions. But it neither can nor wants to impair his liberty. In fact, the very existence of the framework is what grants meaning to the citizen’s liberty. When a person acts according to his own understanding in a place where there is no law at all and no external constraints, that lacks any real value of liberty.

But, as stated, the main mistake lies on the conceptual plane. As we have already seen, the freedom of a person who recognizes no constraints at all—that is, his illusion that no constraints rest upon him—is of no value significance. In the terms of the second gate, such freedom is a case of free choice in “Switzerland,” where there are no constraints, and therefore it is valueless. By contrast, the choice of a person who is committed to Torah and halakha—how to act within the constraints and to bear the consequences of his choices—is genuine liberty, that is, liberty with value. In the above terminology, it is parallel to elections in “Israel.”

Thus the truth is the opposite of what was described above. Precisely because the Torah, as an external and objective factor, fixes value-prices for action or inaction, the human decision whether to act, and how to act, has value significance. If those actions carried no prices, what significance would human choice have—as in elections in Switzerland? As noted, there is no value significance to action in a vacuum. That is complete freedom, and for precisely that reason it has no value significance. Only autonomous human action within the constraints and obligations imposed by external circumstances has value and value significance. That is liberty, as distinct from freedom.

And again, in the moral context, the concepts of “good” and “evil” are given and imposed on us. What lies in our hands is the question whether to act in accordance with them or not. In a situation where there were no concepts of good and evil at all—that is, where even the meaning of the concepts themselves were ours to choose—our choices and actions would have no value significance. From another angle: our assessment of a person, or of his various choices, is also made in terms of good and evil. If those concepts themselves are generated by choice, what room remains for assessing and judging his actions?

Humanism

Thus, liberal freedom, as it is sometimes understood in the West, finds expression in a person’s ability to choose his values, or his moral principles. This stands in contrast to the religious person, whose principles are imposed upon him. But as we have seen, this is an absurd conception. Without value-concepts imposed upon us, our various choices have no meaning at all.

Over the last centuries, a new conception has developed in the West—humanistic—according to which the human being himself can build the framework within which his actions receive value significance. This is the essence of humanism. According to the secular view, no external factor is needed for this. Postmodern morality is anthropocentric not only with respect to the character of its objects of reference, but also with respect to its source.

Not by accident we are reminded here of Amos Oz’s furniture example from the previous chapter. There too, in the aesthetic context, we saw that the analytic person creates for himself a system of principles and standards whose source is himself, as a substitute for a system of firm and objective standards. Amos Oz speaks of the ability freely to choose the furniture in the room as a measure of creativity and artistic value. In the present discussion we see those same pieces of furniture again, except that here they appear as an expression of ethical principles rather than aesthetic ones. But it is the very same conception, and for that reason it is no surprise that the same mistake appears here as well.

If this is indeed the situation, then the moral and value-prices paid by a person who acts within such a framework, for each of his decisions, are virtual. If he himself fixes the prices, that has no meaning. To paraphrase: no prisoner can imprison himself. By analogy, if in Switzerland they were formally and arbitrarily to decide that if Reuven were prime minister that would carry a severe price, while if Shimon were prime minister that would count as a success, it would be absurd to see such a determination as an adequate substitute for an objective determination arising from actual reality.

For values to have meaning, they must be determined by an objective external factor. Values that a person himself determines cannot give meaning to his choices. A person cannot set limits for himself and then use them to give meaning to his liberty and autonomy. A person who wants to redefine the rules of the game so that he comes out the winner—that his actions will have meaning, and that he will behave in the proper and correct way—is in fact defining a new game and merely calling it by the same name, “moral principles.” But this is a childish conception. In a game in which a person himself sets the rules, his victory or defeat has no meaning at all. Such an attitude recalls, in reverse, Baron Munchausen, who climbs out of the pit to his house in order to bring a ladder that will help him climb out of the pit.

Another example, this time from a completely different plane: if a person were to determine the monetary price of the goods in his possession, their monetary value would have no objective significance. He could not say that he possesses goods worth this or that sum.

Thus, the belief that there is an alternative to the religious-synthetic framework, one whose source lies in man himself, has no hold on reality. This is yet another of the analytic thinker’s escape routes from the bleak conclusions of his doctrine. In a characteristic way, this route too has a “Bokononist” character. It also makes use of conceptual metamorphosis, a method characteristic of postmodernism. Since there is no morality and no meaning, we redefine those very concepts themselves, and now—behold—there is already “morality,” and “meaning” too, all homemade. In accordance with the best analytic tradition, conceptual definition covers over all the logical errors, paradoxes, and oddities of the analytic position.

Is God a Taoist?

To sharpen the dispute presented here regarding values and meanings, let us now turn to a discussion of morality in East and West.

It is commonly accepted that there is a difference between the West and the Far East in their approaches to morality. The West, following Kant, advocates a demanding morality that requires a person to coerce his selfhood and his nature and to act in accordance with moral rules that usually run contrary to his nature. The basic conception associated with this approach is that “the inclination of the human heart is evil from his youth”; that is, without morality, the “state of nature” is expected, in the terms of Hobbes in Leviathan, and others.

In Kant’s own doctrine, however, it is not entirely clear whether these rules are external to man—for that purpose Kant founds the concept of God, as an “opium for morality,” in paraphrase of Marx⁶⁷—or whether their source lies only in man himself. Today the prevailing position is that the source of moral values is man, since in the analytic picture there is no other factor that can “take the task upon itself.” Many attribute such a view to Kant himself as well. In any event, it is clear that this is a conquering and arresting morality, one that requires action in light of rigid and stable principles and duties, against a person’s natural and living inclination. “Fulfilling duty” is almost synonymous with moral action in Western culture. The source of this approach, though it is considered Kantian, is in the Western religions, especially Judaism, and it is sometimes called “moralism.”⁶⁸

By contrast, the East—or at least central currents in Eastern thought—is characterized by a completely different moral attitude. This difference is described in a sharp and amusing way in Smullyan’s book The Tao Is Silent.⁶⁹ There are a number of incisive and beautiful descriptions there of the Taoist alternative. For example, on page 139 he brings the following passage, apparently his own:

In the time when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to important people, nor did they single out the talented man. Rulers were merely the high branches on the tree, and the people were like deer in the forest. They were upright and good, without knowing that they were “fulfilling their duty.” They loved one another, and did not know that this was “love of neighbor.” They deceived no one, but did not know that they were “trustworthy people.” They were reliable, and did not know that this was “integrity.” They lived together freely, giving and taking, and did not know that they were “generous.” Therefore their deeds were not recorded. They made no history.

Thus Taoism advocates natural moral behavior, as opposed to “fulfilling duty.” There are no external duties, and the moral principles arise naturally from within the person. It neutralizes the moral pathos that accompanies the Western approach to morality as the heroic fulfillment of duty and the coercion of nature and desire. In the eyes of the Taoist, to be moral means to behave according to your nature.

This is the antithesis of the moralistic morality of duty-fulfillment. As noted, such morality is based on the Western religious tradition, Jewish-Christian. At the foundation of Western morality lies original sin, which all of us must repair. That is why Smullyan, speaking to the Western reader, refers to some mythic-utopian time when life on earth was full—the lost Paradise before the sin—when there was no need for coercive moralistic morality. But in fact, it is quite clear that Smullyan the Taoist also means that even today it is more correct to live this way.

As noted, it is customary to see this controversy as a difference characteristic of West versus East.⁷⁰ The East flows with nature in general, and with human nature in particular. The West, which tends to distinguish between subject and object, sees the human being as standing opposite nature, something that also finds expression in his standing and struggling vis-à-vis his own nature.⁷¹

In many respects, however, it appears that contemporary secular Western culture, including Smullyan himself, is drifting away from its pseudo-religious heritage and moving more and more in a Taoist direction. Today in the West as well one hears quite a few expressions of the principle that demands of a person that he do what the natural inclination of the heart—moral feeling, conscience—tells him. This is the essence of freedom, now perceived as an almost supreme value, and not necessarily liberty. This approach sees dictated values, or a morality of “fulfilling duties,” as a restriction of choice.

A person must, of course, express himself and be true to himself, but the identity of that “self” is the focal point of the dilemma. Is it the collection of natural inclinations, desires, and feelings, or is it the collection of values that a person chooses and to which he is committed?

The actual situation in the Western world today is a mixture of the two directions, for it is difficult to free ourselves completely from our religious tradition. But the dosage of Taoism has certainly been increasing over the past years.

The Root of the Dispute: A Morality of States of Affairs (Freedom) versus a Morality of Autonomy (Liberty)

To deepen the discussion, let us now look at several additional passages from Smullyan’s book. In one of the chapters there is a dialogue between a person and God, in which the person asks God to take from him his power of choice. After a long and fascinating discussion, full of twists and turns, the Christian person discovers, to his astonishment, that God is a utilitarian and not a moralist. Near the end of the dialogue there appears the following passage:⁷⁴

God: I would like to return to the question of what you thought was my purpose in giving you free will. Your first idea, that I gave you free will in order to test whether you are worthy of salvation or not, may appeal to many moralists, but to me it sounds rather horrifying. Can you not think of another reason—a more human reason—why I gave you free will?

Man: I once asked an Orthodox rabbi the same question. He explained to me that, the way we are built, it is impossible for us to enjoy salvation unless we have earned it. And in order to earn it, we obviously need free will.⁷²

God: That explanation is certainly much nicer than the previous one, but it is still far from the truth. According to Orthodox Judaism, I created angels, and they have no free will. I am within their range of vision, and they are so drawn to the good that they have never had even the slightest impulse toward evil. They have no choice in the matter.⁷³ Yet they are eternally happy, although they never earned it. So if your rabbi’s explanation is correct, why did I not create only angels and not human beings as well?

Man: I have no idea! Why?

God: Because the explanation is simply not true. First, I never created angels ready-made. All rational creatures eventually approach a condition that may be called “angelhood.” But just as the human species is at a certain stage of biological evolution, angels are the final stage in a process of cosmic evolution. The only difference between the so-called saint and the so-called sinner is that the former is much older than the latter. Unfortunately, it takes countless cycles to learn what is perhaps the most important fact in the universe—that evil simply hurts. All the arguments of the moralists—all the reasons given in answer to the question why people should not do evil deeds—pale in the light of the one basic truth that evil is suffering. No, my dear friend, I am not a moralist. I am completely utilitarian. One of the great tragedies of the human race is that I have been taken for a moralist. My role in the course of affairs, if one may use this misleading expression, is not to punish or reward, but to assist the process by which all creatures reach final perfection.

…

God: Of course! What could be wrong with sin?

Man: You know that, and now I know it too. But all my life, unfortunately, I was under the influence of moralists, who regarded sin as bad in itself. In any case, when I put two and two together, it seems to me that the only reason you gave me free will is your belief that with free will people will hurt one another—and themselves—less than they would if they lacked free will.

God: Bravo! That is certainly the best reason you have given so far…

After that, the dialogue continues and explains that a person should act from his natural feelings, and that this itself constitutes the realization of moral principles. It says even more than that: in essence, a person cannot act except from those very laws.⁷⁴ In the Western Kantian conception, the concept of “sin” is central, where “sin” means failure to fulfill duty. In the Taoist conception there is no such thing as sin. There is suffering and sorrow, but not sin. From this one can learn much about the root of the dispute.

The dialogue excerpt quoted here teaches us what underlies the Taoist conception. Of course, first of all there is here a statement that we should free ourselves from the myth of original sin. Not all our lives are dedicated to expiating some virtual, mythical sin, and therefore we should not fear human nature so much. A person should be given more credit to behave according to his nature, and therefore also to behave freely, according to what his feelings dictate. In the Taoist view, the human inclination is good from youth.

Not by accident tactical considerations now also arise in the dialogue. Smullyan places in the mouth of his God the claim that natural behavior can lead to better outcomes than coercion. This is true in education in general, and in moral behavior in particular. But this consideration, though it seems to concern only the tactical plane, hides behind it very important and far from simple substantive assumptions. Let us now try to sharpen this further.

When we discussed above the value in the action of autonomous persons as opposed to action in a state of freedom, we did not justify it by the utilitarian fact that such action would lead to a better, more just, and more moral state of affairs. The claim was that such a mode of action is important in itself, not merely because of its positive, pleasant, and moral results. This means that autonomy is important in itself, not only because it leads to a more just and good state, if indeed it does, or at least to fewer wrongs and sins. Similarly, in the second gate we emphasized that there is importance to choice itself, even before the question of what one chooses—the content of the choice.

An important conclusion that emerges from the plainly moralistic picture described throughout this chapter is that even if natural behavior leads to a better, calmer, and more moral state of affairs—that is, to the existence of fewer sins and wrongs—this still does not constitute sufficient grounds to change our moral assessment of human action. The judgment and moral value of an act are not measured only by its outcomes and its character, that is, by the state of affairs produced by it, but also by the considerations, motives, and struggles that led to it. Jewish-Kantian morality is a morality of actions and not a morality of states of affairs, or in another formulation: a morality of actions and not of ends. Moral action is not measured only by its end, but also by its character.⁷⁵

In a world of Taoist, natural behavior, a person does not choose in a value-laden way. This is a “Swiss” world, in which each person behaves according to his nature. In such a world, even if it is true that there would be fewer wrongs in it—and I doubt that, despite the charm of Smullyan’s proposal—human action has no value. As we saw, in Switzerland elections are free, but valueless.

Thus, in fact, the most basic dispute between the sides concerns the question: what is value? The conclusion is that according to the moralistic conception, morality is an end, not a means to bring about a better world. Moral behavior is a criterion of the human being and his personality, not merely an efficient means to reach a more perfect, peaceful, and pleasant world. By contrast, in the analytic-Taoist picture morality is a means, for the sake of a goal that is nothing but living in a more comfortable and pleasant world. In essence, in a Taoist world an act will be judged by its consequences, not by its motives and by the constraints that surrounded it.⁷⁵

The next two observations examine two halakhic points in which actions themselves, rather than the results they achieve, are what stand trial. These are illustrations of the “Kantian” approach of halakha. The first observation, which deals with the process of repentance, illustrates the importance of the process itself in moral-halakhic evaluation. The second, which deals with the essence of the commandment of charity, provides a substantive explanation of why the action and process are important, and not only the result or the bottom-line situation created. This observation shows that the moral demand is not intended only to attain some positive situation, but also for a no less important purpose: the straightening and improvement of the soul-traits of the person who acts.⁷⁶ Only the combination of the two observations yields a complete Kantian position.

Observation 19: The Penitent and the Completely Righteous⁷⁷

The two types of moral conceptions described in the body of the chapter—a morality of states of affairs and a morality of actions—find expression in additional ways as well. In this observation we shall describe a dispute over another aspect of evaluating acts through their results or through the process of performing them.⁷⁸ We shall see that there is a consistent disagreement between Rabbenu Yonah of Gerona and Maimonides on the meaning of the process of action as opposed to the goal of the act, or the state that it achieves.

The basis of the discussion lies in a dispute that appears in the Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 34b:

Rabbi Yohanan said: All the prophets prophesied only concerning penitents, but as for the completely righteous, “No eye has seen, O God, beside You.” And this disagrees with Rabbi Abbahu, for Rabbi Abbahu said: In the place where penitents stand, the completely righteous do not stand…

Thus Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi Abbahu disagree over whether a completely righteous person is preferable to a penitent, or vice versa.

To be sure, no halakhic ruling is relevant in such a question, because this is not a halakhic issue.⁷⁹ Nonetheless, in most books Rabbi Abbahu’s statement is cited, namely, that penitents are greater.⁸⁰ Even so, there is a difference in how this is presented. From the language of Maimonides in Laws of Repentance 7:4, it appears that the penitent’s reward is greater, because he conquers his inclination. The toil he invests is the basis of the penitent’s greatness. Plainly speaking, the intention is that he receives greater reward. But his actual superiority—his spiritual rank—is not necessarily higher.⁸¹

By contrast, one might understand Rabbi Abbahu’s statement literally: the level of the penitent is higher, because the very fact that he has undergone a process adds something not present in one who never sinned at all. That is, Rabbi Abbahu is not speaking of the great reward due the penitent for his labor, but of his objective superiority. According to Rabbi Abbahu, the process of progress has value in itself, and not only as an instrument for reaching a perfect state free of transgression, like that of the completely righteous. This value exists to a greater degree in the penitent, and from that standpoint he is therefore greater than the completely righteous person—though it appears there are also other respects in which the completely righteous person is greater.⁸² Below we shall see that this is apparently how Rabbenu Yonah understood it.⁸³

Maimonides rules in Laws of Repentance 2:8 that sins confessed on one Yom Kippur are confessed again on the next Yom Kippur, in accordance with Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov; Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86b. Rabbenu Yonah, by contrast, in his Shaarei Teshuvah (Gate 4, chapter 21), ruled the opposite.

Plainly, the disagreement concerns the purpose of repentance on Yom Kippur. Rabbenu Yonah holds that repentance on Yom Kippur is a process, and therefore we are obligated to keep advancing all the time. The goal is progress, not the “cleaning” of sin. Maimonides, by contrast, rules that repentance is a means for reaching a perfect state, and not a process important in itself, and therefore our goal is to be as clean as possible. Thus even if we have already “cleaned” the given sin, there is no reason not to continue and “clean” it even more. The process as such is not important; what matters is the result to which it leads. Here too Maimonides continues his position that sees the process of repentance as a means to reach a more complete state, and not as a value in its own right.

It appears that Rabbenu Yonah and Maimonides follow their respective approaches elsewhere as well. Maimonides does not count among his enumeration of the commandments the commandment to repent at all. Rabbenu Yonah, by contrast, in Shaarei Teshuvah 4:17, counts repentance on Yom Kippur as a separate commandment, and his language implies that it is a commandment at all times.

Similarly, we find that Maimonides, in Laws of Repentance 7, interprets the verse “And you shall return to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 30:3) as a prophecy and not as a command, whereas Nahmanides, in his commentary ad loc., determines that it is a commandment to repent.

Maimonides’ approach is, at first glance, very clear. In light of his conception of the process of repentance as a means of cleansing from sin, there is no point in defining the commandment of repentance as a special command. It is clear that we are commanded to be free of sin, for the sin is already defined in a separate commandment as sin, and it follows that one who violates it must cease his wickedness. According to Maimonides, repentance is a means for leaving sin and being cleansed of it, and therefore the commandment to repent is already included in the commandments that define the specific commandments and sins themselves. Rabbenu Yonah and Nahmanides, by contrast, apparently understand that there is a special commandment to repent. Presumably they hold that repentance involves something beyond reaching a “clean” and complete state. The very act of cleansing oneself is a commandment in its own right, and not merely a means. Therefore this command must appear independently in the enumeration of the commandments, because it is not included in the ordinary commandments and prohibitions themselves.

Indeed, in Chayei Adam, rule 143, he writes similarly to Rabbenu Yonah:

It is a positive commandment from the Torah that one return in repentance before Yom Kippur, as it is written: “Before the Lord you shall be purified”…

His language implies that the commandment is to repent before Yom Kippur, and not on Yom Kippur itself. His source is apparently the midrash Pesikta de-Rav Kahana (section Shuvah, supplement 3):⁸⁷

Blessed and exalted be His name and memorial, for He loves Israel and instituted for them the Ten Days of Repentance, such that even if an individual repents during them, his repentance is accepted like the repentance of the public. Therefore all Israel must hold fast to repentance, make peace between one person and another, and forgive one another on the eve of Yom Kippur, so that He may accept their repentance.

The explanation of the matter is that he understands the commandment to be repentance before Yom Kippur, while Yom Kippur itself has a different purpose. Repentance is a means to reach the complete state, and that is the role of the Ten Days of Repentance. Yom Kippur is devoted to living in a complete state, and that is a different matter from repentance.

We have found another place in the writings of Rabbenu Yonah where he too seems consistently to move in the direction we have proposed for his view. On the verse in Proverbs 22:6, “Train a youth according to his way; even when he grows old he will not depart from it,” Rabbenu Yonah’s commentary seems to suggest that the meaning is that the youth will not depart from the way of being educated, and not that he will not depart from the path to which he was educated. That is, Rabbenu Yonah interprets the purpose of education as creating a baal teshuvah, not a completely righteous person. The goal is to create a person who keeps improving, not a person who is already improved.⁸⁴

By contrast, the plain sense of the verse indicates that the purpose of education is to create an educated youth, one who will not depart from the pattern into which he was educated. This is an education of the completely righteous person, and perhaps this is how Maimonides would understand the instruction of that verse.

Rabbenu Yonah’s conception may also provide an interesting basis for understanding the tendency of the type described in the saying of the Sages in the Mishnah, Yoma 85b:

One who says, “I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent,” is not given the opportunity to repent.

At first glance, this is a person who tries to evade his duty, and therefore he is punished by being prevented from repenting. But according to Rabbenu Yonah it may also be understood differently, as is explained in works of Hasidic thought: the aim of such a person is to rise to the level of the baal teshuvah, which is above the completely righteous. He wishes to sin in order to reach higher spiritual levels, since if he remains completely righteous, but static, he is limited in his level. And indeed, in Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 4:1, it is implied that the problem is evasion, and therefore he treats such a statement as a grave sin that obstructs repentance. In his eyes, this cannot be spiritual motivation to attain a higher level, but only attempts to evade the fulfillment of duty. Here again, Maimonides apparently follows his own consistent approach.⁸⁵

Below, in Observation 22, we shall see another example in which Maimonides follows this same line. In Shemoneh Perakim he rules that the completely righteous person is preferable to one who subdues his inclination. That determination certainly accords with his view here.⁸⁶

Observation 20: The Purpose of Charity

As noted, the previous observation demonstrated the importance of the process, beyond the importance of the halakhic-moral goal. In this observation we shall see that the theoretical basis for that is that the moral-halakhic act has two goals: the first is the attainment of some desirable state of affairs—in the case of tzedakah (charity), the welfare of the poor person—and the second is the improvement of the person who acts toward that goal, the giver of charity. The second goal is the reason that the process itself also takes an important part in generating the value of the moral-halakhic act. This observation therefore completes the picture presented in the previous one.

Two different conceptions may be proposed regarding the commandment of charity. At first glance, this commandment is intended to improve the economic condition of the poor person. But from several sources it emerges that there is also another goal here: the giver himself. Let us bring a few examples to illustrate the idea.⁸⁷

For example, Rabbi Akiva says in Midrash Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah 34:

More than the householder does for the poor person, the poor person does for the householder.

The same Rabbi Akiva conducts a dialogue with the Roman Turnus Rufus, as described in the Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 10a:

Wicked Turnus Rufus asked Rabbi Akiva: “If your God loves the poor, why does He not support them?” He said to him: “So that through them we may be saved from the judgment of Gehenna…”

Here too there is a clear conception that sees charity as intended for the giver, not for the recipient. God could have solved the recipient poor person’s problem much more easily had He not left him to our kindness. The purpose of the commandment is to save us from the judgment of Gehenna.

To be sure, the purpose of the commandment of charity here seems external—to save the giver from punishment in the World to Come. But below we shall see that the purpose is the improvement of the giver’s character traits in this world, and the enlargement of his share in the World to Come is only a result of the improvement that the act of charity creates in his soul. If so, Rabbi Akiva seems to have a consistent approach in his understanding of the commandment of charity.

By contrast, on the previous page there in the Gemara, Bava Batra 9b, the following statement appears, dealing with a unique reaction by the prophet Jeremiah toward the people of Anatot:

Rabbah expounded: What is the meaning of the verse, “Let them be made to stumble before You; in the time of Your anger act against them”? Jeremiah said before the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the universe, even when they suppress their inclination and seek to perform charity before You, cause them to stumble over people who are unworthy, so that they will receive no reward for it.

Here an entirely opposite conception appears. This is a clear example of seeing charity as intended for the poor, and not for the giver. Jeremiah’s request implies that if the purpose was not achieved—that is, if the poor person’s condition was not improved, because the person who received the money did not need it, or was not worthy of it—then the commandment has no value, or at least is not complete. This is so even though the giver did everything in his power to do, for he gave charity to someone who appeared to him to be poor. From the standpoint of the giver’s psychic-spiritual work, this was a perfect commandment, for the refining experience was experienced. Therefore, one might have expected that the act of giving charity would have its effect on the giver’s soul even in the case of an unworthy poor person. The conclusion is that this Gemara conceives of charity as an act intended to improve the condition of the poor person, and if that goal was not achieved, the commandment is not considered a full commandment. We must remember that these two Talmudic passages appear adjacent to one another in the same sugya, and therefore the frontal contradiction between them is highly problematic.

Approaches to the commandment of charity find unique expression in the enumeration of the commandments as well. First, in Sefer Mitzvot Katan there is a unique prohibition, prohibition 21:

“Let your heart not be grieved when you give to him,” meaning: one should not be distressed after the giving, but rather rejoice.

Nahmanides says the same in supplement 17 to Maimonides’ negative commandments.⁸⁸ It follows from this that there is an aspect of charity that is for the sake of the giver.

In Maimonides and his followers, however, a different picture emerges. They maintain that with respect to charity there is only one negative commandment—prohibition 232 in Maimonides’ count—and one positive commandment—positive commandment 195 there.

In defining the prohibition, Maimonides adds: “This is a warning against acquiring the trait of stinginess and cruelty that would prevent one from doing what is proper.” It should be noted that in defining the positive commandment Maimonides does not speak about character traits, but only about strengthening the weak in practice.

Likewise, in the headings to Laws of Gifts to the Poor, Maimonides writes: “It is a commandment to give charity according to one’s means, and a prohibition not to harden one’s heart against the poor.” Thus here too the prohibition is formulated as forbidding the hardening of the heart, not as a prohibition against failing to give charity in practice. The positive commandment, by contrast, is to give charity according to one’s best ability for the sake of improving the poor person’s condition.

Thus it appears that Maimonides understands the positive commandment simply as giving charity in practice, whereas the prohibition is part of the work on the giver’s character traits.

This also emerges from Maimonides’ language in Laws of Gifts to the Poor 7:2: “Anyone who sees a poor person asking and hides his eyes…,” implying that hiding one’s eyes from a needy person who is not asking for charity does not involve transgressing a negative commandment. This is the same asymmetry we saw above between the positive and negative commandments, as several commentators on Maimonides note. When there is no request for charity, then non-giving does not involve hiding one’s eyes or hardening one’s heart, and therefore one does not violate the prohibition. By contrast, in such a situation it appears that according to Maimonides one still does violate the positive commandment. This is a practical ramification of the distinction between the positive and negative commandments in Maimonides’ approach.

Another ramification is that one who did not give charity to a poor person, but this was under compulsion, is not considered to have violated the prohibition—not even a coerced transgression. In such a situation, according to Maimonides’ definition, he does not violate the prohibition at all, because in practice he did not harden his heart. On the other hand, it is clear that a theoretical desire to give charity—even though God joins a good thought to action—does not count as fulfillment of the commandment itself, since the positive commandment commands us regarding the actual giving, not regarding intentions of the heart.

A further ramification can be seen in explaining the halakha that does not obligate a person to spend all his money on charity. According to halakha, a person must spend all his money in order to save himself from violating a negative commandment. But with regard to charity the situation is different. As we have seen, when a person does not give charity he violates a prohibition, and if so, at first glance he should have to spend all his money in order to avoid that. According to what we said earlier, this can be understood, since in such a situation the non-giving is not due to hardening of heart, and therefore he does not violate the prohibition at all. Thus it is clear why there is no obligation here to spend all one’s money in order to escape the prohibition.

It may be that Maimonides’ source for this distinction between the prohibition and the positive commandment lies in the apparent contradiction in the Gemara that we saw in the sugya in Bava Batra. As we saw there, in Jeremiah’s case it is implied that charity is intended to repair reality, that is, for the sake of the needy. But in the discussion between Rabbi Akiva and Turnus Rufus it is implied that charity is for the sake of the giver.⁸⁹

A careful reader there will see that in Jeremiah’s statement the Gemara speaks about the reward for charity, and that of course is given for the positive commandment—for refraining from a prohibition there is no reward, only avoidance of punishment. Rabbi Akiva, by contrast, says that charity was given to us in order to save us from the punishment of Gehenna, and prevention of punishment concerns a prohibition, not a positive commandment. Thus the Gemara proves that when it deals with charity as an act for the poor person’s sake, it is speaking of the positive commandment, and therefore this is defined as the commandment of actual giving. But when the Gemara relates to charity as an act for the giver’s sake, it is speaking of the negative commandment, and therefore the definition of that prohibition is the improvement of the giver’s character traits. This is exactly what we saw in Maimonides.

The conclusion from the whole discussion is that the commandment of charity is an example of a moral-halakhic act whose goals are dual. There is one aspect that sees the act of giving as a means intended to achieve a positive state of affairs—the welfare of the poor person. And there is another aspect according to which the act is assessed in light of its contribution to the character traits of the giver.

This is a complicated topic, and we have touched only the outermost edge of it, in order to illustrate the halakhic-Kantian mode of evaluating acts of the service of God.

What we have discovered here is that utilitarian conceptions stand at the root of the Taoist approach. The dispute between the moralist and the Taoist is not a dispute over how, tactically, to arrive at a better world, but over what will be called a better world, or what “good” is. Is the good examined by standards of state and result, or by standards of action and process?

This is, apparently, also the reason for the penetration of Taoism, in this sense, into the West.⁹⁰ The analytic position, which is spreading more and more in the contemporary West, is unwilling to recognize values that are ends in themselves. Therefore, in its eyes the purpose of morality is the creation of a state without wrongs, and nothing more. All values—or “values”—are assessed by the degree to which they fit this goal.⁹¹ This is the essence of the utilitarian approach presented by Smullyan. But in the synthetic picture morality is an end in itself. Its purpose is to assess human actions and to give value and meaning to those actions. True, the practical aim of those actions is usually to create more complete states of affairs, without wrongs, but one of the parameters used in evaluating such a state is how much the human being contributed to its creation, and how much he did so through the use of his power of choice and the coercion of his bad traits.

For example, in the synthetic approach humility is not understood only as an instrument for creating a more peaceful, good, and just world. It is itself a positive human trait. In addition, the very act of acquiring it is an act of great value, even if it does not achieve its aim. Contrary to what is described in Smullyan’s first passage, it is actually very important that human beings understand that they “love their neighbor as themselves,” and that they are “generous,” and so forth. The reason is that, contrary to what one might perhaps infer from Smullyan’s passage, human beings are not deer. Animals act according to instinct, and therefore are not judged in terms of good and evil. Human beings are not meant to be placid animals, but moral agents.⁹²

In summary, in the synthetic picture the purpose of moral principles is the principles themselves, and not only the creation of a more complete state of affairs. Moral behavior repairs the person—not by making the world better, or at least by refraining from wrongdoing. It refines his personality, and that is an end in itself. This is what we saw in the previous observation regarding the commandment of charity.⁹³

Impulse and Autonomy: Who Is the “I”?

From another angle, the matter may be seen as follows. From the picture presented in the second gate it follows that the impulsive dimension of the human being is not the person himself. The person himself is the “I” that wants, or chooses, and thinks, and decides how to act within the system of drives, psychological impulses, and circumstances in which he is situated, which are to a large extent imposed upon him.

Someone who behaves according to his impulses is usually regarded today as someone who behaves autonomously and as a truly free person. But if we connect what was said here with the picture from the second gate, the conclusion is that such a person is in fact a slave to an external factor, namely, his impulses. He is ostensibly free, in some sense, but he is not at all a person of liberty, for what leads him is his impulses and not his will. The one who overcomes his impulses, and thereby expresses autonomy and non-submission to constraints—he is the one who is truly free, and his life has value. This is known as the Kantian approach to morality.⁹⁴

Thus we arrive at the classic Kantian conclusion, and one that is less popular today, that the value of moral behavior lies in restraint and overcoming, not in release and absence of bonds. Of this the Sages already said: “There is no free person except one who engages in Torah.” Commitment is not a limitation of freedom but an increase of liberty. This is a supreme expression of the moral and value significance of human action, an expression that does not exist in an analytic-postmodern world.

It is no wonder that the concept of “character refinement” does not exist in the Western cultural arena. This is a religious-synthetic concept, which sees the improvement of character traits as a goal, and not merely as a means for repairing the world. In the secular-analytic world people speak of repairing society, the world, and so forth. The subject is always the state of affairs, not the value of human action. Technical solutions that lead to a more complete state are considered equivalent to substantive solutions that repair the person. In the next observation we shall see that this approach is, in fact, the very essence of democracy.

Observation 21: Two Techniques for Moral Improvement: Between Democracy and Bureaucracy

This observation has two parts: the first is more general, and the second presents a halakhic example. One may skip the second part, which enters somewhat into the details of a particular halakhic sugya.

A.

In the body of our discussion we pointed out that democratic-liberal society does not demand that a person repair his character traits, but only that he behave properly. This is not merely a philosophical distinction between a morality of goals and states of affairs and a morality of intentions and processes. This approach has practical consequences.

Democracy seeks to replace the classic ways of correcting value-related problems in the human being, and especially in society, which were based on moral and value demands upon the individual personality, with technical, bureaucratic mechanisms.

Let us begin with an example that will illustrate the difference. Suppose we want to divide a cake between two children in an exactly equal way. There are two principal ways to do this:

1. We can educate each of them, and appeal to them to behave equitably.
2. We can establish a bureaucratic mechanism that ensures the desired result. In game theory, for example, the following procedure is accepted: one of them divides the cake into two parts, and the other chooses his half first.

There is no doubt that the bureaucratic mechanism will yield better results. The cake will be divided into two exactly equal halves. More than that: the more self-interested and egoistic the children involved in the process are, and the less value-driven they are, the more exact the division will be. The combination of the two interests will specifically bring the optimal practical result. In a certain sense this is the capitalist “invisible hand” method, which holds that precisely from concern for opposing interests, the proper balance and optimal state will be produced.⁹⁵

But there is a price. First, the character of the children will not change one whit. Only the state of affairs itself will be more equal. This may not bother the analytic liberal who advocates a morality of states of affairs, but even a Taoist can recognize the importance of positive character. By the criteria of Kantian action-morality, such a technique is destructive.

Beyond that, this method does not always work. If there is a more complicated situation, in which it will be difficult to find a simple theoretical solution like the one we saw in the example, then the results will in any case depend on the character of the persons involved. And as we have seen, a mechanical method does not improve people’s character, and sometimes even causes it to deteriorate, because ostensibly nothing depends on it, and good character has no importance in itself except as a means to an optimal state. In the example above, bad character would specifically produce better results. Thus, in more complicated situations, not only does character not improve, but even the desired state is not achieved. Here the Taoist and the Kantian will agree that bureaucratic solutions alone will not help.

It is reasonable to assume that the description given above reminds the reader of familiar situations. Democracy as a whole is built on an attempt to solve substantive problems by technical means. People try to build a system of balances—through separation of powers and supervision of each of them—that will produce an optimal and as corrected a state as possible. Even the basic democratic infrastructure, according to which all systems are chosen by the public, is part of this mechanism: elections are supposed to cause the various elected officials to behave properly even without any change in their character. The improvement is produced as a result of personal interest. In fact, the more power-hungry and honor-seeking a person is, the more he will want to be elected, and therefore the more he will have to behave in accordance with the public will. Ostensibly, that is how the system will function better. He will take better care of his own interest, and we will reap the benefit.

All this belongs to analytic morality—we saw in the sixth gate of the first volume that democracy usually expresses the analytic approach. It aspires to optimal states of affairs, or to the results closest to the optimal state. It attributes no importance to the moral character of the actor, but only to the state that prevails in fact. It is clear that from a synthetic standpoint these solutions do not attain the goal in full. Optimal states are important, but no less important is purity of character itself, and not only as a means of preventing undesirable states of affairs. This goal is only harmed by the democratic-bureaucratic method.

Beyond this problem, even if we relate only to the analytic aim of attaining optimal states of affairs, that goal is not achieved by such mechanical forms. The reason is that the system of a whole society, or of a state, is not a cake division. It is a complex system in which it is very difficult to find a purely technical solution that will give a satisfactory—and certainly optimal—response to proper governance. Very often, a bureaucratic proposal solves one problem while simultaneously creating three others. Here there is no substitute for proper conduct and refined character traits in those involved, both citizens and political figures and the clerks of government and administration.

The preservation of merely formal rules, or what is sometimes called in our case “the rule of law,” is the philosophical root of the CYA mentality—forgive the expression—in our districts. It may be hard to believe such a McCarthyite accusation, but it seems that analyticity is to blame even for this. An analytic approach to morality and to the aims of society yields a technical form of solution. Such forms of solution dictate their own built-in failures—the CYA mentality.

The conclusion is that in such a complex system there is no disagreement that there is no substitute for Kantian morality. Even if the moral criterion is one of states of affairs, Kantianism will achieve better results.

As noted, all this is true even under the assumption that what matters is only proper functioning. But if importance also attaches to the character of actions and to the value of the intentions that accompany them, then it is clear that bureaucratic solutions offer no response to that, and sometimes even worsen the situation.

For the sake of balance, it is important to note that although the bureaucratic magic solutions to substantive problems that are proposed to us almost daily often do not work, the picture is of course not one-sided or unidirectional. A proper balance is needed between the two components, and the bureaucratic functioning of the system is also important. But it certainly will not answer everything.

B.

The second part of this observation presents a surprising halakhic discussion, which appears to have implications for our topic as well. At the end of the portion of Balak it is told that Zimri brought the Midianite woman into the Israelite camp, and Pinhas the zealot rose against him and killed him in the midst of his sinful act. We shall pause here over an interesting halakhic aspect of this episode.

In the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 82a, two laws are brought concerning this situation:

If Zimri had separated and Pinhas had killed him, Pinhas would have been liable for him. If Zimri had turned around and killed Pinhas, he would not have been liable, for Pinhas was a pursuer.

The Gemara here determines that if Zimri had stopped his act, it would have been forbidden for Pinhas to kill him, and if he had killed him he would have been liable to the death penalty like any murderer. A second law in the Gemara states that Zimri had the right to turn around and kill Pinhas, because Pinhas was considered a pursuer after him to kill him. This is the familiar law of the pursuer.⁹⁶

A question has been raised by several commentators on this sugya.⁹⁷ There is a law that when one can save the pursued person from his pursuer without killing the pursuer—in the language of the Sages, “if one can save him by one of his limbs”—then there is no permission to kill him. According to this, it is unclear why Zimri had permission to kill Pinhas, for according to the first halakha cited above he could simply have stopped sinning, and thereby he would have been saved; there would then have been no need to kill Pinhas. It is therefore unclear why he was permitted to kill Pinhas when this was unnecessary.

The answer proposed by the author of Kli Chemdah is that Zimri indeed could have done so, but he did not owe that to Pinhas. That is, he was not obligated to stop sinning merely so that he would not have to kill Pinhas. If Pinhas puts himself into such a situation, he must take the attendant risks into account. By analogy: Reuven threatens Shimon that he will kill him unless he gives him ten shekels. In such a case Shimon is permitted to kill Reuven by the law of the pursuer, and he is not obligated—though perhaps it would be proper to do so—to give him ten shekels in order to save Reuven’s life. One who puts himself into such a situation cannot obligate me to give him something, or to waive something that is mine by right, in order to prevent his own death.

We should note that the innovation here is very great. According to this halakha, Zimri has a right to sin, and Pinhas has no right to prevent him from doing so. The sin is indeed a vile and grave act, and it even permits zealots to strike the sinner. Still, none of this is Pinhas’s concern. Zimri is certainly obligated toward God to stop his act, but he does not owe that to Pinhas.

A strange situation thus emerges. Zimri is doing something that permits Pinhas to kill him, and the Torah even views Pinhas’s deed very positively, as is explained at the beginning of the portion of Pinhas. But he is not obligated toward Pinhas to stop his act, even if the result will be that he kills Pinhas under the law of the pursuer. There is a formal, legal logic here. But where is the justice? Is it conceivable that Zimri’s right to sin unmolested should cost Pinhas his life?

One may perhaps see in this a kind of bureaucratic logic, of the sort we encountered above. The Torah permits zealots—and only them, not everyone—to kill one who sins in certain sins. On the other hand, it permits the sinner to defend himself. Such a law brings us, without deliberate intention, to an optimal situation. Pinhas will think carefully whether he is prepared to take the risk, for if he is not a zealot, it is clear that he will not want to endanger himself by the possibility that Zimri will kill him, and he will not rise up to kill Zimri. The permission given to Zimri ensures that not everyone who wants to “take the Name” will come and take it; that is, it functions as a filter, ensuring that only zealots will rise up to kill the sinner. On the other hand, the permission for zealots to strike the sinner is enough to deter him from the sin, because he is risking his life. The fact that he is allowed to turn around and kill his pursuer will not significantly affect his calculation whether to sin. The risk involved in the sin will usually be enough to prevent him from doing it.

At first glance, this is an example of a bureaucratic solution and of a criterion of states of affairs, at the price of personal-moral justice. Let us note that this is not a complex case, in terms of the number of parameters, though not in terms of the considerations, and therefore there is some justification here for such a solution.

Let us now continue the discussion. The author of Mishneh LaMelekh on Maimonides, Laws of Murder 1:15, raises two doubts concerning this law:

1. When Reuven kills Shimon unintentionally, Shimon’s relative—the blood avenger—is permitted to kill Reuven if he is outside the city of refuge. Is Reuven permitted to turn around and kill the blood avenger under the law of the pursuer? From the Gemara we saw concerning Zimri, it seems that he is.
2. When Reuven is pursuing Shimon to kill him, and Levi comes and wishes to kill Reuven in order to save Shimon, is Reuven the pursuer permitted to kill Levi the rescuer under the law of the pursuer? At first glance, this too is the same case.

A consideration may be brought against the permission, for when a court sentences someone to death and the court’s agent comes to execute him, there is no doubt that the condemned person may not kill the court’s agent under the law of the pursuer. Halakha will not permit such anarchy. If so, it is not clear why the Mishneh LaMelekh had any doubt. At first glance, we should rule the same regarding the blood avenger or the rescuer. Yet in the case of Zimri we saw otherwise.

The Mishneh LaMelekh concludes that in the first doubt, regarding the blood avenger, the inadvertent killer may kill the blood avenger, because no commandment rests upon the blood avenger to kill him; at most there is permission. In the second doubt, by contrast, regarding a pursuer, he rules that the pursuer may not kill the rescuer, because a commandment rests on the rescuer to save. Thus the criterion is whether or not the rescuer is performing a commandment.

The meaning of this is that since the core of the pursuer’s claim, which permits him to kill the rescuer, is that his transgression is against God and therefore is not the rescuer’s concern, that claim exists only against someone to whom the permission to kill is given merely as permission and not as a commandment. But if there is a commandment to kill someone, then the accused cannot claim that the one commanded to kill him has no standing with him. One cannot say to the agent of the court that the sin I am committing is none of his business. It is the task of the court to ensure that sins do not occur and to punish them. Regarding a rescuer who comes to kill a pursuer, there was room to argue that he should be treated as a private person, but in the conclusion, since a commandment rests upon him, that claim cannot be made against him either. The rescue is the rescuer’s concern, and therefore the pursuer may not kill the rescuer. He has no rights against him. Regarding the blood avenger, where the killing is only permission and not a commandment, we apply the model of Zimri and Pinhas. In Pinhas’s own case as well, this is only permission, though it is a very positive deed.

The conclusion is that while a person has a “right to sin,” this claim helps him only against another private individual, not against the appointed authorities. In those cases halakha establishes clear and sharp criteria, and does not leave the situation to the rule of the “invisible hand.”⁹⁸

Is Autonomy Not a Basic Western Value?

Above we presented two approaches to morality: the Taoist approach, which advocates a criterion of states of affairs for the evaluation of a moral act, and the Kantian approach, which advocates evaluation also in accordance with the intentions and struggles of the agent.

There is another important distinction between these two positions, which is a consequence of what has been said above. For the Taoist there is no value at all in the choice to choose. The aim is to behave properly, and nothing more. Even if we train someone to behave properly, and he does so automatically, our goal has been attained. After all, no one was robbed or murdered, and the world is calm and peaceful. A perfect world. In a Taoist world there is no goal of repairing the human being as such. Moral rules are means for creating a more complete and serene state of affairs. The bureaucratic-mechanical methods with which we dealt are a kind of such training.

Yet here we witness a very strange and puzzling phenomenon. In today’s world it is very common to see the autonomous realization of our selfhood as a supreme value. We have now reached the conclusion that there is no value in such realization, since the aim is to reach a more complete state of affairs, and nothing more. The goal is the state of affairs itself, not necessarily the human action intended to attain it. Autonomy—that is, chosen rather than passive and coerced behavior—has no value in the Taoist picture. This is an internal contradiction in the postmodern Western moral picture.

The reason for this problem lies in an incorrect conception of the concept “I.” As we have seen, in the synthetic picture of the soul, impulses and feelings are not part of the “I.” They constitute a periphery within which the “I” acts. By contrast, in the analytic-Taoist picture, the “I” is the totality of our impulses and inclinations. Therefore, conduct that yields to drives and desires may be conceived either as complete freedom or as servitude. The dispute at root is ontological, not necessarily moral.⁹⁹

We should note that one can also find such natural Taoist approaches in Judaism. But these always constitute a utopian goal, not practical guidance for everyone, as Smullyan’s Taoist God proposes. In the next observation we shall see one prominent example, from the teaching of Rav Kook.

Observation 22: The “Upright” and the “Subduer”: Rav Kook’s Conception of the Binding of Isaac

The two approaches discussed here often arise in discussions of the relation between Torah and natural inclination, and sometimes also of the relation between Torah and natural morality. The optimistic, Taoist, assumption about human nature sees a person’s natural inclination as basically corresponding to the commandments of the Torah, much as Taoism sees morality, whereas the pessimistic, Kantian, assumption sees it as basically opposed to Torah, and the service of God as overcoming natural inclination.

This finds expression in modes of interpretation of various halakhot, and therefore also in halakhic expansions. If we have a basic trust in our natural inclinations, we will tend to interpret halakhot, or verses, in a way that accords with natural inclination. We will also see natural inclination as an interpretive guide, and a contradiction to nature as an interpretive problem. Our nature is an interpretive aid planted within us, a kind of additional giving of the Torah. Our nature too is part of the Torah given to us, sometimes a more subjective part.

By contrast, those servants of God who are Kantian will see natural inclination as an obstacle placed within us so that we may overcome it, and the Torah as the means to help us do so. According to this conception, nature is a test that must be overcome, and the Torah is the means to overcome the evil inclination, in the spirit of the saying: “If this disgusting one”—the evil inclination—“encounters you, drag him to the study hall”; see Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 52b; Kiddushin 30b. The Taoists, however, will interpret this in the opposite way: one should drag the disgusting one to the study hall, and there he himself will no longer be considered disgusting.

Very often these distinctions find expression in various controversies in the contemporary religious world, and this is not the place to expand on them. In this observation we shall try to see the roots of this controversy and to propose a third approach, that of Rav Kook, who thinks the two different sides can be joined into one harmonious conception.

The basis of the discussion lies in Maimonides’ Shemoneh Perakim, chapter 6, the introduction to Pirkei Avot. There Maimonides discusses whether the superior servant of God is the pious person, who does things from natural identification and has erased from his soul the impulses to sin, or whether the superior one is the ruler over his soul, that is, one who has desires and impulses and longs for them, and nevertheless subdues his inclination. He writes that the philosophers agree that the superior one is the pious person, and that one who subdues his inclination is on a lower level.¹⁰⁰

On the other hand, he brings what seems to be a different approach of the Sages. There is the well-known saying of the Sages, Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 52a: “Whoever is greater than his fellow, his inclination is greater than his.” Or, “According to the toil is the reward,” in Pirkei Avot. In the sharpest form, the matter appears in the Sifra, section Kedoshim:

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: A person should not say, “I do not want to eat meat with milk, I do not want to wear shaatnez”—a garment of wool and linen—“I do not want to engage in forbidden sexual relations.” Rather he should say, “I do want to, but what can I do? My Father in Heaven has decreed it upon me.”¹⁰¹

Maimonides concludes by distinguishing between transgressions between one person and another, and transgressions between man and God. In “religious” transgressions, those between man and God, it is preferable to subdue one’s inclination; and the sages of the nations of the world, who by nature dealt with moral duties rather than “religious” ones, were correct with regard to the universal, moral, or rational commandments.¹⁰²

The terms used in contemporary Torah discourse for this matter are drawn from the teaching of Rav Kook. There, the one who rules over his soul is called the “subduer,” and the pious person is called the “upright.” An earlier source for these terms is found in HaKetav VehaKabbalah on Genesis 47:9. The author of HaKetav VehaKabbalah, however, argues that most writers disagreed with Maimonides and agreed that the pious one—that is, the “upright” one—is superior.¹⁰³

To understand better the term “upright,” let us examine Rashi’s commentary on the first verse of the Torah. There Rashi brings Rabbi Yitzhak’s well-known question:¹⁰⁸ Why does the Torah not begin with the first commandment, namely the sanctification of the month in the portion of Bo? He answers that the whole book of Genesis was written so that:

If the nations of the world say, “You are robbers, for you conquered the lands of the seven nations,” they can say to them: “The whole earth belongs to God. He created it and gave it to whomever was upright in His eyes. By His will He gave it to them, and by His will He took it from them and gave it to us.”

At first glance, Rashi’s answer is difficult, because it explains at most the appearance of the opening verses that describe creation itself. But it still does not explain why the whole rest of Genesis, up to the portion of Bo, was written.

It seems that this matter is clarified by the continuation of Rashi’s language: “and gave it to whomever was upright in His eyes.” The Torah teaches us who is upright in God’s eyes. The stories of the patriarchs teach us “uprightness,” and therefore they form part of the basis that justifies the giving of the Land to us.¹⁰⁴

It is not for nothing that Genesis is called by the Sages Sefer HaYashar, the Book of the Upright. It describes uprightness. The concept of uprightness that appears here, however, does not necessarily mean natural morality. It seems that the intention is something deeper. The Sages tell us in a midrash that the patriarchs observed the whole Torah. But it is not clear how they knew it, before the giving of the Torah. The accepted solution lies in the famous midrash concerning Abraham, that “his two kidneys became like two rabbis.” That is, his natural uprightness guided him, and thus he discovered and observed all the commandments of the Torah. If so, an “upright” person is not necessarily one characterized by uprightness in the moral sense in which we use the term today, but by an inner uprightness that enables a person to draw from his natural inclination what God expects of him, both in the sphere of morality and in the ritual-religious sphere.

At first glance, these two interpretations of uprightness are equivalent. It is clear that God expects us to do what is upright, as can be seen, for example, in the commandment “And you shall do what is upright and good.” If so, why do we insist so strongly on distinguishing between them?

The reason is that this situation does not always actually obtain. Inner uprightness does not always correspond to what God Himself expects of us. A person may behave in an “upright” way, but his inner axis is crooked. In such a situation his actions will be distorted. Conduct of “uprightness,” which assumes that a person’s natural inner command corresponds to the divine will, is permitted only for one who is in fact in a state of correspondence between his inner uprightness and the divine will. One who lacks such inner uprightness may not behave as the “upright” one. He must behave as the “subduer,” that is, follow the commandments of the Torah in a more formal manner and subdue his natural inclinations—namely, his impulses.

Thus Rav Kook reconciles these two approaches, the “upright” and the “subduer,” and creates from them one complete path: a person is not created complete. In this sense Rav Kook too is half-Kantian. He must conduct himself as a “subduer,” and thus slowly straighten his inner world—of this it is said, “In all your ways know Him, and He will make your paths straight.” To the extent that the inner world is more straightened, a person can begin to trust the correspondence between his natural inclinations and the divine expectations of him. In such a state he is supposed to begin to behave as the “upright” one. And indeed, in the end the higher goal is the mode of the “upright” rather than the “subduer,” as the author of HaKetav VehaKabbalah wrote.

Rav Kook’s words appear in several places. They may be seen briefly in his prayer book Olat Re’iyah (part 2, p. 17), and in greater detail in his well-known essay HaDor.¹⁰⁵ But the most complete and programmatic form is specifically found in a place where these terms are not mentioned at all: in Olat Re’iyah, in the commentary on the portion of the Binding of Isaac, pp. 84ff.¹⁰⁶

Rav Kook offers a very innovative interpretation of the Binding of Isaac, one that moves along a path similar to that of Kierkegaard in his wonderful work Fear and Trembling,¹⁰⁷ but their conclusions are diametrically opposed.

Kierkegaard places the focus of the lesson of the Binding upon the “subduer.” The religious dimension of the human being is an antithesis to the aesthetic, and even the ethical, dimension. To act in a “religious” way, according to Kierkegaard, is to act paradoxically, and even immorally when required. For Kierkegaard, paradoxicality is a criterion of religiosity. As we remarked in the twelfth gate of the first volume, this is a distinctly Christian approach.

By contrast, Rav Kook describes in detail the paradox and the binding that Abraham was required to bind before the divine command. First and foremost, he was required to bind his moral principles, his fatherly love, and in fact his entire natural inclination. The Binding is the quintessence of the conduct of the “subduer.”

What Kierkegaard did not pay attention to is the end of the Binding. The angel calls to Abraham from heaven and says: “Do not lay your hand upon the boy.” That is, in the conclusion it is clear that God never intended an action so contrary to human nature and to our natural morality. According to Rav Kook, one of the main conclusions of the trial of the Binding is that there is no contradiction between the will of God and human nature. That is, the conclusion is specifically the “upright,” not the “subduer.”

But another question arises in light of Rav Kook’s interpretation of the Binding. Why was such a cruel trial needed at all in order to teach us the lesson that the “upright” is preferable to the “subduer,” or to teach us that the commands of the Torah and of God accord with human morality and reason? Could this not have been skipped, and the lesson told to us directly?

Rav Kook’s answer is that it could not. One who has not undergone a binding will not understand the lesson of the “upright.” One who has never been a “subduer” cannot be “upright.” The conduct of the “subduer” is required in order to straighten our inner world, and only after a process of “subduer” does that inner world become aligned with the divine will. Only in such a state can one begin to behave as the “upright,” that is, according to the command of natural morality and reason. One who wishes to skip the stage of the “subduer” and behave immediately as the “upright” may arrive at very distorted forms of conduct.

This is the meaning of the verse in the portion of the Binding: “Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only one, from Me. And Abraham lifted his eyes and saw, and behold, a ram caught in the thicket by its horns…” After Abraham’s offering, after the binding of all his desires and values before the divine command, now God can know—and Abraham himself too can know—that even when Abraham does something because of an inner-natural command, it is not the voice of impulse or personal interest. If he is prepared to sacrifice all of himself, then when he does something in which he believes, it is probably something right and not a step arising from personal bias.

Incidentally, Abraham himself sees this message only after God opens his eyes. Only after the Binding can Abraham see that the intention from the outset was that he sacrifice the ram, not Isaac. This vision was inaccessible even to Abraham himself before he carried out the Binding.

Thus, according to Rav Kook, a dialectical solution is created here. Kant is right, and the Taoists are also right. Kant’s way is the recommended mode of conduct for us at the beginning of the path. As we progress more and more in understanding the Torah and implementing it, we can begin to behave in the way recommended by Smullyan. Apparently no one can reach perfect correspondence to the divine will, since the divine intellect exists and operates far above our plane, and therefore the guidance of Torah is always required. But the dosage of the “upright” in relation to the “subduer” should increase all the time.¹⁰⁸

This is also a lesson for our time. In the religious world, controversies constantly rage about the “upright” versus the “subduer.” Rav Kook teaches us that the level of the “upright” is higher, and this is a correct and worthy aspiration for everyone. But permission to behave as the “upright” is granted only to one who is willing also to undergo a binding, that is, to act over time along the path of the “subduer.”¹⁰⁹

Interim Summary

Let us now summarize what we have seen in this section. Synthetic religiosity sees freedom as a state, not as a value. Liberty is a value, and it means action within constraints—striving for a certain freedom while preserving some subordination to constraints. Therefore, in a synthetic world liberty is the supreme value, and freedom is a neutral state. In an analytic-Taoist world, by contrast, freedom is the value, in the sense in which they use the concept “value,” since even liberty is intended solely to achieve a final state of freedom, to be rid of the burden of constraints. In this picture the goals are complete states of affairs, and no modes of action have value in themselves; they are only means intended to attain those goals. The Taoist perspective on morality is utilitarian: it is a means to attain the complete state, characterized by comfort, pleasantness, and welfare for the greatest number of creatures.

For that reason, according to that approach, human-made values can also grant meaning and value to actions, since in principle they too may lead to the complete state, one without wrongs. But real meaning, in the sense of liberty and autonomy within constraints, cannot exist unless there is an external factor that dictates principles. Those principles constitute external constraints and fix prices for all our actions. The furniture in the house, in Amos Oz’s parable, appears in similar form in both his moral house and his artistic house.

Two Levels of Moral Evaluation

To complete the picture, let us add one more point. We saw above that human actions are evaluated on two different levels: their value in themselves—whether this is a good act or not—and the value of the liberty and autonomy expressed in performing them. For example, giving charity is a good act in itself, while hitting another person is a bad act in itself. This is the evaluation of actions in themselves. But if the charity is given without pressure or coercion, and perhaps even against an impulse that opposed it, then it is a good act on another plane as well: as an expression of the liberty of the giver. This is the evaluation of actions according to the degree of liberty expressed in their performance.

These two levels parallel the two planes of choice that we encountered in the second gate: the choice of the values themselves, that is, the construction of the onion of the will—what is a value for me—and the choice to choose, to be autonomous. It is important to understand that at each of these two levels there is a dispute along the analytic-synthetic axis. Let us explain.

Up to this point we have emphasized that values made by our own hands cannot grant meaning to the actions we perform, that is, cannot define us as persons of liberty. As we saw, ironically enough, to be free one needs constraints. We saw that these constraints cannot be the product of our own invention, for then they are not real constraints. Values that we ourselves determine as good cannot give meaning to our actions as persons of liberty. It is very important to note that this is a claim that belongs wholly to the second level of discussion, namely to the plane of evaluating the act in terms of the autonomy and liberty within it. There is no treatment here of the question of the goodness of the act in itself.

But in the sixth gate of the first volume we discussed a similar point that concerns specifically the first level of discussion, namely the plane of evaluating the values in themselves. We saw there that values in themselves, and not only as a framework that gives meaning, cannot be determined except by an authoritative external factor. That is, not only can values of our own making fail to give the meaning of liberty to our actions, but they themselves cannot serve as real measures of moral good and evil.

Can a definition that I myself gave attach value to a certain act I performed and determine whether it was right or not right? This is like a person deciding that some coin is worth ten thousand shekels and inferring from this that he indeed possesses ten thousand shekels. Or again, the Nazis set for themselves a moral scale of values somewhat different from the accepted one. By what shall we judge them, according to the analytic picture? By the scale we ourselves created out of nothing?

We already noted above that this is a bizarre, even somewhat childish, approach. A child decides that his plastic soldiers are soldiers and that they are now conducting a war, and from his point of view there really is a war here. Woe to anyone who wanders onto the battlefield and knocks over his soldiers. It is surprising how such childish approaches are adopted by grown and intelligent people. What will people not do in order to preserve the analytic worldview and try to evade positing the existence of the “objective factor”?

There is no doubt that many readers will feel that this is not an accurate description of the world called here “analytic.” There too many people believe in binding and absolute moral values. But this is only one more of the contradictions that exist within the analytic position. As we saw above, in an analytic world there is no room to see values as entities. We cannot see them, and therefore they do not exist, and certainly they play no part in grounding any moral or intellectual doctrine. If so, values are principles—apparently subjective—that the person himself, or human society, sets for itself. If so, how can an analytic person, who does not believe in any objective dimension of moral values, continue simultaneously to speak of binding and absolute values? Usually linguistic-analytic proofs are brought for this, but there is no reference to the philosophical-metaphysical basis of these puzzling assumptions.

There is a connection between the analytic approach and moral relativism. Even one who denies this must justify his claim. We already remarked above that one must distinguish between declarations and a deeper examination of philosophical assumptions. Therefore the analytic thinker will have to decide whether to cling to his rationalistic positions, which deny the objective dimension of values, in which case he must give up any objectivity of morality, or alternatively give up the analytic approach and the conventionalism that consistently accompanies it. The utility of moral behavior cannot serve as a sufficient argument for the moral content poured into it.

It is quite clear that there is almost no one who does not believe in the existence of an objective scale of values, with some degrees of freedom, of course. But analytic analysis casts this in a dubious light.

For that reason it is not surprising that many who belong to the analytic world will specifically adopt the description proposed above, that liberty and autonomy are themselves the values, and not only the attainment of complete states of affairs—freedom and welfare. For this purpose the paradoxical concept “secular humanist morality” was invented. The reason is the tireless human need to find meaning, even in lives that truly lack meaning. Such people are not satisfied with striving for comfortable lives or with the fulfillment of satisfactions; they want meaning. To that end they redefine the concept “morality,” just as they did with the concept “truth.” They replace the concept “liberty” with the concept “freedom” and fail to notice the accompanying shift in meaning. For this purpose they must prevent themselves and others from seeing that a value a person determines for himself cannot grant meaning to his actions. Thus arises the intensive, almost religious preaching in favor of humanism. Analytic thinkers adopt a paradoxical picture and believe in it with religious devotion. As we recalled, for them religion and contradictions are synonymous terms, under Christian influence.

But in the end, each person must decide whether to assume that intuition is correct, and arrange his assumptions so that they lead to the intuitive conclusions, or to choose the analytic solution and reject intuition as a kind of illusion. The two types of positions, analytic and synthetic, again reveal themselves as two options intended to resolve a contradiction between analytic analysis and synthetic intuition.

“From You I Flee to You”: Back to God

To conclude the chapter, it is important to add one more remark. There are two completely different ways of moving from moral principles and commitment to them to the existence of God. One can do so in the pragmatist way, namely by being aware that it is difficult to ground morality and commitment to it—at least at the theoretical-philosophical level—without positing the existence of God. And since in the postmodern world all ideas and ideals are nothing but assumptions convenient for us to assume, and God is an idea no less useful and beneficial than any other idea and truth, then why not assume the existence of God as a guarantee for morality, if He can help in that respect?

In our postmodern age God usually functions as an “opium for moralists.” People invent Him—or His virtual shadow—in order to save morality. The adherents of analytic morality, beginning with Kant, are opium consumers who systematically ignore reality and posit assumptions at will in order to establish the picture they would like to see, while at the same time accusing religion of using God as the “opium of the masses.”

By contrast, those who hold the synthetic position travel the opposite road. In their view as well, God is indeed the only theoretical basis that can establish commitment to moral principles, at least in their Kantian-religious sense, though perhaps not in the Taoist sense. But on the synthetic path the existence of God is not a pragmatist assumption but a conclusion drawn from intuition. Since there is a very strong intuition of commitment to morality, we infer from it itself the conclusion that we indeed believe—sometimes implicitly—in the existence of God. We do not invent a fictive God in order to secure commitment to morality; rather, we prove from the intuition of commitment to morality the implicit assumption of the existence of God.

This is a proof of the kind we have already encountered several times along the way, and which we called a “theological proof”: from intuition to metaphysics. The line of argument is very similar to what we did in the first volume in Observations 21 and 25, except that there we began from epistemology. In fact, any arbitrary assumption that is present in our intuition, and seems to us correct in a way that cannot be surrendered, probably entails the existence of God.

It is unclear whether this is itself Kant’s proof for the existence of God, after in the Critique of Pure Reason he argues that no philosophical proof can be brought for it. It may be that he “repents” and brings a “theological” proof, and it may be—though his words do not appear to indicate this—that here too he still adheres to his transcendental path, which is fundamentally analytic-pragmatist; that is, he invents God rather than proving His existence from moral intuition.¹¹⁰

Chapter 7: On Aesthetic Judgment

Introduction

In this chapter we shall examine additional aspects of the analytic-synthetic controversy as they pertain to aesthetic judgment and evaluation. As background, it is important to clarify a bit further the field of discussion and its relation to what was done above in Chapter 5.

In Chapter 6 we distinguished between two meanings, or two layers, of moral evaluation: evaluation of the degree of liberty and autonomy expressed in an act, and evaluation of the essence of the act itself. The very same distinction can be made in the aesthetic context: one can evaluate a work in terms of the liberty expressed in it, and one can evaluate it in itself—whether it is “beautiful” or “of artistic value” in itself. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish the line that marks off these two questions, and this is true with respect to morality as well, but in principle they are two different questions.

Chapter 5 dealt with the first question, that is, with the connection to the concepts of freedom and liberty. This chapter deals with artistic content in itself. It naturally touches upon the question of aesthetic relativism, which parallels the ethical question already mentioned and briefly discussed above. As we shall see, just as in the ethical context, so too in this plane the different positions in the analytic-synthetic confrontation exert an important influence.

Aesthetic Judgment

In the philosophical tradition it is customary to divide philosophy into three domains, in each of which value judgments of a different character appear: logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Logic deals with “truth” and “falsehood,” ethics with “good” and “evil,” and aesthetics with “beautiful” and “ugly.”

The various controversies, almost all of which can be mapped onto the analytic-synthetic axis, appear in very similar form in all three domains. The domain that deals with truths occupied us chiefly in the first volume. The domain that deals with good and evil occupied us throughout the present gate. And with contexts of aesthetic judgment we shall deal in this chapter.

In aesthetics as well there is intensive philosophical engagement with questions of the objectivity and absoluteness of criteria—one may call these questions of aesthetic truth—and also with questions concerning the characterization of the essences of those criteria. Here too one may speak of the “aesthetic onion,” that is, of the theoretical structure that underlies aesthetic and artistic judgment and creation in general.¹¹¹ At the core of the onion stand the basic aesthetic values, which the person chooses, whether subjectively or not. There are outer layers derived from the inner ones. There is an entire aesthetic scale of values located in the core of the onion. And of course there are also all the principal problems that accompanied this structure in the ethical context.

In the end, however, in the aesthetic field the result is a value judgment, not an act. In the ethical field the result is a judgment that also dictates behavior. Therefore, the attitude toward conflicts is somewhat different. In ethics it is very important to establish a scale of values in order to decide how we ought to act in a situation where two values collide, such as saving life and Sabbath, or an individual’s right to privacy and the public’s right to know. In the aesthetic field, by contrast, the need for a scale of values that defines a hierarchy among the basic values in the core of the onion scarcely exists. In a case of contradiction between two aesthetic values, the judgment will be complex. We shall say that from one standpoint the work has value, but from another standpoint it does not.¹¹²

Since one can say, at least schematically, that the structure is entirely parallel, we shall not repeat here the whole course taken with regard to the onion of thought in the first volume and the ethical onion in the previous gate. In this chapter we shall deal only with what is distinctive, if anything, about judgment and evaluation in the artistic-aesthetic domain.

The Question of Criteria

The basic question that arises in this context is, of course, that of the objectivity of artistic, or aesthetic, criteria. Does the fact that there are disputes in this field necessarily lead us to aesthetic relativism, or is this located within a defined sphere, while there are objective aesthetic frameworks that bound the legitimacy of differing tastes?

As a starting point for the discussion, it is important to mention again the variation we proposed in Chapter 5 on Moore’s argument, according to which the very conduct of the controversy proves that there are objective criteria. If there were none, every controversy would be sterile and pointless. It could be concluded by a semantic agreement: one side is speaking of aesthetics A, the other of aesthetics B, or any other terminological distinction that would satisfy the sides. The fact that people argue about aesthetic values proves that the idea of the “beautiful,” like the idea of the “good,” exists in some sense—in the world of ideas—and aesthetic values are the result of observation of the concept “beautiful,” or “aesthetic.”

As we have already mentioned several times, postmodernism appears in our world chiefly in artistic contexts.¹¹³ The postmodern attitude to this discussion, as expected, does not recognize the existence of any criteria at all. This does not prevent many who hold this position from discussing, at great length and with impressive erudition, questions of aesthetics and artistic judgment. As we know, consistency is not the strong suit of this mystical movement. In fact, it has made inconsistency its banner as a central ideal—sometimes it seems that this is the only ideal that postmodernism guards with zeal and consistency.

A blunt example of this approach can be found in Gideon Ofrat’s book Defining Art.¹¹⁴ Ofrat, who is regarded as an authority in this field—almost a guru, or, if one prefers, a rebbe—goes through dozens of approaches that try to define art, one by one, and rejects each of them for various reasons. His final conclusion is “revolutionary”—and needless to say, empty: art is whatever is displayed in a museum.¹¹⁵ We are thus left only with the question: in what field is Ofrat an authority? In the empirical field of listing everything currently displayed in museums?

Of course Ofrat is not alone in this approach. He joins a distinguished company of art figures such as Marcel Duchamp, David Avidan, and others, who define in a circular fashion that art is whatever I define as art.

Ofrat’s book is a grotesque example of a postmodern discussion whose aim is to show that it is very difficult, and perhaps impossible, to offer a sharp definition of the concept “art.” But there is nothing new in this. As we saw in the first volume, even simpler everyday concepts such as “heap,” “afternoon,” and the like cannot be defined. Ofrat would presumably conclude from this that there are no heaps in the world either. In fact, from here on he ought simply to obey the command of Wittgenstein, his great master, and remain silent.¹¹⁶

As we repeatedly see, here too there is a clash between analysis and intuition. The postmodernist, true to his way, chooses analysis, whereas the synthetic thinker, equally true to his way, chooses intuition. The synthetic position returns and argues that even if a concept has no definition, this does not mean it does not exist. Clearly, adopting a ridiculous and provocative definition like Ofrat’s does not solve the problem. At most it is a sharp presentation of the problem, not a solution.

Ofrat himself, in the course of the discussion, classifies various works as art, and by virtue of that classification rejects the different definitions he brings up. Why is it justified at all to classify those very works as art? Is it because they are already displayed in a museum? If so, then his discussion begs the question. He assumes that a work of art is whatever is displayed in a museum, and as a consequence he fails to define the concept “art.” And, to our great surprise, at the end of the process he reaches the revolutionary conclusion that art is whatever is displayed in a museum.¹¹⁷

Against this background it is interesting to examine Ofrat’s repeated assertions, in writing and orally, that Judaism and art are contradictory and opposed to one another. It seems that art in Ofrat’s definition is indeed opposed to Judaism. Yet the deep religiosity with which Ofrat himself relates to the subjects with which he deals hints at a different conception of religion, and apparently Judaism in his own interpretation is not so opposed to art—also in his interpretation.

A conception of religiosity and morality as criteria of religiosity expresses a Christian approach, and it is very far from the Jewish conception of religiosity.¹¹⁸ The latter operates through intellect more than through emotion. The fact that Christianity, emotionality, and art go together excellently is well known.¹¹⁹

One should add to the discussion the connection Ofrat makes between religiosity and right-wing politics, both of which stand opposed to art. This connection adds another dimension to the discussion, one that only sharpens the claim we presented here. The linkage between religiosity and right-wing politics, against which stands the left-secular-postmodern pole, only sharpens the deeper axis of the confrontation. At root, this is a clash between intellect and emotion, in which, as always, the synthetic approach occupies the intellectual pole and the analytic approach the emotional pole.

Thus the phenomenon of Gideon Ofrat clearly represents the essential connection between leftism, secularism, and postmodernism discussed in the first volume, and the connection of all these to inconsistent and irrational emotionalism, described there and in the present volume as well. The synthetic pole is indeed opposed to these ideas on all fronts.

By contrast, the synthetic picture treats synthetic intuition, no less than ethical or logical intuition, as a source of cognition. Therefore the conception that some works are art and others are not reflects some objective cognition, even though it cannot be explicitly defined. Ofrat’s assumption—that the works he raises as tests for the theories he examines are indeed artistic works—is a correct assumption, but only if one adopts the synthetic position. According to the analytic position that he presents, the procedure of the discussion in his book is nothing but a collection of question-begging assumptions and paradoxes. One cannot deny the existence of a definition of art while simultaneously determining that certain works are certainly works of art and, on that basis, examining and even rejecting the various theories.

To conclude, let us add that the mistake of Ofrat and his colleagues is that their determinations depend on a mistaken interpretation of both sides of the equations under discussion. For example, if we interpret art differently from the postmodern manner proposed by Ofrat, we will not necessarily have to arrive at the contradiction allegedly existing between it and Judaism. The same is true of tolerance and openness, of values, and above all of rationality.

It is important to understand that Ofrat’s discussion concerns a more fundamental question than the criteria for the quality of art. He claims that there is no definition at all of the field of art as such. The criteria for the quality of art, or for the degree of its aestheticity, are shrouded in even deeper fog. And indeed many today hold the view that there are no criteria at all for aesthetic, artistic, or any other sort of quality.

Even those who reject artistic relativism generally bring analytic-linguistic proofs for their view, but I have not found anyone who claims that there are any abstract entities relevant to the evaluation of works of art. The situation is very similar to what we saw in the ethical context.

But anyone who holds that there really are objective criteria for art will have to agree, in one way or another, with the claim already presented above in the ethical context: that there is an ontological dimension in artistic evaluation. According to the proposal we have offered, we observe the concept “beautiful” and extract from it the criteria for our evaluations. This concept exists, in one form or another, and therefore grants an objective dimension to artistic and aesthetic evaluations.

For a more detailed discussion of this issue, the reader is referred to Adi Tzemach’s book Introduction to Aesthetics.¹²⁰ Tzemach proposes there, in his own description, an objectivist doctrine in the field of aesthetics and art evaluation. But it seems that he too does not require metaphysical-ontological justification, and leaves the discussion within the analytic-linguistic domain. When he arrives at the need for objects that will serve as the standard for aesthetic judgment, he creates a new ontology ex nihilo, and in the end remains within the subjective realm. His solution strongly resembles Kant’s solution to the problems of his day.

For example, in order to create some ontological dimension that will enable his objectivist treatment, Adi Tzemach proposes the following (there, from p. 157 onward):

The critical activity can be fully described as the activity of a person judging the aesthetic value of the harmonies and tensions that establish the texture of the work before him, because one can give a purely structural meaning to aesthetic judgments of the sort quoted by Weitz and Hospers. “A literary work faithful to human nature” is, for example, a work that develops harmoniously and consistently certain motifs according to the accepted grammar of those motifs…

When we say—as art critics—of a certain work, “How true this is!” “How apt!”, we have not at all blurred the boundary between aesthetic judgment and theoretical-scientific judgment, nor have we engaged in comparing claims to reality and verifying the former, though this may appear so at first glance…

In saying “How true this is!” we are expressing our admiration for an inferential, logical, and continuous development of known subjects or motifs, for a thickening or a surprising combination of them…

A well-written work draws us into its “world,” into the system of beliefs and opinions presupposed in its background, in a natural and “smooth” manner, so that we do not feel that this system is not the ordinary system that we hold in reality…

This is precisely why I need conduct no scientific research in order to become convinced that a work of Dostoevsky is true and very profound. The only “reality” with which I need compare the text T is the system M, and this is given to me together with the text and in the course of my reading of the text…

The truth of the work is therefore a purely aesthetic “truth,” and a formal structural interpretation can be given to it…

At the beginning of chapter 1 of the third part he adds:

The reader familiar with the terminology current in the aesthetics of the last hundred years has surely already sensed that my use of the expression “aesthetic object” differs greatly from the usual use of that term. I do not use it, as is customary, to denote a kind of object with a special mode of being, a sort of phenomenal entity. The aesthetic object, so we are told, differs from every ordinary material object in that its existence depends on its being observed by the observer—who, for example, adopts an “aesthetic stance”—in that the observer builds it in his consciousness, or in that the observer experiences it aesthetically…

By the term “aesthetic object” I have designated any object whatsoever that is evaluated in terms of its aesthetic properties…

In this passage Tzemach describes the accepted “objectivist” approach that sees aesthetic objects as a kind of fictive entities that “come to life” when they are observed. He himself, in order to escape that strange impasse, proposes an “objectivist” alternative that is in fact nothing but a different subjectivism. What the two proposals share is that they do not truly move beyond the subjective boundary. These are Kantian solutions to the problem of the objectivity of aesthetics.

All those who certainly regard themselves as modernists, and who believe in binding criteria, in fact do not give themselves an account of the metaphysical-ontological foundation underlying their claim about the objectivity of aesthetic judgment. The hidden analytic character of these aesthetic doctrines finds expression in the Kantian and analytic nature of their proposals. They ignore the substantive difficulties and offer an artificial solution that in fact solves nothing.

What is the difference between aesthetic subjectivity and constructing an object that exists only when one looks at it? Or, alternatively, an object that is an entire background system which in fact does not exist and is conveyed only through the reading of the work itself? Tzemach himself brings Paul Ziff’s remark, who calls this strange aesthetic object “the ghost of aesthetics.” See there throughout the chapter also the other citations from the “realists” among philosophers of art. Tzemach himself claims that his alternative escapes the straits, but it seems not to.

Put differently: how will Tzemach explain the objectivity of relative aesthetic judgment? According to what criteria does he propose to examine the texture of the work and the fit among its components? Do these criteria actually describe an object that exists in real reality, or are they also virtual? If they exist, then it is unclear what we have gained in his proposals over naive-naturalistic objectivism, of the sort proposed here. And if they do not exist, it is unclear what help his proposals have given us.

All these proposals in fact suffer from Hume’s naturalistic failure, and their root lies in the analytic element that appears in them, openly or covertly. Our simple naturalistic intuition allows only the simple and “naive” way out that we proposed above.

Observation 23: The Question of Imitation, or: What Is Wrong with Kitsch

We proposed a conception according to which art is measured in light of criteria drawn from objective reality. But there is a more extreme conception of the relation between art and reality, according to which art is required to be an imitation of reality, something like a photograph of it. According to this conception, aesthetic judgment is almost entirely objective, and on the other hand it does not require the creation of abstract theoretical objects, that is, the metaphysical-ontological speculations proposed above. According to this approach, the measure, or judgment, of artistic value is made against physical reality itself.

This conception touches on the well-known question in the philosophy of aesthetics known as “the question of imitation.” Let us offer several formulations of it, which are not equivalent to one another: Is a work of art that describes reality in a more fitting way, directly or indirectly, of higher artistic value? Or: must works of art imitate nature? Or: is great art that which reveals to us important and central facts about the world in which we live—usually things that science cannot describe?

Adi Tzemach, in his Introduction to Aesthetics (third chapter, section b, from p. 148 onward), describes a clash between two approaches to these questions. On the one hand, there are approaches, rooted in Plato, that maintain that art should represent—what he calls “the theory of representation”—or express—what he calls “the theory of expression”—some dimensions of reality. These theories were popular among aestheticians in the first half of the twentieth century. They were later strongly attacked, and today they are no longer popular.

One argument against imitation theories is that we have no standard to compare the artistic description with. For example, to what shall we compare Shakespeare’s Hamlet in order to know whether he corresponds to reality? There was apparently no such prince in reality, and there is no point comparing him to an average prince, for he was not an average prince. Thus we would need to compare him to a prince exactly like Hamlet, but such a comparison would be no more than a ridiculous tautology.¹²¹

Thus we would have to compare him to a fictional character—to the way Hamlet ought to look. We would have to build an imaginary construct of Hamlet’s ideal likeness, and compare Hamlet to that. But for this to be a criterion of fit to reality, the ideal Hamlet would somehow have to be connected to reality—otherwise in what sense is he better than the work of art itself?—and so on ad infinitum.

Alternatively, people say that Hamlet’s character is “credible.” We believe that such a character could have been. Here there is a comparison to a character who could have been, and not necessarily to any concrete character. This is no longer really a comparison to something. Here Plato’s theory of ideas enters and provides us with a model of comparison. The work must be compared to some idea of it, which exists in the world of ideas.

Below, in the section on hermeneutics, we shall refer to the general pattern of such an argument in terms of “the hermeneutic circle.” Our conclusion there concerning synthetic hermeneutics resembles the Platonic conclusion presented here above. By contrast, Adi Tzemach’s conclusion on this issue is described in the quotation we brought before this observation.

Let us now present a direction that appears, at first sight, completely opposed to everything we have seen until now. The dispute over the question of imitation gave rise to two approaches: one holds that art should imitate reality in some sense, while the other opposes this and maintains that there is no need for that at all. But there is a position that seems opposed to both: a work must not imitate reality too well. Not only is imitation not an advantage, it is an aesthetic defect.

Thomas Kulka, in his article “What Is Wrong with Kitsch,”¹²² discusses an embarrassing problem in aesthetics. On the one hand, there is full consensus that kitsch is bad art. Dictionaries place it under such respectable headings as “worthless art,” “artistic trash,” “pretentious art,” or simply “bad art.”

On the other hand, according to all accepted parameters of aesthetics, it looks like art in every respect, and it may be good or bad depending on the case. The technical skill required to produce kitsch is sometimes very high. For a very broad public it has considerable appeal. The emotion that kitsch evokes in the viewer is indeed very intense—some would say too intense. Kulka shows that the same is true with respect to the three basic terms of aesthetic evaluation: unity, complexity, and intensity.

Kulka’s claim is that artistic evaluation is not identical with aesthetic evaluation. The parameters brought here provide a basis for aesthetic evaluation, but art requires meeting additional criteria.

Kulka’s conclusion is that the kitsch of the crying child in the light of the melancholy sunset does indeed arouse strong emotions in us, but this involves deception. What arouses the feelings is the depicted object, not the painting as such. The values of the painting do not derive from its aesthetic values, but from what they express or reflect. According to Kulka, kitsch is a “transparent” work, through which we see what it symbolizes, namely the reality it describes. That reality is what affects us, not the added value created by painting it.

A kitsch work is a representation of an ideal object—its gestalt; that is, it is a sort of symbol whose referent is the reality described. The painting of the crying child is in fact like the words “crying child.” It is nothing more than a representation of a situation, and there is no contribution, no added value, in the artistry itself. The excitement surrounding the viewer stems from the fact that the child is crying—that is, from the depicted situation—and not from the added value of the painting or the painter. Here specifically fidelity to the source is what creates the excitement.

The conclusion is that the artistic value of a work, as distinct from its aesthetic value, stands in inverse relation to the degree of transparency of the work. As it were—by way of exaggeration—the less faithfully it represents reality, the more its artistic value may rise. This value lies in the added value that the work possesses beyond the reality reflected in it. The excitement aroused in the viewer should result from the added value the painter grants the work, and not from the depicted situation itself.

Thus we arrive at a conclusion opposite to both approaches we saw earlier. According to this approach, high art ought to distance itself from too faithful a representation of reality.

But it seems there is no contradiction here at all. The emphasis at the end of the previous paragraph must be placed on the word “too.” The representation of reality may indeed be a criterion, but the representation itself must have added value, which is what affects us and gives the work its value. Yet this emphasis does not cancel the importance of some reality existing in the background of the work.

As noted above, this “reality” is not tangible. From our standpoint it may perhaps arise from the painting itself, and ostensibly it does not exist independently of it. But in fact the painting is a means of reaching some idea that exists independently of it.¹²³ This example illustrates for us the concept that we presented above as the idea of the work. This gestalt is what is compared to the work. The comparison, however, must be made in a complex way: on the one hand, the work must constitute some representation of it, and on the other hand, not a “transparent,” or overly faithful, representation of the source.

The Synthetic Alternative: A Sophisticated Kind of Naivete

In contrast to the accepted proposals, we suggest here—similarly to the ethical context—the real existence of an aesthetic object of a new type: the concept “beautiful” in itself. This is an existing idea, in the Platonic world of ideas, and observation of it yields the criteria or standards for aesthetic and artistic evaluation and judgment.

Here too, as in the ethical context, it is important to understand that this proposal differs from ordinary naturalistic, naive observation, since the criteria themselves are not existing objects. They are properties of the one object that does exist, namely the concept “beautiful,” or, in Platonic language, the idea of beauty. The synthetic picture of aesthetics simply returns us to old, good Plato.

There are arguments that advocate aesthetic relativism because of the cultural background necessarily required in order to evaluate a work of art. For example, a Martian cannot understand the meaning of Henry Moore’s work, which sculpted figures with a tiny head placed atop a huge body. For us the head serves in a combination of various functions, and symbolizes, for example, intellect and thought. For the Martian, who is not equipped with a head, these sculptures would say nothing. He has no associations of intellect and understanding linked, as in our case, to the human head. Another example: in a world without death, works that deal with death would not receive the deep meaning they have in our world. The same applies to love, and so forth.

If so, the conclusion would seem to be that the aesthetic value of a work is culture-dependent, and therefore relative. A work has no absolute aesthetic value, because it depends whom one asks. We saw similar claims in the ethical context, and in the first volume even in the logical context.

The mistake in all these arguments is the same. The fact that our context differs from that of other creatures does not mean that our judgment is relative. Above we saw that the controversy over the concept “good” proves that the concept itself has some objective meaning. True, there may be disputes about its characteristics, because such characteristics depend on the system of observation. The same applies here. The cultural system is an instrument of observation through which we observe the concept “beautiful.” The form the concept takes is objective, though it is expressed in our language. If the Martian were to step into our shoes in every respect, he would judge as we do. The fact that over his “eyes,” if he has them, a cellophane of a different color is laid than over ours means that he will see a different picture, but this is not an argument against the fact that there is one object that all of us observe, and that aesthetic judgment is objective in some sense.

Put differently, aesthetic judgment from the Martian’s point of view gives a certain artistic value to the work in question. If we were the ones observing it from that same point of view, we too would assign it that same value. The relation between point of view and aesthetic value is a universal function. What varies among different evaluators is the point of view itself. They occupy different points on this universal-objective function.

The general model we propose is one in which only a single concept has ontological reality—the concept of the beautiful, or the good, or truth—as distinct from theories that grant objectivity to various criteria. In our view, all those criteria merely describe these objects. We now apply this model in the aesthetic context as well. There is one object, and yet disagreement is possible and legitimate. It stems from different means of observation, or different angles of view.

This issue is connected to the discussion in the second book about a priori systems of meaning, through which we confer meanings on our entire environment. The cultural system is a priori to every judgment, and yet it does not render judgment fully relative. The same is true of the ethical-evaluative system, and perhaps at times even of the logical one.

Synthetic Pluralism: Ethics and Aesthetics

Despite everything said above, there is a sense that aesthetics is less rigid than ethics. It is clear, even from empirical observation, that aesthetic tastes display greater variation than ethical “tastes.” As we repeatedly say, those who adopt the synthetic position do not ignore their intuitions, and therefore room must be found within the present picture for these intuitions as well.

Some have concluded from this that aesthetics is completely relative, and that in fact there is no room for such a field within philosophical inquiry at all.¹²⁴

Yet even simple intuition suggests that the distinction between ethics and aesthetics is merely quantitative. As we have already seen, it is not plausible to say that aesthetics is wholly subjective. The arguments for this are very similar to those raised in the ethical context. If so, aesthetics too contains an objective component, just as ethics does. The difference is apparently that in aesthetics the subjective domain is broader than in ethics.

It should be noted, however, that from this quantitative difference it follows that in both contexts, the ethical and the aesthetic, the basic onion is composed of two domains of different character: there is an objective core, and beyond it there is a neutral domain that allows for essential pluralism. The complete onion that makes up each of us is composed of our decisions in both respects: both observations of the objective domain, and decisions within the neutral-pluralistic domain. The second domain is one that, even in the synthetic picture, is open to interpretations and disagreements, and therefore has a pluralistic character. It probably does not involve observation of some objective reality; rather, it is open and left to each person’s own ethical or aesthetic decision. The sense described above indicates that the pluralistic domain is probably broader in aesthetics than in ethics.

There is an innovation here that we have not encountered until now, but it is essential for understanding the synthetic conception. It turns out that even within the synthetic worldview there is a pluralistic component. Not all disagreements arise from misunderstanding or error. Objectivity is not total. The synthetic position does not claim that everything is objective, only that there is an objective component. This is the fundamental dispute with the analytic position.

Still, it may be that this pluralism is not essential, but rather stems from differences in the “distance” between the observed object and ourselves. In ethics, the object—the onion of the good as such—is closer to us, whereas in aesthetics—the onion of beauty as such—it is more distant and obscure, and therefore less clear.

In any event, according to either possibility, this pluralism is not accidental. From a theological perspective—this time in the ordinary sense of the term—it appears that the Creator built it into creation, so that each person might uncover a different true facet of reality. If we all saw everything clearly and thought the same thing, the diversity and multiplicity that exist in the world would never be revealed.

The domain in which synthetic pluralism prevails will be discussed in greater detail in the chapter on openness and pluralism in the next gate.

A Note on Hermeneutics: Another Synthetic Alternative

The arguments of Zemach and his colleagues regarding the aesthetic object must also be examined in another context. Until now we have dealt with the judgment of works of art, but every judgment also involves interpretation, though the converse is not true. The problem of interpreting works of art is bound up with general questions concerning the interpretive process as such. We will not discuss this subject here except very briefly.¹²⁵

Above we cited the words of Adi Zemach, who speaks of an “aesthetic object” as a construction brought to us only by the reading itself, and this construction serves us for the interpretation and judgment of the text, or of the work in general. This formulation powerfully evokes the most basic problem in the field called hermeneutics, or the theory of interpretation. Some call this problem “the hermeneutic circle.” One formulation of it is as follows:

We observe some work; for simplicity and illustration, let us assume it is a text. We must now penetrate to the author’s intention, though the author is obviously not before us. Often he has been dead for many years, and even the culture within which he acted, lived, and thought is no longer sufficiently clear to us. The question is whether, and how, one can step into the author’s shoes in order to interpret his work. In other words: interpretation always contains a component derived from the context in which we ourselves operate and think. Moreover, the boundaries of that component are not at all clear to us. We have no criterion by which to distinguish between principles of interpretation that arise from the work itself and principles that arise from our own conceptions.

A sharper formulation of the same problem is this: suppose we have succeeded in coming up with some interpretation or understanding of the text we are reading. The way to judge whether this interpretation is accurate is to compare it to reality—that is, to the correct interpretation. But what is the correct interpretation? Our own proposal is precisely what appears to us to be the correct interpretation. It makes no sense to validate our proposal by means of a criterion that is itself derived from that proposal. Such a procedure is guaranteed to succeed, and is therefore meaningless.

Yet necessarily the criterion for the accuracy of the interpretation is itself our own product. As noted, the author and his period are not always present here, and in any case they are not fully transparent to the reader or interpreter. If so, the indication that our interpretation is correct is itself the product of our interpretation, not of something objective that emerges from the text. We have nothing against which to compare the interpretation we have proposed, and therefore no indication that we have truly captured the author’s view. Can one really distinguish, then, between a correct and an incorrect interpretation of a text, or of a work of art, or of anything else at all?

This question arises in several contexts; see, for example, note 23 above, for an example regarding the evaluation of a work of art. In the context of Torah study, it arises with particular force in recent debates about the relation between different interpretations of the Bible, and also of halakha (Jewish law).¹²⁶

As stated, Adi Zemach’s remarks strongly evoke the hermeneutic problem. If the “aesthetic object,” relative to which every interpretation is measured and every judgment is made, is itself nothing but a construction that arises from the text by means of our interpretive tools, then it is not clear how it can also serve as a criterion for judging and evaluating that very same text, or our interpretation from which it arises. Even if we say that it is not a model for comparison but rather the interpretation itself that we give the work, the question still remains: what meaning can such an interpretation have if we have no objective standards for it? How can any objectivity of aesthetic evaluation be grounded upon it? I should note that, to the best of my knowledge, all objectivist approaches to hermeneutics fail to provide a real answer to this philosophical problem.

As a result of this problem, Derrida’s proposal, known as “deconstruction,” has gained prestige over the last several decades. According to Derrida, we should not seek the author’s intention, but only what the text says to us as readers and interpreters. We reconstruct the text according to what we understand to be missing in it, and create our own picture of the text, which becomes the true interpretive object—not the text or work in its original context. According to this approach, the text has no meaning beyond the impressions it makes on us. Clearly, this approach leads to complete relativism.¹²⁷ Indeed, Derrida is regarded as one of the founding fathers of postmodernity.¹²⁸ It may be noted that even in the halakhic context there are approaches that tend to view the interpretation of texts in this way.¹²⁹

One possible way of remaining with the intuitive approach to hermeneutics—that is, the approach that believes it is possible to discover the author’s intention—is to assume that there is a possibility of direct contact with the author’s ideas, not through the formal and conscious interpretive process.

But if Adi Zemach requires such an assumption in order to present his aesthetic “objectivism,” then there is no need at all to assume the objective existence of something like an “aesthetic object,” and there is no point in continuing to press his other claims. They do not rescue us from the need to assume the reality of some “mystical” object of one sort or another.

In a simple generalization, one can see that this argument applies to all interpretation and art criticism, and similarly to all ethical judgment. Every artistic objectivism implicitly assumes something of this sort. Thus, either we find ourselves giving up aesthetic objectivism, or we must accept the assumptions of the “mystical” model proposed in this chapter.

The conclusion is that Adi Zemach’s proposal in fact assumes that the author’s ideas still exist, at least in some sense, as Platonic ideas. The text merely helps us establish contact with them, by means of something like Husserl’s “eidetic intuition,” which was meant to solve a similar problem in scientific and ordinary cognition. The criteria for interpreting the text are based on comparison to the results of this direct observation of the author’s ideas. This may sound fanciful or mystical, but without this assumption it seems impossible to break out of the hermeneutic circle, and we are forced to surrender to the deconstructionist conclusion.

Thus we arrive at another synthetic solution, somewhat different from the previous one, to the problem of objectivist aesthetics. We assume the existence of an idea to which we compare the work, and which serves as the criterion of its quality. This idea is not embedded in the work itself, for then we would have circularity. It exists in a Platonic world of ideas, and we can observe it, perhaps with the help of the work itself. It is reflected through the work, just as the general ideas of science are reflected through particular facts, which are “transparent” according to Husserl. See above, note 23, for another angle on this.

According to this solution, we do not observe only the concept of the beautiful and derive aesthetic values from it. We observe the idea of the work and compare the work to it. This proposal leaves us with an “expressivist” aesthetics—see note 23—in contrast to the previous proposal, which views aesthetic judgment as observation of the concept of the beautiful. That earlier proposal does not assume the existence of any specific object of comparison, and therefore does not treat the work as reflecting some specific idea.

And Finally, Another Note on Amos Oz’s Essay

In Chapter 5 above, we discussed Amos Oz’s essay “A Full Wagon and an Empty Wagon?” There is an aspect of that essay that touches on the discussion conducted in this chapter. Amos Oz writes there as follows:

What is included in “Jewish culture”? Everything that the Jewish people has. Everything that has accumulated within it over the generations. What was born from within, and also what was absorbed from outside and became at home. What is practiced and what used to be practiced; what is accepted by everyone and what is accepted only by some. What is accepted today and what was accepted in earlier generations. What is in Hebrew and what is in other languages. What is written and what circulates outside the written texts…

Amos Oz is in fact repeating Ofrat’s definitions. Ofrat explained to us that art is whatever is displayed in a museum. Amos Oz defines Jewish culture as everything created by Jews. By the way, we must now ask ourselves: who are Jews, according to Amos Oz? His answer will presumably be: whoever creates Jewish culture. Or perhaps, this time, it is more convenient to choose an alternative circular definition: whoever defines himself as a Jew. There is no shortage of circular definitions. It is clear that the principled scope of all of them is identical: the entire universe; and therefore all of them together are devoid of any real content and meaning.

Under the wings of such a definition, everything enters. In Chapter 5 we already mentioned his statement that the true continuation of Jewish culture is modern Hebrew literature. In fact, everything that moves can be included in Jewish culture. Oops… once again we missed it. A mistake! Everything enters there, except Torah study, of course. That is the only thing that does not fall under the heading of Jewish culture. Every scribble of a pen, in any language, by anyone who defines himself as a Jew, with no relation to any actual reality or any content whatever, is Jewish culture at its finest. Perhaps even Torah study is Jewish culture, provided it is done by those who do not believe in it and do not understand a single letter of it. Only Torah study disconnected from the original intention of the text being studied is Jewish culture. Everything—except traditional yeshivah Torah study.¹³⁰

This circularity is typical of postmodern jugglers. When there is no definition, their conclusion is that anything goes. We saw this in Ofrat, and now we see it again in Amos Oz. At first glance one might view this specifically as a non-formal, non-logical, in fact non-analytic conception—a conception that scorns logic and is built on circularity. Yet as we already saw in the first book, the assumption here is actually the opposite, and distinctly analytic: only a sharp definition is binding. Consequently, when there is no sharp definition, there is no other intellectual obligation at all. Here once again we encounter the phenomenon that precisely attachment to definition and logic leads to a circular logical vacuum. Excessive yearning for the logical is what leads straight to postmodern hallucinations. This is how we explained in the third and fifth gates of the first book the transition from positivism to postmodernity. Many of those who present themselves as modernists are in fact covert postmodernists, even in their own eyes.

Those who adopt the synthetic position, by contrast, when they do not find a sharp positivist definition, accept the situation. But they do not therefore deny the existence of the subject of the definition, nor do they abuse it with postmodern cruelty.

Amos Oz, Gideon Ofrat, Adi Zemach, and the rest of their colleagues all share, despite the emphatic denials of some of them, a distinctly postmodern aesthetic position. They are like Smullyan in the ethical context. All of this is a result of analyticity, which sees definition and logical justification as everything. Hence anything not contained within logic is perceived as an object open to arbitrary abuse. The absurd consequences accompany us throughout the entire quartet.

At the end of his essay, Amos Oz tries to persuade the reader that he is prepared to join the struggle against Hellenization, but in his view the alternative is not only the Shulchan Arukh. The alternative also includes Gordon and Bialik, and apparently Aristotle and Homer as well. Amos Oz concludes his essay as follows:

All this may perhaps be folded into half a verse: “Renew our days as of old.” One cannot renew without what came before, and what came before cannot endure without renewal.

One can certainly agree with that. The subject of genuine renewal and reform will be discussed at length in the next gate. To conclude our remarks, it is worth recalling the missing half of the verse, which, for some reason, Amos Oz did not quote, within the freedom to remove and insert furniture into the house:

“Bring us back to You, O Lord, and we shall return; renew our days as of old.”

Chapter Eight: Love and Awe: On a Different Kind of Emotional Dimension in the Traits of the Soul

Introduction

In this chapter we return to the distinction between intellect and emotion, which was already discussed in the second gate. Here we will address a side result of the discussion in this gate, one that may illuminate an additional part of the structure of the soul that we did not identify in the second gate. From several perspectives, it emerges that there is a part of the soul with an emotional character, yet its essence lies somewhere between emotion on the one hand and intellect and will on the other. My picture of this part is not entirely clear, but in order to complete the broader picture it is important to pay attention to the character of this part of the soul as well.

What Is Conscience

In the discussion in the second gate, we distinguished between emotion and intellect. We saw there that the contemporary attitude toward morality is generally emotional rather than intellectual. Moral criticism is formulated in terms of heartlessness and the like. A key word in discussions of this kind is “conscience.” The supreme moral imperative, as many formulate it, is to follow the dictate of conscience.

Yet conscience, in its characteristics, appears to be like an emotion and not like a part of intellect or will. The metaphors we use in speaking about it are usually emotional. Conscience is “in our heart.” It usually has no rational arguments, and is justified in terms of feelings of the heart.

One might have argued that this word is meant to express what throughout the quartet we have called “intuition,” that is, a direct and unreasoned intellectual sense. But as we have seen, in order to create objective moral criteria—and also aesthetic ones; there is such a thing as an artistic “conscience”—we must assume some entity existing in the background of those judgments. In an analytic world such an assumption is unacceptable, and therefore it indeed appears that the main thing meant by the word “conscience” today is an emotional element. This fits what we saw in the discussion in the second gate: morality is tied to feelings of the heart, that is, to emotions, more than to intellectual judgment or voluntary choice.

In light of what has been said here, it seems that the world’s attitude to morality, and to conscience in particular, is undergoing a process very similar to what the concept of truth is undergoing. We are moving from morality as an objective, rational, absolute principle to a conception of morality as a subjective principle, essentially emotional in character. As we saw in the first book, truth too underwent a similar process. Thus, as we have seen, in the postmodern age all criteria—the logical, the aesthetic, and the ethical—undergo relativization.

Back to Dov Sadan and Jewish Orthopedics

In the opening quotation of the book, we cited the late Dov Sadan, who said that the next world revolutionary would be a Jewish orthopedist. His reason for classifying him as an orthopedist was the continual descent from the world’s first revolutionary, Abraham our father, who placed everything in the head, down to the heart and the loins, ending finally in the feet.

As we remarked at the end of the first Hasidic intermezzo, after the second gate, this quip describes a process of decline that began in the head, passed to the heart and emotion, and ends in a psychology located even below the heart, at the level of instinct. Determinism lowers us all the way to the material dimension, to the body itself. This decline is expressed in the phenomenon described there: the world is becoming increasingly emotional and instinctual. In fact, on Kierkegaard’s scale, we have regressed from the religious to the ethical, and today we are descending even from the ethical to the aesthetic. Taoism is, at its root, an “aesthetic” moral conception.

And Back to Conscience

In this context as well, the synthetic position remains “primitive.” It believes in criteria in their classical, old-fashioned sense. Morality, in its eyes, is an intellectual-volitional category, not an emotional one. As we saw in the second gate, and in the intermezzo that followed it, in the terminology of the author of Tanya one could say that this is a confrontation between people of the divine soul, that is, the intellectual soul, and people of the animal-vital soul.

Admittedly, as we saw, those who hold analytic positions continue to use objective and absolute language regarding moral principles, but they are not consistent on this matter. They do so despite the fact that their method offers no basis for such a conception. As we saw, they establish moral principles—as well as ontological and aesthetic ones—on pragmatist grounds. Thus, without any justification, in a world lacking criteria, morality remains an absolute category.

For those who hold the synthetic position, by contrast, morality is an intellectual category. According to them, conscience is not an emotion but a moral intuition. In fact, in the terms of the second chapter of this gate, one may say that conscience expresses moral cognition. We saw that our basic values are received in a quasi-cognitive process, by means of moral cognition. Conscience is presumably the feeling that is created within us after that cognitive reception. Just as light is the phenomenon produced in us after an electromagnetic wave strikes the retina of our eye—as discussed in the second gate of the first book—so conscience is a feeling produced after our apprehension of the results of our observation of the concept of the good as such. This feeling includes the set of characteristics of that concept as they are formed within us.

Hence, in the synthetic picture, conscience is not emotion in the emotive sense. Conscience is a feeling that is the result of cognition. It is a phenomenon situated between emotion and intellect—like the sensation of light, taste, or sound, which are states of our consciousness resulting from ordinary sensory reception.

Conscience, in the ethical context, resembles the feeling of self-evidence, that is, clarity, that arises in us when we apprehend a correct fact or a correct principle. True, conscience can “hurt,” whereas self-evidence cannot, but perhaps that is simply a difference between kinds of feeling and carries no further significance. It is certainly not proof that conscience is nothing but emotion.

At times conscience can be very confusing. There are “pangs of conscience” that are not justified from a moral or intellectual point of view. These are emotions masquerading as a kind of cognition. At times there are situations in which two opposing value-considerations are awakened, and one of them resonates much more strongly on the strings of our conscience.

To illustrate, let us return to the example discussed in the second gate: the wife of a priest who has been raped, and halakha requires her to divorce her husband, against the will of them both. The logical-value consideration contains two components. On the one hand, conscience aches over the pain that will be caused to both of them through no fault of their own. On the other hand, there is the value of preserving the sanctity of the priesthood, and the Torah teaches us that continued life with a woman who has been raped harms that sanctity, even if we find it difficult to understand or emotionally identify with such an abstract principle.

The first side resonates very powerfully on the strings of our conscience, and therefore seems highly dominant. In fact it arouses very strong emotions. Those whose orientation is that of the animal soul will tend, in such a case, to “follow the dictate of conscience.” Those of the divine soul, by contrast, take the second side into account as well, even though it appears with less emotive force, if any at all. For them, conscience is indeed an indication of a worthy moral principle, but it is not an exclusive criterion.

We know of several examples of such “feelings,” which appear in the soul as emotions, yet also contain a component of a different character. Analysts will tend to interpret all of them in purely emotional terms, whereas those who hold the synthetic position will interpret them as a mixture that also includes an intellectual component. All these are additional examples of the claim already raised in the second gate: that our contemporary world has a very emotional character, and emotion occupies a dominant place within it. As we explained there, this does not mean stupidity. It means that intellect is subordinate to emotion, and its main function is to wrap emotions in an intellectual and rational cloak. See the intermezzo at the end of the second gate.

Let us now examine several examples of “feelings” of this sort.

Love and Awe

A number of Torah sources refer to two unique powers of the soul as having a different status from the other traits and qualities of the soul. These are love and awe. Usually the discussion concerns love of God and awe of God, which are two foundational principles in the service of God. On this, see below in the fifth gate.

Let us bring two sample sources. The author of Tanya writes as follows, in chapter 4:

The traits, which are awe and love, along with their branches and derivatives, are clothed in the fulfillment of the commandments in deed and in speech—that is, Torah study, which is equal to them all. For love is the root of all 248 positive commandments, and from it they are drawn, and without it they have no true existence. For one who truly fulfills them is one who loves the name of God and truly desires to cleave to Him… And awe is the root of the 365 prohibitions, for he fears to rebel against the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He. Or there is an inner awe deeper than this: one is ashamed of His greatness, to rebel before the eyes of His glory and to do what is evil in His sight, every abomination that the Lord hates…¹³¹

And so too in the quotation we brought above in the Hasidic intermezzo. In the course of his remarks, the Alter Rebbe writes:

And likewise all the other traits of the heart, which are branches of awe and love…

That is, love and awe are not exactly traits in the ordinary sense, like jealousy, humility, lovingkindness, and the like. These two are roots of the other traits, but they themselves are apparently not merely traits.¹³²

The basis of this lies in what he writes in chapter 44, pages 234-236 in the Steinsaltz edition:

Therefore dehilu u-rehimu—that is, awe and love—are called “the hidden things belong to the Lord our God,” while Torah and commandments are “the revealed things belong to us and to our children, to do…” For there is one Torah and one law for all of us in fulfilling the whole Torah and the commandments at the level of deed. It is not so with awe and love, for these depend on each person’s knowledge of God in mind and heart, as stated above.

Here the author of Tanya gives us a hint to the distinction between love and awe and the other traits. These are in the mind and the heart, that is, they belong both to intellect and to emotion. It should be noted, however, that he is not speaking of them in contrast to the other traits, but rather in contrast to the practical performance of the commandments. His words imply that he means all the traits of the soul. We will see his intention below.

Another source for clarifying the status of love and awe is Rabbi Soloveitchik, in his essay Uvikashtem Misham (“And from There You Shall Seek”).¹³³ Beginning in chapter 8, Rabbi Soloveitchik details three hierarchical planes with respect to the traits of love and awe. There is an instinctive, animal, spontaneous plane—eudaemonic—on which desire and fear occur. Above it is the emotional plane, on which ordinary love and awe operate. Above that is an intellectual-volitional plane, which includes judgment and evaluative decision. There appear pure love—called by many “intellectual love of God,” that is, love that does not depend on anything¹³⁴—and awe of exaltedness, awe before the exaltedness of the Holy One, blessed be He, as opposed to fear of punishment. Thus Rabbi Soloveitchik too identifies an intellectual plane within the traits of love and awe. We will discuss his remarks below in note 26.

In light of what is said in Tanya, one may conclude that the issue is not only love and awe, but a different mode in which emotions or traits can appear. We saw that according to his approach, love and awe are roots of that higher mode of appearance throughout the entire system of traits. This is indeed a manifestation of traits, but not a purely emotional one; it is also connected to intellect and to the decision of judgment. This is the additional component with which we are concerned in this chapter.

Above we saw conscience as an expression of this sort of intellectual-emotional faculty, and below we will see additional expressions that draw upon the traits of love and awe. Therefore we will present this entire part of the discussion through those two traits.

What Is Love

Love is a unique trait in several respects. In the second gate of the first book, we saw that all statements that refer to other entities concern their properties as they appear to us—the phenomena, in Kantian terminology—and not their essence—the noumena, in that terminology. There is one exception we mentioned there: the statement that something exists. That statement is exceptional, since it refers to the essence of the thing or entity under discussion, not to any of its properties.¹³⁵

When we say of someone that he is humble, we mean one of his traits. The same is true when we say that he is righteous or upright. But what is the meaning of loving that particular person? Does it mean love of this or that trait of his? There is such a concept as love of a trait, but that is not the ordinary concept of love. Usually, when love is directed toward a particular person, it does not mean love of one or another of his traits, but a relation to his essence. True, encountering his essence, as with the essence of any other entity, comes through his traits; but in the final analysis, love, like the claim of existence, does not refer to properties.¹³⁶ In the terminology of the Mishnah in tractate Avot, as we shall see below, one may say that love of a trait is “love that depends on something,” whereas real love is “love that does not depend on anything.” As we shall see below, perhaps this feature is also responsible for other characteristics of love.

There is a verse that describes the love of Jacob our father for Rachel. After it was decreed that he would have to work seven additional years in order to marry her, the Torah describes his feelings as follows, in Genesis 29:20:

Jacob served for Rachel seven years, and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.

The most surprising thing about this verse is that the classical biblical commentators do not remark on it. It seems to pass before them without difficulty. For a modern reader, by contrast, it appears very puzzling and calls for explanation. If Jacob truly loved Rachel so much, why did seven years of work seem to him but a few days? We are familiar with the opposite phenomenon: when someone loves a woman and waits years to marry her, every day seems like eternity.

A well-known answer to this question¹³⁷ is that the people we know are usually people who love themselves, not others. When a man wants to marry a woman and cannot wait for the fulfillment of his desires, this is because he really wants her for himself. He stands at the center, and the desire to realize his own wishes is what drives him and robs him of patience. But Jacob our father loved Rachel, not himself. From his point of view, if this was the right thing, then nothing was pressing. He worked for her, and seven years seemed to him like a few days.¹³⁸

For the early commentators, this seems obvious. They ask nothing about this verse, because they grasp the concept of love in this simple and natural way. We are accustomed to a different concept, and mistakenly confuse it with love. We are speaking of desire, of a wish to possess and conquer—not necessarily in a forceful sense, but more in the sense of ownership—not of love. The desire to possess gives us no rest, and we have no patience to wait for its realization. That is the way of instinct. But pure love is something that is not only instinctual; it is also intellectual-volitional. It is a gentler and more peaceful force, and therefore it is endowed with a greater degree of patience.

The concept of love has been discussed by a number of philosophers,¹³⁹ and we will not go into detail here. The main claim accepted by most of them is that love is the opposite of desire. Love places the beloved at the center—a centrifugal process—and everything is done for him. Desire places the self at the center—a centripetal process—and everything is done for me. Action for myself is instinct, whereas action for someone else cannot arise from instinct alone. About this the sages said: “A person does not sin except for himself.” It apparently comes from another source, a higher one. In the next note we shall see that this is in fact a general characteristic of the instinctual dimension of the human being: instinct is essentially bound up with the enlargement of the self.

Note 24: Instinct and Selfhood: Metaphysics and Psychology

This note parallels note 1 to a considerable extent, and it is worthwhile to review that discussion as well. Here, however, we focus on a different aspect of the picture of concentric circles surrounding the human being. Several speculative aspects will arise here, but their purpose is to sharpen a certain implication, not necessarily to make direct claims about reality.

We saw above that desire places the person himself at the center. In such a condition, unlike in love, a person acts for himself and not for the object of desire. In fact, this is true to a considerable degree regarding all our instincts. In this note we will demonstrate this, mainly from halakhic contexts, with regard to several desires: the desire for honor, sex, food, and money.

Sexual desire is rooted in the wish to enlarge oneself in the sense of offspring or continuity. This is enlargement along the axis of time, or along the axis of scope: how many people connected to me exist in the world; how large is my family? Increasing the number of one’s descendants is, in effect, enlarging one’s family, that is, enlarging some peripheral circle situated around oneself. This is a first type of enlarging oneself.

One can see from several sources that halakha treats a person’s family as a peripheral part of the person himself. A striking case of such a view is the relationship between husband and wife.¹⁴⁰

Several proofs can be brought לthus that, from the halakhic perspective, a wife is considered as if she were part of the husband himself. In note 1 we brought one proof from the Ra’avad’s view in the issue of “splitting testimony,” pelaginan dibbura. We saw there that in Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 10a, the possibility arises that a person’s testimony about his wife should be considered like testimony about himself, and therefore be “split” accordingly. The reason is that testimony about a person’s wife is considered testimony about the person himself. That is, his wife is a kind of periphery of himself.

True, the Talmud’s conclusion rejects that possibility. But this is not necessarily a rejection of the understanding that a person’s wife is part of him. Rather, the conclusion may be that the wife is too distant a periphery—like the other relatives—for testimony about her to be defined as testimony about himself. This also emerges from the language of the Talmud in Sanhedrin 28b:

What is the law regarding a man testifying concerning his stepson’s wife? In Sura they said: “A husband is as his wife”; in Pumbedita they said: “A wife is as her husband.”

For Rav Huna said in the name of Rav: From where do we know that a wife is as her husband? As it is written: “You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s brother; you shall not approach his wife; she is your aunt.” But she is his uncle’s wife, not his aunt. From this it follows that a wife is as her husband.

That is regarding a wife. As stated, other relatives too are disqualified by halakha from testifying for or against one another. The Talmud and Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Testimony 13:15, explain that this is not because of fear that they will lie in their testimony, but because it is “a scriptural decree.” According to our discussion here, one can suggest that the matter resembles a person’s testifying about himself. A person’s relatives are his periphery; therefore, just as he is disqualified from testifying about himself, so too he is disqualified from testifying about his relative.

Relatives, however, certainly belong to a sufficiently distant periphery that testimony about them is regarded as invalid testimony—and not as no testimony at all, as in testimony about oneself. Therefore, the rule of splitting testimony will apply there, in a case where he testifies both about his relative and about some unrelated person; see note 1. As we saw, regarding his wife the Talmud entertained the possibility of placing her in a more inner circle, but that possibility was rejected. Thus the conclusion is that the wife is one of the relatives.

Incidentally, even with regard to a person himself, it seems necessary to add at least one more circle. As we saw in note 1, a person’s body is itself only a periphery of the person. See there the implication for liability in torts. But his innermost “I” is his soul, or his spiritual part.

These two circles provide the metaphysical root for two additional instincts. The body is the root of the instinct for food—eating is enlargement of the body¹⁴¹—and the soul is the root of the instinct for honor, since honor is the enlargement and aggrandizement of one’s name and significance in the world.

So far we have seen several circles around the human being, which constitute a kind of extension of himself. The first is his soul, which is the root of the instinct for honor. The second is his body, which is the root of the instinct or desire for food. The third is his relatives—his children, in this context—and in the final analysis his wife as well, which are the root of sexual desire.

But as we saw in note 1, there is also a fourth circle: a person’s money and property.¹⁴² With regard to a person’s property too, the Talmud in Sanhedrin 10a raises the possibility of applying the rule of splitting testimony. That is, at least according to the Ra’avad it clearly emerges that a person’s property is also some sort of periphery of himself. In continuation of the aspect discussed here, one can see in this circle the root of yet another instinct: desire for wealth. This is the desire to enlarge and expand one’s peripheral circle, to accumulate and hold more property.

It is very important to understand the meaning of these “mystical” claims. They are indeed mystical—or metaphysical—claims, not psychological ones. When we claim that the aspiration to enlarge one’s body stands at the root of the instinct for food, we do not mean to make a psychological claim, that deep in the human soul there really exists an instinct to grow physically. That may indeed be true, but that is not what is meant here. The claim here concerns metaphysical connections, not psychological ones. The claim is that the force in the world that expresses itself in the human aspiration to enlarge himself is what causally gives rise to the instinct for food, not that it is the psychological motive behind it. We are not claiming that if we search deeply enough, we will find in the depths of the soul a desire to enlarge the body. This is a metaphysical interpretation of the meaning of the instinct for food. It expresses a negative force in the world, the force of enlarging selfhood. It is its metaphysical result, not its psychological result. No research is supposed to discover or confirm such a claim. This is a philosophical-a priori reflection, not an empirical one.

With regard to the instinct to increase one’s wealth, the matter is subtler. This instinct expresses the fact that a person wants to expand and realize himself in a broader and more influential way. This is not merely a psychological phenomenon of wishing for power or control over others through money. It is a metaphysical phenomenon: the aspiration to expand the self’s periphery of the human soul, beyond the body and property one presently has. Here too, of course, this is a philosophical explanation and not a psychological one.¹⁴³

We have here an illustration of a metaphysical treatment that stands beyond psychological explanations, as two levels existing in parallel. In the second book we discussed at length the phenomenon of parallel explanatory planes, and we will not return to it here.

But there is another point that is important to emphasize in this context. In fact, one can propose a metaphysical explanation for almost all psychological phenomena. Analysts, of course, relate to all these phenomena as psychological fictions that have no root in reality. These are events in the human soul that express “connections” only in a borrowed sense. Connections of cause and effect in psychology are problematic, because they do not express physical processes, unless one is a materialist. If so, who is really responsible for the connection between the cause and the psychological effect?

For example, when a person expresses fear in situations of darkness, what causes that fear to occur? Psychologists will claim that this is a mental state caused by a human tendency to fear such a situation. But this is an event in the world, and it ought to have a real cause that produces its occurrence. As we saw in the second book, especially in the second gate there, failure to recognize the existence of theoretical entities leads to a mysticism that gives up the principle of causality. Here we see a similar analytic phenomenon: psychological events have no real cause.

Materialists will say that this is a process occurring in parallel to a physical process, and that only the physical process truly exists in reality. But as we saw above in the first gate, that is absurd. So we are still left with events that have no cause.

Perhaps the rational explanation is that there is something in reality that serves as a cause of that fear. Perhaps there are demons—forgive the digression!—that our spirit discerns, even if our eyes do not, and these cause such phenomena. This is, of course, mysticism, but causeless events are an even worse mysticism. Sometimes mysticism is more rational than rationalist approaches.¹⁴⁴

The approach presented here offers a solution. There is a metaphysical dimension that exists in parallel to the psychological one. There the issue is reality, not merely human attitudes. The psychological connections express quasi-physical processes, that is, events that occur in reality and express relations among spiritual entities. Instincts are the results of metaphysical causes, not merely psychological ones—as we saw, these are not really causes in the full sense.

Such a description is unacceptable to analysts, since they believe only in the existence of entities that can be observed. They explain everything in terms of psychological fictions. The alternative is, of course, “mysticism.”

From here one can derive another difference. Desire is an instinct—an impulse awakened in us from outside. The mythological image of Cupid’s arrows describes this very well: we are acted upon from outside, by someone who shoots an arrow into us and arouses us. Love, by contrast, is a decision of the loving person. It is also prompted by an external stimulus, but it is not exhausted by that stimulus. It has an object toward which it is directed, but the active party here is the lover, not the beloved. Thus there is an element akin to decision, or judgment, involved in this process. It is not mere instinct.

Perhaps this can help us understand why our culture—though the roots of this are mainly Christian—assigns such sublime and unique value to love and to its realization: in the love between man and woman, in parental love for children, and in love between friends, that is, the value of friendship. If this were mere instinct, the phenomenon would be completely incomprehensible. Clearly we perceive here some kind of value, as though the realization of a command laid upon us. This cannot be said of desire at all. There it is an instinct, which has indeed arisen in us in some way, but is not essentially different from desire for money. Why do we not see value in realizing the desire for money? The answer is because it is an instinct. Not necessarily because it is a bad instinct, but mainly because it is an instinct. See above, note 10, where we saw that even the “good inclination” is still only an inclination.

This is also why the Torah commands us in various commandments regarding love; on this see the next note. This is an activity with a cognitive dimension and with judgment. The power of choice is relevant to it, and therefore it makes sense to command it. Thus love—and especially love of God—is connected to wisdom.

Against these arguments, some readers may feel an objection. We often have the sense that love does not depend on us. It is a kind of spark that strikes us and arouses us against our will. But this conception is the result of a great deal of Hollywood brainwashing, which is destructive in several respects. It is, in fact, nothing but desire. True, the distinction between the concepts and the processes is difficult, mainly because an essential and important part of love, at least between man and woman, is the more bodily, instinctive component, which is also connected to desire. But it is important to make the distinction and the hierarchy among the different components. In a person ruled by the divine soul, to use the terminology of the Hasidic intermezzo, desire is an instrument meant to serve love, not the reverse. In a person—or world—ruled by the animal-vital soul, the situation is the opposite.

In love that does not occur against a romantic background, such as parents’ love for their children or love of God, there is no component of desire at all. True, in these examples too there are sometimes certain instinctive components, but they do not exhaust the concept. As we saw above in the quotation from Tanya, true love is composed of elements of mind and elements of heart together.

One might object to the description proposed here on the basis of the well-known words of Maimonides in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 10:3:

What is the proper love? It is that one should love the Lord with a very great and exceedingly strong love, until his soul is bound up in the love of the Lord, and he is continually obsessed with it, like one who is lovesick, whose mind is never free from love of that woman, and who is always preoccupied with her, whether sitting or rising, even while eating and drinking. More than this should the love of the Lord be in the hearts of those who love Him, being obsessed with it always, as we were commanded: “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” And this is what Solomon said by way of metaphor: “For I am sick with love.” And the whole Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.¹⁴⁵

Maimonides demands of everyone who serves God and fulfills the commandment of love of God that he be constantly obsessed with that love, as in the love of a man for a woman. At first glance, it seems from these words of Maimonides that the intensity of love is instinctive, as we described desire: an urge that never leaves us. Does he not accept the distinction proposed here?

If we pay attention, it seems that Maimonides is speaking of love toward an object—God—with regard to whom love can never be realized. His demand is not that we unite with Him, as some mystics would put it, but that we “be continually obsessed with His love.” That all our actions be done for His sake. This is already a description that fits very well with what we saw in Jacob our father’s love for Rachel. His actions were always done for her, out of love for her, but there was no desire bound up with them, no impatient expectation of concrete realization or possession. If so, Maimonides’ description does not contradict the distinction made here at all.

It should be noted that in laws 1-2 there, Maimonides explicitly connects love with intellect and wisdom—as opposed to awe based on fear, which is an emotional-instinctive form of awe and of lower value.¹⁴⁶

Let a person not say: I will fulfill the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom so that I will receive all the blessings written in the Torah, or so that I may merit the life of the world to come; and I will separate from the transgressions against which the Torah warned us so that I may be saved from the curses written in the Torah, or so that I will not be cut off from the life of the world to come.

It is not fitting to serve the Lord in this way, for one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the wise. Only the ignorant, women, and children are made to serve in this way, in fear, until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.

One who serves out of love engages in Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world—not because of fear of evil, and not in order to inherit the good—but does the truth because it is true, and the good will ultimately come as a result.

In this passage there is also a description of love as a mental state not dependent on anything, that is, fulfilling the commandments not for any reason external to them. We will elaborate on this below in the fifth gate.

Continuing Maimonides’ remarks about the connection between love and action without ulterior motive, let us sharpen the point somewhat. Desire is something that arises in us as an instinct, but love can and should be built by our own hands. It is an activity that demands work throughout life, and one should not expect it to arise automatically from an external source. In an approach that sees love as desire, there is room only for decline over time. But according to the approach that sees love as an activity which we are commanded to expand and deepen over time, rather than merely presuppose, there is ongoing potential—not only to preserve the bond, but even to improve it and intensify the feeling of love on which it rests.

This is probably what the sages meant in tractate Avot 5:19:

Any love that depends on something—when that thing ceases, the love ceases. But a love that does not depend on anything never ceases. What is a love that depends on something? This is the love of Amnon and Tamar. And what is a love that does not depend on anything? This is the love of David and Jonathan.

Love that depends on something contains an element of desire, as in the love of Amnon and Tamar. This is a love that depends on a certain trait of the beloved and does not use connection to that trait as a lever for creating connection to the beloved’s essence. In such a love, if the thing ceases, the love that depends on it ceases as well. But a love that rises above this or that trait of the beloved is not dependent on anything. Therefore, even if the thing ceases—and even after death, as in David and Jonathan—the love does not cease. We saw the same with respect to love of God: it is not annulled because it does not depend on anything.

In fact, every true love—that is, love at its highest layer—never depends on anything. “Love that does not depend on anything” is a phrase containing two synonymous expressions, much like “free will.” Just as there is no will that is not free, for if it were not free it would not be will, so too there is no love that depends on something, for if it does, it is desire and not love.

Still, as we saw in Maimonides’ words above, the instinctive-emotional dimension is an important instrument for creating love. Love that depends on a trait—and not love of the thing itself—is an instrument for creating love that does not depend on anything. The traits provide the way to connect with the thing as such. Therefore, the way to develop love of God that does not depend on anything is by means of love that depends on something, that is, through reward and punishment. So it is in education generally as well, though this is not the place to expand on that.

In the next note we will discuss the commandments of love in halakha and examine them in light of what has been said here.

Note 25: The Commandments of Love in Halakha — Love That Depends on Something

We saw in the body of the chapter that love is a relation to the essence of the thing and not to its traits. Yet it appears that in halakha there are other definitions as well.

Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, in his book Pahad Yitzhak, Passover, discourse 29, cites in the name of a certain sage a strong question. In halakha there are several positive commandments of love. We are commanded to love every Jew—the commandment of love of one’s fellow—to love the convert, and to love God. But at first glance this is puzzling. Why must we count love of the convert as a separate commandment? After all, there is a commandment to love every Jew, and clearly the convert is included in that as well. If so, one who fulfills the commandment to love Jews automatically fulfills the commandment to love the convert, and therefore the latter seems superfluous.¹⁴⁷

Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner explains that the commandment to love the convert is a commandment to love him because he is a convert, not merely to love him as a human being. Therefore he argues that this commandment is not fulfilled if I simply love some particular person, and only afterward it turns out that he is also a convert. In such a case I did not love him because he was a convert, and therefore I did not fulfill the commandment to love the convert. We are commanded to love the virtue of the convert, who entered beneath the wings of the Divine Presence of his own initiative. The same is true of the commandment to love one’s fellow. This is not a commandment to love someone who happens to be Jewish; it is a commandment to love him because he is one of Israel. Therefore, if one loves someone whom one thought was a gentile, then even if it later turns out that he is Jewish, one has not fulfilled the commandment of love of one’s fellow. True, one loved one’s fellow, but not because he was one’s fellow.

Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner’s conclusion is that these commandments of love are commandments of loving the virtue, not of loving the person as such. We are to love him by reason of his virtue. It must be emphasized that this does not mean only that the virtue is the reason for the commandment of love—that it is the reason why we were commanded to love a convert or a Jew. Rather, love of the virtue is itself the mode of fulfillment of the commandment. We are to love the Jewishness in him, not necessarily him himself. In these contexts, the reason for the commandment becomes part of the definition of its fulfillment.¹⁴⁸

If so, when we fulfill the commandment of love of the convert with respect to a certain person, this does not constitute fulfillment of the commandment of love of one’s fellow, for we love him because of the property of being a convert and not because of the property of being one of Israel, and vice versa. Hence there is obviously no obstacle to counting these two commandments—love of one’s fellow and love of the convert—as two separate commandments, since fulfillment of one does not include fulfillment of the other. They are two independent commandments.

What follows from this is that the commandment of love of one’s fellow and of love of the convert refers to a love that depends on something, that is, on a certain trait of the beloved and not on his essence. But above we saw that true love is not of this kind. In the previous terms, one could say that this is desire and not love.

On the other hand, it is clear that even this halakhic love has an intellectual dimension, for the Torah commands it and does not leave it to instinct. Likewise, there is no doubt that these feelings are not nourished by desire in the ordinary instinctive sense. We are not drawn to them from outside; rather, we decide upon them intellectually and voluntarily.¹⁴⁹

Therefore it seems that the intention here is true love, not desire—but the object of love is not the person, the particular Jew or convert, but the trait itself. I am not drawn to that person because of a desire to possess some trait of his—beauty, wealth, or some other attraction—and therefore this is not desire. True, I am relating to his trait and not to his essence, but that trait itself is the object of love. I love it for its own sake, not for my own.

Using the terminology employed above, we may say that this is a centrifugal process, not a centripetal one, and therefore it deserves to be called “love.” My intellectual decision is that I love this convert because he is a convert, that is, this is a value-appreciation of conversion. This love places conversion at the center, not myself. Therefore, although its object is a trait, it is truly love and not desire.

As we saw, in the synthetic picture concepts too possess real presence. Therefore, perhaps here too one can say that this love is directed to the thing as such, not to its appearances, and in this respect it resembles all true love.¹⁵⁰

To conclude the discussion of love, let us note the parallel phenomenon in the context of awe. The connection between awe and wisdom—that is, with the intellectual dimension and not only the emotional one—is even more explicit, and appears in dozens of places in Scripture and in the words of the sages. For example: “Behold, the fear of the Lord—that is wisdom; and to turn from evil is understanding,” or: “A wise man fears and turns from evil, but a fool is reckless and confident.” And among the sages: “If there is no fear, there is no wisdom,” and many more.¹⁵¹

In this context one should note Rabbi Soloveitchik’s distinction between fear, ordinary awe, and awe of exaltedness. Awe of exaltedness is a kind of intellectual-volitional manifestation, bound up with judgment and decision. This stands in contrast to fear, which is an instinct that arises on its own. In the next note we will sketch a fuller picture of these traits on the basis of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s remarks, and there too we will see the relation between emotion and intellect within the system of the traits.

Note 26: The Fourfold Relation of Love-Desire and Fear-Awe in Rabbi Soloveitchik

Rabbi Soloveitchik, in his work Uvikashtem Misham,¹⁵² addresses the relation between love and desire, and between fear and awe, and finds mutual and parallel connections among these four traits. In this note we will summarize in general terms the conclusions that emerge from his discussion there, though some of the points are only implied. One who reads his discussion after the summary presented here will see that our summary largely reflects the Rabbi’s intention.

These four traits are divided into two sides: the side of love and desire, and the side of awe and fear. Each of these two sides is divided into three hierarchical levels: the instinctual-animal level, the emotional level, and the intellectual-volitional level, which includes judgment.¹⁵³ As stated, below we will deal only with two levels on each side: love-desire, and awe-fear.

First, the Rabbi establishes an internal connection between the two components belonging to each of the two sides: fear is the path to awe, and desire is the path to love. This is the point of the hierarchy: one stage leads to the next.

He then explains the difference between the two components in each of these pairs—we mentioned this above in the section on love and awe. Fear is an instinctive reaction, one that does not arise from choice, “without the flash of illuminating will,” in his language. The same is true of desire: it is an automatic instinct not involving judgment and decision. The conclusion is that in both these feelings the activity is instinctive, and therefore the person is at the center. In the terminology adopted in the body of the discussion, this is centripetal action, not centrifugal.

Love and awe, by contrast, are the result of judgment and decision, of “the illuminating will.” This picture accords exactly with what we saw above, namely, that love and awe are not simple, emotive feelings, but the result of a volitional decision. The conclusion is that in both these “feelings”—which in fact are an intermediate state between emotion and intellect, as we saw in the body of the chapter—the direction of the activity is toward the object of the feeling and not concentrated in the person himself.

What remains to be understood is the line that cuts across the two sides. That is, what is common to love and desire, and at the same time opposed to awe and fear? At first glance we have already covered all the axes: the axis of inward-outward, and the axis of choice-instinct. But those are not the relevant axes here. They are longitudinal axes, each of which exists on both sides.

It seems that Rabbi Soloveitchik’s intention is that what love and desire have in common is that both operate to bring the two entities closer to one another. The difference between love and desire lies only in the mode of this nearness, and for whose sake it is achieved: desire draws the object toward the one who desires it, centripetally, whereas love takes the lover toward the beloved object, centrifugally.

This is the root of the difference between these and the pair fear-awe. The pair fear-awe operates to increase the distance between the two entities. Here, however, it is difficult to describe this geometrically, that is, as a difference of direction, as we saw in the relation between love and desire. Here the difference must be understood on the essential level: for whose sake is the action performed—who stands at the center? Awe, the higher awe of exaltedness and greatness, is for the sake of the object. We are in awe of the Holy One, blessed be He, for His sake, so that He is at the center—centrifugally. Fear, by contrast, is an action performed for our sake, in order to save ourselves from the object of fear. We are at the center—centripetally.¹⁵⁴

This is a full and intricate system of relations, creating parallels and anti-parallels among these four emotional-traits. Let us recall that two of them belong to ordinary emotion—instinct, the psychological dimension—and two belong to the higher “emotion” in the sense defined in this chapter: roots of traits situated between intellect and emotion.

So far we have discussed the traits of love and awe. We have seen that they contain intellectual-volitional dimensions, not only instinctive ones. In this respect they resemble what we identified above in the concept of conscience. But as already noted, love and awe are not merely traits; they are roots of all the traits of the soul, the powers of character. If so, it seems that in all the traits there can be a manifestation of this sort as well, one that includes intellectual dimensions in addition to emotional ones. In the next section we will bring one example of such a manifestation in the trait of regret, and from it one may infer the others as well.

Regret and Forgiveness

Another example of such a trait is regret. Let us imagine a person who has sinned against his fellow man. He now wants to appease him and reconcile with him. He intends to ask forgiveness and pardon from the friend whom he hurt. How should we regard a situation in which he feels no regret at all for what he did, and yet nevertheless comes to ask forgiveness?

In a lecture I gave on this subject, the audience’s reaction was unambiguous and clear—and also typical: this is hypocrisy! My own claim, by contrast, was that this is a noble act.

If that person is suffering pangs of conscience and therefore goes to ask forgiveness, then his act is aimed solely at himself. It is almost an instinct, and his action is meant to appease his conscience, or to quiet it. In other words, it is done in order to satisfy needs of his own, not for the sake of the injured person. But someone who feels no psychological need at all to appease his fellow and nevertheless goes to him to ask forgiveness because he knows intellectually that he sinned against him, and that he was in the wrong—this is a perfect moral act, not according to Taoist morality but according to a moralistic-Kantian conception. This act is done out of pure choice. It is entirely grounded in moral considerations, with not a trace of egoistic motive. Why say that there is hypocrisy here?

Do we not have a claim against someone who does not feel that murdering Jews is a grave wrong, and on that basis commits such murder? Or, alternatively, is our claim against him about his lack of feeling, about his having no heart? His instinctive feeling is innate, and he bears no responsibility for it. He was created with an emotional system different from ours. What do we want from him? That is how he is built.

Clearly our claim against him is not connected to his emotion. Moral demands, like commandments, are not addressed to instincts. If there is a moral demand, it is based only on the fact that one must not murder. And even if he does not feel this because he is emotionally constituted otherwise, the demand made of him is that he is obligated to refrain from the act simply because it is a forbidden act. In other words, we put his moral judgment on trial, not his instincts and feelings.

We could repeat this entire line of reasoning with respect to the forgiveness granted by the injured party. He too may do this out of “the dictate of his conscience,” or in order to satisfy some feeling that troubles him. Alternatively, he may do it from decision and judgment that it is proper to forgive the offender who asks his forgiveness. Is the expectation that a person forgive being hurt directed toward his feeling, or toward his moral judgment and decision? Again, it is highly plausible that we do not direct demands toward instincts and feelings. What happens if he feels no change at all in his sense of injury, yet nevertheless tells his friend that he forgives him? Would that be hypocrisy? Not at all.¹⁵⁵

Thus we have two traits, regret and forgiveness, which in our immediate perception seem to belong to the emotional plane, and we even feel that without the emotional plane they are empty and valueless. Yet on closer examination it becomes clear that they contain an intellectual and volitional dimension beyond emotion, and that this dimension is probably even the main and more important one.

As stated, we will not draw out the implication for the other traits here. It seems that what we have brought is sufficient to serve as a paradigm for the rest.

A Note on Aesthetics

This is the place to note that “feelings” with an intellectual-volitional dimension probably exist in the aesthetic context as well, and certainly in the religious one. For example, the sense of wonder and sublimity in response to a work of art probably also contains cognitive dimensions, not only emotional ones.

Here too one can see the parallel to ethical “conscience.” We already mentioned earlier that in our language we also speak of the creator’s “conscience.” This is the “feeling” that tells him what it is right to do, and what the proper way is to create and to act.¹⁵⁶ But there is no room for instructions about what is right and proper, and certainly no room for directing demands to the creator’s aesthetic conscience, unless we assume the reality of objective ontological dimensions in the aesthetic imperative, or in the principles of aesthetic judgment and evaluation. Here too, “conscience” is not mere emotion; if it were, it would have no evaluative meaning at all.¹⁵⁷

There is a common denominator between wonder before beauty and art, a sense of sanctity toward morality, and religious sublimity. All of these are not only emotions, but also decisions of orientation, as we saw above in the discussion of awe of exaltedness.¹⁵⁸

Perhaps this is the basis for the religious value our culture sees in religious experiences. At first glance, this too is only an experience. But if so, it is not clear what value it could have. An emotional experience that does not depend on us at all cannot possess value.¹⁵⁹ But if we understand religiosity too as a manifestation of an “emotion-intellect” of the kind we found in conscience or in love, then one can understand the religious value of such experiences.

The Connection to the Analytic-Synthetic Conflict

As mentioned above, the common view in the contemporary world is that all these phenomena belong solely to emotion and instinct, and nothing more.

The deeper reason for this is that in order to say that they belong to our intellectual dimension, one must assume certain ontological assumptions about objective reality—for example, the assumption of the existence of the concept of the good, or of the beautiful, as entities. But this is an essentialist assumption, about the existence of something that cannot be observed by the senses, and such an assumption is unacceptable within the analytic picture. Therefore the analyst must choose between the following possibilities: either continued support for objectivism without any basis, while ignoring the philosophical problems bound up with it, and grounding this ignoring in pragmatism; or alternatively, the establishment of a new “religious,” Bokononist faith in the sanctity and absolute truth of doubt. The only thing that has absolute existence, that is unconditional and non-subjective, is the argument that there is no such thing. True, this sounds contradictory. So what?

This is a fitting summary of the analytic worldview as presented in this gate. This position lays claim to the crown of rationality and rationalism, but is based only on pragmatism, which is itself an absurd approach, as we have already noted several times. In order to rescue the possibility of our existence and the meaning of our lives, the analytic position assumes that what is desirable is actual—remember the plastic soldiers. To achieve this, it builds a house of cards, conceptual and ideological, built entirely on contradictions and implausible theses. All this certainly joins what we have already seen in previous gates and books.

Summary of the Discussion in This Gate

In this gate we dealt with the implications of what was said in the two previous gates for understanding will and choice in relation to the various judgments. In the previous two books we dealt mainly with the conduct of human thought, that is, with the concepts of truth and falsehood, scientific and in general. In this book we deal with parallel phenomena in the other two contexts of judgment: ethics, the concepts of good and evil, and aesthetics, the concepts of beauty.

We saw that the analytic-synthetic dispute is expressed similarly in both these contexts. They are two additional onions, parallel to the onion of thought. Each has its basic values, parallel to axioms in the onion of thought, and external layers derived from them.

We began with the arbitrariness of will, and from there saw that the way we understand the relation between emotion and intellect radiates outward to our conception of ethical and aesthetic judgments and interpretations. The analytic human being, homo analyticus, is much more inclined to attribute things to the emotional and subjective plane, but this stems precisely from an excessive attraction to the logical and the defined. This attraction leads to the position that when there is no precise definition, everything is open and legitimate. In the first book we already pointed out that postmodernism, despite appearing to be a mystical and paradoxical theory, is actually rooted in excessive logicism.

By contrast, homo syntheticus assigns limited status to logic and analytic justification, if there is any such thing at all, and instead places intuition at the center and grants it great importance. We saw in many cases that if one gives intuition credit, in the end it proves itself. Ultimately, from within a synthetic picture one can understand the solution to most of the problems that underlie the mistaken analyses of the analysts, and therefore there is no need to give up our intuitive pictures. Throughout, the synthetic position and picture withstand all the tests better than the analytic ones, which are detached from reality and from the perceptions of common sense, that is, intuition. The fact that the synthetic sometimes appears to us “mystical” is solely the result of brainwashing by a barren and paradoxical “rationalism,” which itself constitutes an even more esoteric mysticism, to the point of absurdity. There is nothing rational in analyticity except the title it bestows upon itself without warrant.

At the end of the gate we encountered an additional plane that exists in the soul, where various traits appear in a zone between intellect and emotion. To this domain we assigned “conscience,” which is the sense of moral—and aesthetic—cognition. This is an intermediate domain that we did not identify in the second gate, when we sketched the general map of the soul. It gives sharp expression to the relinquishing of the distinction between will and choice on the one hand and cognition on the other, as described in the second gate, similar to the relinquishing of the sharp distinction between thought and cognition that was made in the first book.

The present gate was more topical and therefore also more polemical. It required Torah sources beyond what we had used previously. This follows from the fact that the subject with which it deals is more topical and touches more directly on real ideas, and not only on abstract philosophical positions. As stated, the close connection between the abstract plane and the real plane is one of the important lessons of the quartet. This gate dealt with presenting several categorical systems, such as moral and aesthetic systems.

In the next gate we return to the philosophical movement of the argument, which by nature has a more formal-technical character. We will continue there to deal with categorical systems in general, and with the different ways of relating to them.

Second Hasidic Intermezzo: “The Wise Man and the Turkey”

To conclude the more topical discussion in the third gate, let us tell the well-known story of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov about the wise man and the turkey.

A disaster struck the royal house. The king’s son, who until then had been sane and well-mannered, sank into melancholy and began to rave. He rolled about on the floor under the dining table, dragging along pieces of bread and bones that he found there, saying that he was a turkey…

And not only that, but he insisted on no longer wearing his clothes, explaining that a turkey does not wear clothes…

The king suffered great distress because of this. He summoned his physicians and wise men—but to no avail. The prince persisted: “I am a turkey, and there is nothing strange in my behavior, since all turkeys behave this way…”

One day, long after all the physicians and wise men had despaired of healing him, a certain wise man arrived from a distant city and claimed that he undertook to heal him completely…

What did the wise man do? He too removed his clothes, sat beneath the table beside the prince, and also began dragging around crumbs and bones, with an innocent expression, as though the whole matter were perfectly obvious…

The prince stared at him in amazement and asked: “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” The wise man replied: “And what are you doing here?” “I am a turkey,” answered the prince innocently. “I too am a turkey,” the wise man replied after him…

Several days passed, then even weeks, and the two became accustomed to one another, eating the same food together with no clothing on their bodies, and a strong bond was formed between them.

The wise man understood that the time had come to begin some real action. He signaled to those around him to throw two shirts under the table, and turning to the prince he said: “Do you suppose that a turkey cannot wear a shirt and still remain a turkey?” And so they both put on shirts.

After a suitable time had passed, the wise man signaled again, and trousers were thrown down to them. Once more, turning to the prince, he said: “Do you think that with trousers one can no longer be a turkey?!”

And so the prince put on one garment after another, with no resistance. Again a considerable time passed, and the wise man signaled to those present to throw human food down from the table. Again he said to the prince: “Do you think that if one eats good food one ceases to be a turkey? One can eat it, and still remain a turkey.” And he ate.

After some time, the wise man asked the prince to sit with him on a chair at the table, and from there it was not long before he restored him to the full course of normal life, without the prince even sensing that he had become a turkey performing all manner of human acts…

The Breslov Hasidim explain that the point of the parable is to show how one can overcome the destructive feeling that the service of God is meant only for people greater than ourselves. In the copyist’s note appended to this parable, it says as follows:

One can say that a person who wants to draw near to the service of God is a “turkey” clothed in materiality, and in this way one can gradually draw oneself near to the service of God, until one enters it completely…

But on the surface, this interpretation does not seem convincing. Let us begin with a problem that ought to arise here by itself: at the end of the process, was the prince actually healed? Without a doubt—not. He behaved in a completely healthy way, but in reality, in his essence, he was still just as sick as at the beginning.

If so, why is he presented as a healthy person? At first glance, the wise man is the hero of the story, and he indeed succeeded in outwitting the prince. But his cleverness did not operate on the medical plane; it operated in the realm of rhetorical persuasion.

In our terms, one could say that the cleverness of that wise man operated in the service of an analytic goal. The goal of the “healing” was to bring the prince to a state of proper behavior, not necessarily to heal him. This is Taoist morality, or a morality of states. If the technical conduct is proper, then it does not bother us that it stems from distorted and corrupt personal motives. If by means of interests we can bring society and the state to a condition of proper functioning, if the “cake” is divided in perfectly equal shares among the brothers, then we have no demands beyond that. For us this is a healthy society, or a healthy personality. In the terminology defined above, one could say that here too the healing is only bureaucratic.

But essentially it is clear that even after such a healing, the society or personality remains sick. Only its technical-formal behavior has changed. This is not healing in synthetic-Kantian terms.

In chapter 1 of the first gate, and also in note 12 of the first book, we described the Chinese room parable. According to the analytic interpretation of the situation, the technical manipulation of symbols is an adequate substitute for speech. Here too, technical external behavior—the syntax of the situation, which in normal circumstances expresses a certain inner state or certain semantics—serves as a full substitute for that essential inner state, even if it does not really exist. Behaving as if one speaks is speaking. As if one thinks is thinking. As if one wills is will.

Analyticity constructs theoretical models that look and behave the same, but contain no essential content. The shell substitutes for the content. This is exactly what we saw above in note 5, about the scapegoat: in the analytic palace there are forty-nine gates of understanding, but inside them there is not a single room of wisdom. A perfect and empty shell, but with no essential inner content.

As we saw there, in such a condition the entire structure is meaningless. Essence is what gives content to behavior and to the external shell. If a person is not healthy, the fact that he eats normally and dresses normally is of no use whatever. Perhaps it is more convenient for those around him to be in his company, but that does not define him as healthy.

So too we saw with regard to aesthetics. There too analyticity constructs entire structures, and there are even those who claim that they offer an objectivist theory of artistic evaluation. But in the background, or inside, there is no essence at all. As we saw, the structures that emerge from the work itself are the object to which it is compared. This is a logical circle with its tail in its mouth.

Thus, in logic, in ethics, and in aesthetics alike, analyticity deals in processes of artificial “healing” by means of a conception of states in place of processes and essences. Empty shells are produced which supposedly replace the essence. There is now a new concept of “truth,” though its meaning has become entirely different. It is relative, says nothing about the world, and perhaps is nothing more than an emotion—but it obligates, and it is our contemporary substitute for the original concept of truth. So too a new concept of “beautiful” or “good” is created, though these too have changed greatly. In the same way, the value of freedom replaces liberty, though the two are opposites by every relevant parameter. Constantly, the priests of the analytic cult work to persuade their believers that they possess substitute value-concepts—that their “plastic soldiers” are real.

A sophisticated and intelligent structure, accompanied by ceaseless brainwashing, is operated by “wise men” who try to heal turkeys by persuading them that they are actually human beings. The various Amos Ozes and Adi Zemachs, and the other priests of the analytic religion, even appear to themselves as wise and rational, and relate to others as irrational mystics. But all this lacks essential backing. As we saw over the course of the book, not only does the prince remain a turkey; the wise man who tries to persuade him that he is a human being is himself nothing but a turkey.

Our analytic-postmodern world is a whole and complete system based on strange and bizarre assumptions, on artificial definitions remote from common sense, on religious devotion to methods—that is, science—for which no justification can be found within an analytic world, and on ethical and aesthetic “values” that replace values in their accepted sense, despite the fact that none of this can be justified. All of this proceeds under ceaseless brainwashing and the mumbling of mantras that say, “We are the rational ones, and they are the primitives.” This is the shell that envelops the citizen of the postmodern world.

And we have not yet mentioned the famous values of “tolerance” and “openness” of the analytic world. Of these foundational values, which the educational systems in Israel deal with almost exclusively, of course there is no trace in any essential sense within the analytic world. But here too there is a wonderfully simple magic solution: say three times an hour, “We are tolerant and pluralistic, and they are dark, fossilized, and primitive”—and also thieves, draft-dodgers, and money-grubbers. Such is the power of mantras: in the end one grows accustomed to them and internalizes them.

A very similar description may be found in Daniel Shalit’s book Sikhot Panim, part 2.¹⁶⁰ There he discusses the figure of the postmodern world as a “mall.” A person walking in a mall lives in an artificial and glittering reality that completely surrounds him and cuts him off from the real reality outside. So too the postmodern system surrounds the “mall man” on every side and offers a glittering imaginary shell as a substitute for actual reality.

So it is really no wonder that the father in the excerpt at the head of the book is worried that his son, the student, is beginning to think. In the analytic “empire,” this is a destructive and dangerous process, for in the end he may cease to be “rational.” He may start to think that there is a non-virtual reality somewhere outside the mall—the empire. How good it is that our lord the emperor does everything in his power to prevent the unpleasantness involved in that.

Let us now return to the story of the turkey. One can penetrate it one step further. Earlier we asked why Rabbi Nachman thinks that the prince was healed. Now we ask why Rabbi Nachman thinks that he was ever sick at all.

As the story describes him, that prince looks in wonder at the wise man who comes down beneath the table, and asks him what a human being is doing in that underworld. That is, in the depths of his consciousness he knows that he is in fact a human being and not a turkey. But this is a repressed consciousness, which he does not allow to rise to the surface. He lives like a turkey, and even convinces himself that he is indeed one. That is his illness. But in the depths of his heart he knows—even if he does not formulate it to himself in words, and perhaps does not even know that he knows it—that he is not that. The illness is that he does not allow his clear intuition to guide him. Instead, he formulates analytic substitutes that seem to him more fitting and “rational,” and lives by them.

As we have mentioned more than once, usually the analyst himself knows that he is mistaken. It is clear to him that there is truth, that axioms are not arbitrary, and that the distinction between cognition and thought is not sharp—that is, that there is also aural cognition. After all, in many cases he himself argues and disputes about values, and certainly believes in and uses science. Yet despite all this, when it suits him he continues to speak about a value-vacuum and a logical vacuum, about pluralism and tolerance, to write learned articles, and to champion postmodernity. His illness, like that of the prince, is not analyticity itself, for he is not really analytic. His illness is that he does not behave as he truly thinks, according to his intuition. He behaves and thinks as the emperor, inside him and outside him, instructs him to think.

Someone who is honestly and completely convinced that he is a turkey has no chance of being healed. Gradual approach to the service of God will not help such a person. Such a technique helps only one who, in the depths of his heart, already knows that he is not a turkey. The process of learning only helps him discover and internalize this, and also apply it.

Perhaps this is the place to connect the matter back to the previous Hasidic intermezzo. A mentally ill person who has within him no healthy point at all cannot be healed. We always need some Archimedean point from which and by means of which we can begin the process of healing the patient. Therefore there is an assumption that every patient who can be treated really knows, in the depths of his soul, that he is ill. If so, somewhere within him there is some healthy point.

But if he really knows everything, then what in him is ill? Apparently the illness is that he represses it. He tries to “sell” himself the story that he is a turkey, although deep in his heart he knows that he is a human being. Why should he do this? Presumably because for some reason it is very convenient for him to be a turkey—that is, a sinner. There is no obligation, no one demands anything of him, he is treated indulgently, and so on.

If so, what is the way to heal that sinner?

Maimonides writes in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Divorce 2:20, that one who refuses to divorce his wife in circumstances where halakha requires him to do so is compelled until he says, “I am willing”:

One for whom the law requires that he be compelled to divorce his wife, and who does not wish to divorce her—a Jewish court in any place and at any time beats him until he says, “I am willing,” and writes the bill of divorce, and it is a valid bill of divorce. Likewise, if gentiles beat him and say to him, “Do what the Jews tell you,” and the Jews pressured him through the gentiles until he divorced, it is valid. But if the gentiles of their own accord forced him until he wrote it, then although the law requires that he write it, it is an invalid bill of divorce. Why is this bill of divorce not null, seeing that he was under duress whether at the hands of gentiles or at the hands of Jews? Because one is called coerced only when one is pressured and forced to do something that he is not obligated by the Torah to do—for example, one who is beaten until he sells or gives something. But one whose evil inclination overcame him to neglect a commandment or commit a transgression, and who was beaten until he did what he is obligated to do, or until he distanced himself from what it is forbidden to do—this is not coercion by others; he has coerced himself by his evil state of mind. Therefore, this one who does not wish to divorce—since he wants to be among Israel, he wants to do all the commandments and to distance himself from transgressions, and it is only his inclination that has overpowered him—once he is beaten until his inclination is weakened and he says, “I am willing,” he has divorced of his own will.

The question arises: what does this coercion accomplish? After all, if a bill of divorce is given without his consent—in the language of the sages, a “coerced bill of divorce”—then she is not divorced. If we could regard her as divorced even without his agreement, there would be no point in coercing him. We should simply tell her to leave him. But according to halakha, divorce requires the consent of the husband who divorces. So what does the coercion achieve, since in the end it causes him to do something against his will?

Maimonides there establishes a very puzzling principle. He says that every Jew wants, in his heart, to do the will of his Creator and to fulfill the commandments. It is the inclination that pushes him toward transgressions. When we compel him to fulfill the commandments, his true will is revealed.

This explanation sounds apologetic and unconvincing. What causes that Jew to change his will? It is clear that he does so only because of the coercion.

But in light of what we said above, Maimonides’ words can be understood very well. In the background, we must remember that halakha deals with a world in which there is clear faith, and in which the religious idea is widespread in society, so that everyone understands that this is the right thing to do. In such a condition, the reasonable assumption is that every Jew wants to fulfill commandments, and only the inclination diverts him from his path. How does the inclination work? It tries to push awareness of the duty to fulfill the commandments inward, repressing it, and wrapping it in thick external shells so that its voice will not be heard. How does it succeed in doing this? The momentary convenience of sin helps it. Because of that convenience, he manages to “convince himself” that this is not really a sin at all—that is, that he really is a turkey.

What is the way to extricate him from such a condition? If we compel him to fulfill the commandments, then repression no longer helps him. Even if he pretends to be a turkey, he will still be obligated to fulfill the commandments. Even if he objects to divorcing his wife and screams about it at the top of his lungs, we tell him that she will be divorced in any case, and his resistance will be of no help. Or alternatively, he will be flogged until he divorces her, and his claim that he is acting under compulsion will not help him. In such a situation, he has no remaining motive to repress the truth. In any case it will not help him; the woman will be divorced regardless. Thus the truth that lies inside must come out, because there is no mechanism left to support repression. At that point he stops deceiving himself and genuinely returns to wanting to fulfill the commandment—in this case, to divorce his wife.

This is a very interesting halakhic mechanism, one that sustains itself. The coercion ostensibly solves nothing. From the standpoint of the strict law, the woman is not divorced, because he does not truly want to do it. Yet the arbitrary halakhic fact that she will be considered divorced despite his unwillingness causes him really to want it. Hence it follows that she is also truly divorced.

A similar mechanism is offered to that sick prince. The doctor compels him to behave like a human being, and thereby removes all the motives for continuing to repress the fact that he is a human being. After all, he knew this in the depths of his heart from the outset; he merely repressed it for various reasons. In such a situation, there is no longer any reason to go on repressing the fact that he is a human being.

This may be the explanation of the principle formulated by the author of Sefer HaChinukh: “Hearts are drawn after actions.” Once a person performs good deeds, his heart too becomes good. According to this, it follows that evil deeds do not draw the heart after them; rather, they only prevent it from being drawn toward the good.

Thus our two difficulties with the story are resolved, one through the other. We asked why that prince was sick at all, since in the depths of his heart he knows the truth. We also asked: if he is indeed sick, why do we think he was healed? The answer is that that prince both was sick and was not sick. Within him there was an inner point that knew the truth, for otherwise there would be no way to heal him. But his illness was the repression of that fact inward, out of awareness, because it was convenient for him.

So perhaps Rabbi Nachman was right after all. It may be that the prince always knew he was human, and therefore the wise man’s way of healing was indeed the correct one. He brought him to a state in which he behaved as a Jew anyway, and therefore there was no longer any point in repressing what he already knew. And indeed, the prince truly was healed in the end. If that prince now behaves exactly like a human being, and inwardly he always knew that he was human, then what remains of his illness?…¹⁶¹

Footnotes