On Platonism – Continued (Column 384)

With God’s help

Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.

In the previous column I defined Platonism and the ideal entities that appear within it. There I distinguished between an idea (eidos), which is a set of properties, and an ideal entity, which is a theoretical object. This distinction has two opposing aspects: (a) the idea exists (in the world of ideas), whereas the ideal entity does not exist (it is an abstract object we invented in our imagination); (b) the ideal entity has the properties of the concrete entity, whereas the idea does not. Thus, for example, the idea of “horseness” has no properties of a horse. Those properties are contained within it but do not describe it. By contrast, the ideal horse, which is an abstract object, has the properties of a horse. We saw one implication of this distinction regarding the “Third Man” argument raised by Plato’s opponents, and now we shall see further implications that sharpen these distinctions.

Platonic and Socratic Love

From time to time we speak of emotions in a Platonic sense, the most prominent being Platonic love. What exactly does that mean? The common definition is love for a woman without the physical component (sexual relations). More abstractly, one can speak of love for a woman who, physically speaking, does not attract me sexually. Why is such love called “Platonic”? I think it can be understood through the definition given by the learned Florentine, Marsilio Ficino, in the fifteenth century: it is love for a person’s personality and wisdom, not for their physical traits. Interestingly, until his time such love was called “Socratic love” (amor socraticus), and Ficino regarded “Platonic love” (amor platonicus) as a synonymous expression.

Upon further reflection, however, I think there is a difference in meaning, or at least in the context, of these two expressions. Socratic love is an exalted love: it does not focus on a person’s lower parts but on the higher. One might say it is love rather than lust—its aims are not egoistic but value-laden (to cleave to the good, the spiritual, the lofty). This follows from the description of Socrates’ personality: he indeed dealt with the exalted and tried to get people to aspire to cleave to it. Plato, by contrast, represents a turn to the ideas. This is not necessarily something more exalted, but rather something more abstract—the abstract dimension underlying reality and the concrete objects in our world. In my understanding, the expression “Platonic love” does not necessarily express a yearning for something lofty, but for something abstract. Platonic love relates to a person’s idea and not to a concrete person. His idea comprises his set of properties; according to Plato it is an abstract entity—but this is love that does not truly address the person before me, only his properties.

In my terminology one could perhaps say that Jacob’s Socratic love is directed toward “Rachel the pure” (and not toward the concrete one)—that is, toward some abstract figure of the Rachel before him. Platonic love, by contrast, is directed toward Rachel’s idea. Socrates loves the “Rachel-ness” within the concrete Rachel, whereas Plato loves the “Rachel-ness” itself (a general set of properties). The object of Socratic love is a pure person, whereas that of Platonic love is an idea, not a person (and not even a pure person). In a moral context we speak of love of the good. When you meet a good person, you are supposed to love them and try to cleave to them. One could say that on the Platonic plane you really love the Good (the noun, i.e., tov with the shuruk vowel) as such, and not the good person before you—not even the good in the particular person before you. Socrates would love that.

What I have defined here as Platonic love is love that does not address a person but rather an idea or an abstract set of properties (an idea). Socratic love, by contrast, addresses the person and not the ideas, but it focuses on his higher part, not his lower parts. In my terminology: it is love for a pure person, not for an idea. To sharpen what may still seem blurry, think of someone who aspires to the good and loves the Good (with shuruk), but who has no love for any person around him—not even for good people. He loves the Good, not good people. Does that sound implausible? You might be surprised, but you all know such people.

My grandfather, of blessed memory, used to say of a certain famous Rebbe that he loved the people of Israel very much, but he had a problem with the individuals. In my terminology, one could say that this Rebbe loved Israel with a Platonic, not a Socratic, love. His love was directed toward “Israel-ness,” not toward Israelis. Socratic love is love for people—even though it is directed toward their higher and exalted part. You can focus it on an abstract Rachel, but through her you develop love for Rachel herself. Plato, by contrast, can love “humanity” with great passion and at the same time be a misanthrope. He is not interested in concrete people but in ideas.

As noted, we all know such people. Not infrequently we wonder about those righteous folks who care for the world and fight tirelessly and self-sacrificingly to improve it, but care less for the concrete human beings around them. An acquaintance of mine—truly a man deserving of great esteem for his principled deeds and devotion—used to say that he has no friends, only fellow travelers. That is a quintessentially Platonic expression. Such people cleave to ideas and values, but it is quite hard to live with them, let alone form an emotional bond. The feeling is that they are objects composed of pure intellect and values—but not so much human beings.

In column 269 I discussed the nature of friendship, in particular the obligations it creates. For Plato there is no place for friendship and it creates no obligation toward a person, since his mental orientation is not love or attachment to a particular person but to an idea. Attachment to a person requires that I see before me a concrete person and not only an idea. If he is a good person—that is, a person in whom the worthy idea is embodied—then one ought to attach to him himself (Socratically, and not merely Platonically).[1]

Popper on Platonism

Karl Popper wrote a monumental book, The Open Society and Its Enemies. The main thrust of the book is a struggle against modernist world-fixers, especially the communists. I was very surprised that the first part of the book is devoted entirely to a critique of Plato and Platonism, but when I read on, I understood the rationale. Popper claims that the root of all evil in the great, destructive ideologies is their Platonism. Such world-fixers place before their eyes some utopian model of human beings and of human society that appears to them perfect, and they strive ruthlessly—using any means and without consideration—to realize it. This striving entails quite a few woodchips flying in the process. The communists spoke of the victims who fell along the way (both among communists themselves and among their enemies) as “oil on the wheels of the revolution.”

Popper placed at the center of his critique our utopias and our certitude about them. He recommends that we not be so certain about our utopia, that we not make wild revolutions, but rather place trust in accumulated experience and in long, controlled processes—without the certainty and dogmatism that are expressed in perfect utopian models that are supposed to guide us and toward which we are to strive with all our might. By way of illustration, I recall a conversation I have already mentioned here with a man who is a professor of economics and holds a communist worldview. That person was, and still is, a member of the Communist Party (Rakah, Maki). To my surprise it emerged in our conversation that he has no utopia. He explained that communists today—at least the shade to which he himself belongs—do not strive to realize a utopia, since they too understand that they have no substitute for a market economy. I asked him in what sense, then, they are still communists, and the answer I received was rather vague. He said that they seek to correct various things locally, without placing some final utopian model before their eyes. The model, he said, is supposed to crystallize in motion. This is communism without a utopian model toward which one strives; it is the very desire to critique and repair that constitutes their communism.

I told him that, logically speaking, this definition does not hold water. It reminds me of those secular-humanist Jews whose “Judaism” is humanism. But humanism is supposed to be shared by all human beings. Judaism might perhaps define a certain sort of humanism (I doubt even that), but humanism itself cannot define Judaism, since it is shared by everyone—or by many, at least as an ideal model. Likewise, the desire to repair and improve is not communism. Communism is supposed to propose a particular kind of improvement or a utopia toward which one strives; once you have given that up, I told him, I do not understand in what sense you are communists. I too want to repair the world en route. As long as you do not define the direction you seek, what distinguishes you from me?! This conversation illustrates the sobering from grand utopias and from Platonic world-repair (which seeks to lead the world to a single, sharply pre-defined utopia).

A Complement and Correction to Popper’s Critique: Between Platonism and Conservatism

Thus far I have explained that Popper dedicates his monumental work—as well as another of his booklets—to a war on historicism (a Platonic view of history). But I think Popper failed to notice that striving for a utopian model is not the root of evil. It is not bad per se, except when it appears in a very particular form.

What I have described so far in Popper’s name is nothing but a conservative argument (see columns 217 and 249). Movements of repair know in advance and with certainty what the ideal model is toward which we must strive—their utopia—for the sake of which they trample the world. Popper, in contrast, proposes that we be more modest and trust trial and error and accumulated human experience, not imagining that we already know better than everyone what ought to be. In his view, the model should crystallize of itself along the way and constantly improve. He claims that we must not think there is some ideal rest and repose—a perfect model to which we are all supposed to arrive—because we never know in advance what it is supposed to look like, and therefore we must not force it upon ourselves. Revolutionary dogmatism is, in his eyes, the mother of all sin.

But in my view there is no need to mix conservative arguments with arguments against Platonism. You can be conservative and still oppose ruthless modernism (like communism). To my judgment, the focal point of harm and evil in modernism is not conservatism but Platonism—that is, attending to an idea instead of to concrete human beings. The communists and their fellow world-repairers did not sin only in that they were not conservative and preferred their utopian model over accumulated experience. Their main failure is that they forgot that their doctrine and their fine models (more or less) were meant to improve the lives of concrete human beings. They saw before their eyes the good of all “humanity” and trampled the concrete people on the path to its realization. They did not really take into account the people who constitute that very humanity about which they care so much. The problem is not that they preferred the model over accumulated experience; it is that they preferred the model over human beings. They saw the forest and ignored the trees—just like the Rebbe and the types I described above. This is the main problem with the great movements of repair, not the mere fact that they had a utopia.

One can strive for a utopian model—and even be revolutionary and very non-conservative—and still do so while taking into account the human beings for whom the utopia is fashioned. Even if we have a perfect forest to which we strive, and even if we are completely convinced of our rightness, we must not fell a multitude of trees on the way to creating that forest. A non-ruthless movement of repair might be mistaken in its utopia (so you likely think, if you are conservatives like Popper), but it is not necessarily evil. When you speak of evil, Platonism in the sense of striving for utopia is not enough; there must also be ruthlessness on the way to that utopia.

A Note on Postmodernism

Popper’s partial analysis also gave birth to postmodernism. It saw modernism and the ills it brought upon us through the very striving for perfect utopias of justice and morality, and therefore decided to give up on truth, justice, and morality, creating instead an alternative of relativism and narrativity. They told themselves—and us—that if only we would give up on the grand utopias, we would no longer have murderous, oppressive world-fixers, and the world would revert to being wonderful. In that sense Popper was part of the emergence of postmodernism (he himself would, of course, strenuously reject that classification). But this is a mistake in several respects. First, the proposed cure is mistaken. Postmodernism does not really offer an alternative. If a person believes in such utopias, postmodern preaching will not change that. The mistake is that postmodernism has no real way to contend with utopian revolutionaries who disagree with it and think there are grand, perfect utopias.

But here I wish to focus on another error—one that concerns the diagnosis of modernism. The postmodern diagnosis is that the main evil in modernism lies in the very existence of utopias. That is a mistaken diagnosis (and again, I am not arguing in favor of utopias; that relates to the question of conservatism), for that was precisely Popper’s mistake. The evil in modernism (which also led to postmodernism) is not the mere existence of a utopia but the way one relates to it and to human beings. The evil is behaving Platonically rather than Socratically: seeing the utopia before one’s eyes while ignoring the concrete people who are trampled along the way. One cannot benefit “humanity” while harming the people who constitute it.[2] Therefore, the remedy is not necessarily to give up on truth and on the grand utopias. One may accept them—or not—but that is not the proper cure for modernism’s ills.

A Note on Racism and Chauvinism

In note 8 of the previous column I mentioned that Platonism identifies objects—including human beings—by their essential properties (those that constitute their idea). A mistake in defining the essential properties can lead to racism, chauvinism, and other ills. One who regards skin color, or a connection between skin color and intelligence or goodness, as essential properties will tend to treat people according to their skin color, gender, and the like. Here, too, one sees Platonist fingerprints: Platonists tend to see our world as an instantiation of fixed ideas that exist somewhere from time immemorial. With such a view it is only natural to conclude there is no way to change the situation. Women will always be uneducated and less capable, and likewise for Blacks, yellow-skinned people, and other groups defined by such natural characteristics.

In the halakhic-Jewish context as well, the prevailing approach is conservatism grounded in Platonism. When I argue for the need to change our attitude toward Gentiles or toward women, one immediately presents me with a Platonic stance: the nature of women is such-and-such, the nature of Gentiles is such-and-such, and therefore the Sages’ words are eternal and there is no need (and not merely no possibility) to change them. Sometimes this begins with the sense that change is impossible (questions of authority and consensus), and the ad hoc justification is Platonic—the claim that there is also no need. They argue that the Sages possessed the Holy Spirit, and therefore if they said something about women it is eternal and unchanging. It is important to understand that without the Platonic assumptions one can still say that the Sages indeed possessed the Holy Spirit and were always right, and yet maintain that the situation has changed and therefore the law regarding Gentiles or women should change. This is not a rebellion against the Sages but an adaptation of their path to our contemporary reality. The claims that the Sages did not err and cannot err do not by themselves lead to conservatism. Conservatism necessarily contains a Platonic element: that a woman or a Gentile does not change across the generations; hence the Sages’ words are necessarily relevant and correct for our times as well. It is important to understand that one who proposes change is not necessarily challenging the Sages’ authority or capacities (and even if one does, there is nothing wrong with that; it is entirely reasonable to think they were not perfect); rather, he opposes Platonic conservatism that has no connection to our stance toward the Sages.

The Relationship Between the Two Aspects of Platonism

On the plane I have just described, Platonism actually leads to conservatism—that is, to a lack of confidence in the possibility of change. This seems, at first glance, the exact opposite of what I described above. There I showed that Platonism underlies the great revolutions and is opposed to conservatism. We saw that Platonism generates ideal utopias (instantiations of ideas) that call upon us to realize them. Communism even espoused historical determinism: those ideas were decreed upon us and will realize themselves willy-nilly. All we can do is join the process and not commit suicide by trying to oppose it (to be the Antichrist blocking the salvation of the modernist religion). Here, by contrast, Platonism stands against the desire and possibility of change; it undergirds conservatism and the refusal to recognize the possibility of change.

Indeed, these are two different sides of the Platonic coin, but it is easy to see that they are two kinds of consequences—somewhat opposed—of Platonic conceptions. I would note that, in my judgment, even here Platonism comes out the loser. I certainly do not trust revolutions and utopias—certainly not ruthless, misanthropic revolutionism—and this is my opposition to Platonism on the plane described above. But I am indeed in favor of change and against rigidities; in that sense I also oppose Platonism of the second (conservative) sort. Just as the utopia is not forced upon us and is not necessarily set in the heavens since Creation, unchangeable, so too the nature of a woman, a Gentile, or a Black person is not necessarily eternal and unalterable. Even if there is an idea of “woman” or of “Black,” there is no necessity to say it includes lack of education or lack of ability. That may be so, but it is not necessary. Even within a Platonic framework (and in the previous column I explained that I personally side with it), one can hang this on the possibility that ideas can be dynamic, or on the claim that those traits are not essential and therefore do not belong to the idea of woman or Black. The second claim is that this is a clinging to irrelevant traits (i.e., non-essential). I fully support a (non-ruthless, non-violent) striving for changes toward equality—whether you see this as a change in the idea, or as a fuller realization of the idea that had not, until now, been realized fully and properly.

In short, there is no real contradiction between these two aspects of Platonism. One can say, generally, that in both cases Platonism leads to a kind of rigidity. Sometimes it is a rigidity of the future model toward which we strive (our utopia), and sometimes it is a rigidity of the present model (which leads to chauvinism and racism). I oppose both sides of the coin, and there is no contradiction: I simply oppose rigidities as such (I have a rigidity against rigidities). And as noted, I say this as someone who holds a Platonic stance on the purely philosophical plane (the existence of ideas).

The Commandment of Love in Halakhah

In column 22 I discussed several emotion-commandments in halakhah (there I referred to an article that expands on this). Regarding the commandment of love, I showed that its core lies in the intellect and not in emotion; in that sense these are what are called Platonic emotions. When I am commanded to love the Holy One, blessed be He, or to love one’s fellow or the convert, this is not a command to love a person who is a Jew or a convert, but to love him by virtue of his being a Jew or a convert. Put differently: to love his Jewishness or his convertedness.

It is easy to get from here to a Platonic reading whereby there is no duty to love people, but only to love ideas. But now I can sharpen that my intention is to a Socratic, not a Platonic, reading. In my understanding there is a duty to love concrete people on account of their being Jews or converts, not a duty to love Jewishness or convertedness. I will go further: one cannot love an idea. That is merely equivocation on the word “love” and a cover for misanthropy. People who love ideas do not love people. At most they love the ideas as they are expressed through people (“fellow travelers,” not friends). That is not love.

In light of what I explained in the previous column, this can be better understood. There I showed that the idea of horseness is not a horse and has no equine characteristics, and the idea of triangularity is not triangular. An idea has no characteristics. It contains characteristics; it is not described by them. Likewise, the idea of the good is not good; hence there is no obligation—and perhaps not even a possibility—to love it. I can, and am commanded to, love something that is good, but the idea of the good is not good. The object of loving the good should not be the idea of the good but an object (a person, or God) that is good. To love a person because he is good is a Socratic, not a Platonic, love. I love a pure (ideal) person because of the good in him; and insofar as that appears in the concrete person before me, I love him as well. But I do not love the good in him; I love him because of the good in him.

I am uncertain whether one can love an idea at all. Love is supposed to be directed toward some being, and the idea—even to a Platonist like me—is not such a being (horseness is not a horse, and humanity is not a human). But even if one can love an idea, it is clear to me there is no obligation to do so. The duty to love the good, or to love a Jew, or to love a convert, has as its object a person, not an idea. One who loves the Good (with shuruk), or convertedness, or Jewishness—but not the Jewish/convert/good person—is a Platonic misanthrope.

In my terminology here, one can say that the commandment to love the convert is directed toward a pure convert, but not toward the idea of convertedness (because love always relates to a person, not an idea). Such a convert likely does not truly exist, but this is a Platonic abstraction that describes the halakhic definition of the commandment. One must love the ideal convert, and from there, actual converts—because he appears in them.

So far I have dealt with the duties of love. To sharpen matters further, I will briefly discuss the duties and prohibitions of hatred.

Platonic Hatred and Socratic Hatred: Hatred in Halakhah

In halakhah there are chiefly two aspects of hatred: the prohibition to hate one’s fellow and the duty to hate evildoers.[3] Thus rules Maimonides (Hil. De’ot 6:5):

“Whoever hates one of Israel in his heart transgresses a negative commandment, as it is said: ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart.’”

Some have understood Maimonides to mean that the prohibition is to keep the hatred in one’s heart, but there is no prohibition on hatred itself. Most decisors, however, agree that it is prohibited to hate a fellow Jew (in addition to the failure to fulfill the positive commandment to love one’s fellow).

Many decisors nevertheless understood that one is indeed commanded to hate an evildoer. The sugya in Pesahim (113b) discusses a case where one person saw his fellow commit a transgression and there is no second witness to join him. In such a situation he may not come and testify against him, since the testimony of a single witness is not accepted, and he would be merely spreading slander. But the Gemara adds that this witness is permitted to hate the offender:

“R. Shmuel bar Rav Yitzhak said in the name of Rav: it is permitted to hate him.”

The Gemara brings a proof from the verse concerning helping one’s enemy load and unload his donkey:

“As it is said (Ex. 23): ‘When you see the donkey of your enemy lying under its burden…’ What is ‘enemy’? If you say a gentile enemy—yet it was taught: ‘The “enemy” of whom they spoke is an Israelite, not a gentile.’ Rather, obviously an Israelite. And is one permitted to hate him? But it is written (Lev. 19): ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart’! Rather, where there are witnesses that he committed a transgression—everyone hates him; what is different about this one? No, rather in a case like this: he alone saw in him a matter of sexual impropriety.”

That is, the verse “You shall not hate your brother in your heart” applies to a regular person; but an offender may be hated. A situation in which only one person hates so-and-so is precisely where that person alone saw him commit a sin and there is no second witness.

Rav Naḥman bar Yitzhak holds not only that it is permitted, but that it is even a mitzvah to hate him:

“Rav Naḥman bar Yitzhak said: It is a mitzvah to hate him, as it is said (Prov. 8): ‘Fear of the Lord [Masoret HaShas: [שנאת]] evil.’”

He learns this from the verse (Prov. 8:13):

“The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil; pride and arrogance and the way of evil and a perverse mouth do I hate.”

Others cite here the verse in Psalms (139:21–22):

“Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord, and contend with those who rise up against You? I hate them with a perfect hatred; they have become my enemies.”

The commentators explain that the prohibition against hating a fellow Israelite is said of “your brother” (as in the verse)—that is, one who is your brother in Torah and mitzvot. A wicked person is not in the category of “your brother” (not “one who acts as your people”), so the prohibition does not apply to him, and there is even a duty to hate him.

But this would seem to contradict the sugya in Bava Metzia 32b, which brings a baraita:

“Come and hear: [Between] one whom you love to unload and one whom you hate to load—a mitzvah with the hater, in order to subdue his inclination.”

We see that if a person has a hater, he is obligated to work on his inclination so as not to hate him.

And Tosafot, s.v. “shera’ah,” in Pesahim there, raise a contradiction between the two sugyot:

“‘Who saw in him a matter of sexual impropriety’—but if you say that in Elu Metziot (B.M. 32b) we say: ‘[Between] one whom you love to unload and one whom you hate to load—a mitzvah with the hater in order to subdue his inclination’—how does ‘subduing his inclination’ apply here, since it is a mitzvah to hate him?”

From Pesahim we see that there is a mitzvah to hate him; so why must one subdue his inclination so as not to hate his fellow?[4]

Tosafot resolve the difficulty thus:

“One can say: Since he hates him, his fellow also comes to hate him, as it is written (Prov. 27): ‘As in water face answers to face, so the heart of man to man.’ As a result they may come to complete hatred, and therefore ‘subduing his inclination’ is relevant.”

Tosafot assume that even with respect to an offender one must not come to complete hatred. By helping him load, one helps oneself avoid reaching complete hatred toward the offender—which is prohibited.

What is the meaning of this “complete hatred”? Later authorities discuss this at length.[5] It would seem this should be explained as Platonic hatred: we must hate the wickedness in him, not him.

This also emerges from the Gemara (Berakhot 10a):

“There were hooligans in the neighborhood of R. Meir who were causing him much distress. R. Meir sought mercy that they die. Beruriah his wife said to him: What are you thinking? Because it is written (Ps. 104): ‘May sins cease (yittamu ḥata’im)’—does it say ‘sinners’ (ḥote’im)? It says ‘sins’ (ḥata’im)! Moreover, look at the end of the verse: ‘And the wicked will be no more.’ If sins cease—then ‘the wicked will be no more.’ Rather, pray for them to repent—and then ‘the wicked will be no more.’ He sought mercy for them, and they repented.”

Beruriah tells R. Meir to pray that his neighbors—who greatly tormented him—repent, rather than die. She offers a homiletic reading of the verse “May sins cease”—not sinners. It is the sins that must cease, not the sinners themselves.[6] So too, one should hate the wickedness, not the wicked.

Indeed, many commentators understood that this is hatred of the sin, not of the sinner. But I will say again here: an emotion is supposed to be directed toward a person, not toward an idea. The implication is that, even with respect to hatred (as we saw with love), there is a duty of Socratic hatred, not Platonic hatred. We do not hate the person—but we also do not hate merely his bad traits and his criminality (his being a sinner). We must hate the person himself on account of his traits. His being a sinner is the reason for the hatred toward him, but not the object of the hatred itself.

We can now see that this is precisely the same mistake that translates the command to love the convert into a love for the idea of convertedness. I explained that love (in its original halakhic sense, not in figurative senses) is directed toward people and not toward ideas. The same applies to hatred. There is a duty to hate evildoers themselves—but not with complete hatred, i.e., not hatred of him as a person, but hatred directed toward him on account of his being a sinner. Still, it is not hatred of wickedness; it is hatred of the wicked themselves.

Emotional Duality

One consequence of this definition is what the commentators write regarding the commandment of hatred: that we must love him as a Jew alongside hating him as a sinner (many explain Tosafot’s “not complete” hatred in Pesahim this way). My claim is that one can live in a state of emotional duality. And again, if the reading is Platonic, there is no contradiction at all: I love Jewishness and hate sin. The fact that both are embodied in one and the same person poses no problem, since on the Platonic plane the emotions are not directed toward the person but toward the ideas. But I claim there is a problem, since emotions are directed toward people and not toward ideas. These are Socratic, not Platonic, love and hatred. My claim is that Socratic hatred can also dwell side by side with Socratic love toward that same person—even though the emotions are directed to the person and not to his traits. I hate him because he is a sinner and love him because he is a Jew. This is a complex state and hard to implement in practice, but there is no contradiction.

To dissolve this seeming contradiction and to understand the commentators, there is no need to empty love and hatred of human content and turn them into Platonic, misanthropic emotions. Even if they are Socratic emotions directed toward people, this is entirely possible and certainly not contradictory: even if I hate the offender for his offending, there is no license to hate him as a person and as a Jew. I must hate him because of the offending in him and love him because of the Jewishness in him.

As I remarked above, I am not at all sure that one can truly feel such emotions toward ideas. The use of the term “love” here is equivocation. The idea of the good is not good and therefore not worthy of love. The idea of Jewishness is not Jewish and therefore not worthy of love. Love of an idea is not really love. In my view one can define and direct love toward the pure Jew (who is indeed a Jew, even if he does not exist in actuality but appears through concrete Jews), but not toward Jewishness. Yet even if, in principle, one can define an emotion toward an idea, I argue that the halakhic command surely concerns an emotion toward people, not toward ideas.

[1] In that column I discussed the question (raised by Sarah Stroud) whether one has an obligation toward a person by virtue of his being my friend, irrespective of his being a good and worthy person.

[2] One can, of course, justify doing harm to a few in order to bring good to many. In principle that is a legitimate consideration, but in practice movements of repair bring harm and suffering to many people and, in many cases, fail to bring the promised repair that would justify it.

[3] On this duty see “The Commandment to Hate the Wicked,” David Ben-Zion Klein, HaMa’ayan, Tishrei 5738; and in R. Yehuda Levi’s article, “‘Feed the Wicked and Let Him Die’ versus ‘Preventing from Transgression,’” HaMa’ayan, Tammuz 5771.

[4] Strictly speaking, one could have answered that the case concerns a person I hate without license, and therefore I must subdue my inclination. The common assumption is that the Torah does not address offenders; therefore the verse speaks of a legitimate “hater.” Yet in the parallel Tosafot in B.M. 32 it seems they indeed intended to resolve it this way:

“‘To subdue his inclination’—and if you say: since in Arvei Pesahim (there) it is established that it concerns an Israelite whom it is permitted to hate, such as where he saw in him a matter of sexual impropriety—what relevance is there to ‘subduing his inclination’? One can say: It is not speaking of the ‘hater’ in the verse.”

It seems they mean that in the verse it really is speaking of someone it is permitted to hate (because he is an offender), whereas the “hater” in Pesahim is a different one, as we suggested here.

[5] See Maimonides, Hil. Rotze’ah 13:13–14; Shulḥan Arukh, Ḥoshen Mishpat 282:11 and the commentaries; Hagahot Maimoniot, Hil. De’ot 6:3; Ḥafetz Ḥayyim 4:4 n. 14; Ḥazon Ish, Yoreh De’ah end of §2; Ben Adam Leḥavero I, pp. 200–272; Lere’akha Kamokha, mitzvat “Lo Tisna,” ch. 4; the book Tanya, ch. 32; Middot Re’iyah, “Love,” §§8–9, and there §§5–6, and more.

[6] The plain sense of the verse, of course, is that “sinners” are the sinning people. The teaching is a homily.