On the moral imperative
Peace to the rabbi
I have been grappling with the question of the moral imperative for a long time, as you have shown many times on the site. If we think that morality is an objective thing, we are bound to conclude that God commanded morality.
I recently heard a serious question about this philosophical move. After all, if God precedes morality, then everything moral is his decision. He could just as easily have decided on a completely different morality, and why are we obligated to obey the arbitrary morality he decided on? If morality precedes God, then why do we need God?
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- Assuming that God precedes morality. Why do we command the halakhic instructions (which are not related to morality)? The very divine command is binding. The same is true regarding morality.
- Assuming morality comes first. Morality defines what is good and what is bad, but what obliges me to do so? God.
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How does this fit with what you wrote in your notebook?
The meaning of a prohibition is not a neutral fact, but that in practice it is forbidden to do so. This is where ethical claims differ from any other claim of fact.
Chaim Perlman, a Belgian philosopher of law, insists that when I tell Reuven not to murder because it is immoral to murder, I have said nothing. I have simply repeated the same thing in different words. If he knows that it is immoral to murder and he also understands the meaning of this, there is no need to add anything to him to dissuade him from murder.
Only after God exists is there such a necessary connection. The claim that morality preceded God speaks, in my understanding, only about the moral definition and not about the validity of these commands.
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