Mitzvah as a beneficial way of life
I know the Rabbi’s opinion that performing a mitzvah from motivations other than ‘because He commanded’ is nothing more than a mere act of will. 27 I would ask, if I put on tefillin and pray because I believe it is like meditation at the beginning of the day which is beneficial for the whole day, or observe Shabbat for the same reason, and so on, but I believe that in a certain sense God commanded this because: a. These actions are beneficial. b. God, or the general good, desires to do us good. Therefore, we must do this, Mishlah.
Did I miss something?
I don’t know what “in a certain sense” means. The question is not what you believe but why you do what you do. If you do it because of the command, that’s fine. If you wouldn’t do it without the benefit, that’s problematic.
So this is the touchstone? If I didn't do it, would there be no benefit? Apparently this is a hypothetical situation, because the benefit here exists and stands.
I'm trying to understand why it's not called fulfilling a mitzvah if my belief is that God's mitzvah is to do good to man. He commands him to do things that are good for him. So anyway, tefillin and Shabbat and more come from that.
This ties in with Spinoza's view that God is the totality of being - and being strives to exist - so ‘God's commandment to man’ is to strive to exist - to do things that lead to this. And since I belong to the Jewish people who created an excellent way for them to do this, I do it.
Isn't that called fulfilling a mitzvah?
The question is whether you do it out of a commitment to a commandment or not. If you do it to improve the state of the world, it is a beautiful and moral act, but not a commandment.
I propose to compare exactly these two things: the command is the benefit and the benefit is the command.
I come to say that my personal motivation can be different every day, sometimes it will be the highest ideal to fulfill God's command to do good, sometimes it will be because of the benefit and sometimes just habit. The motivation is different, but because of the identification of the benefit with the divine command, it does not matter in principle.
I understand, and I don't see anything new in this compared to what I denied. This is exactly what I came to deny.
So why? Because in your view the commandment is not for the benefit? A commandment of ‘because like this’ or because of hidden kabbalistic reasons?
What is the meaning of the word "hai"?
To say that he commanded because of ‘hidden reasons’ is no more convincing than to say that he commanded because it is good for his creatures. Why not?
You are mixing up different levels of discussion. I am not even going into the question of why He commanded. This is not the question we are dealing with here. For the sake of the discussion, I will accept that everything is intended to benefit us (although I have great doubts about this. It does not sound reasonable to me at all). Our discussion here is about a completely different question: what should be my motivation when I come to fulfill the mitzvah (and not what is the reason that God commanded it). Think of a child who does something because he will receive candy, but his father commands it for another purpose.
Like this in the introduction of Agali Tal, who says that there is no problem with studying Torah and enjoying it (and not as someone who sees it as learning for no reason), but it is problematic to study for the sake of enjoyment. Similarly, there is no problem with saying that the mitzvah is intended to benefit us and I do things because of this too. But it is problematic to do only because of this (and the question is when I do not see a benefit, whether I will do it or not).
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