Intuition and emotion

שו”ת › Intuition and emotion

asked 1 year ago

Hello Rabbi. I believe in God and the Torah more out of intuition and less logical arguments (an imperfect faith, but there is always something to work on). However, I am very averse to the Jewish idea of ”You have distinguished a person from the beginning and will recognize him to stand before You” – that is, at the core of man is a worm and his only way to be valuable is in front of God (through commandments). This is expressed in Jewish thought and also in Halacha. In general, religion shows me that man himself has no value and that the Jew does not live for himself but to worship God. Do you think this is a doubt worth clarifying, or some kind of desire to escape? Like a person who is simply bored with the commandments so he looks for ways to avoid them, or maybe it is something deeper? I really do not want to be a person who, because of his desire and emotion, makes wrong decisions (and in the meantime, of course, I do not make decisions, but rather fulfill the commandments as usual), and I am in doubt whether this is a real doubt or an attempt to escape from being a servant of God because ideas of “living for yourself” appeal to me. I also saw the philosopher Joseph Agassi say that the Jewish tradition is misanthropic and fundamentally a worm, and I can’t say that I don’t identify with that.

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מיכי Staff answered 1 month ago

Hello. If you think otherwise, then that’s what you think. But it has nothing to do with the question of whether to keep the commandments. So think that you have value even as a person who is not in the presence of God, and keep the commandments. Why does it have anything to do with that? As for this very feeling, I think it’s not well defined. Try to define the two possibilities and the negation between them, and I don’t think you’ll be able to do it. You might want to read column 159 on the concept of ‘meaning’, from which it emerges that a person cannot have meaning without some external source that gives it. Inherent meaning (meaning value to a person from the very nature of what he has without something external that gives it to him) is philosophical nonsense in my opinion. But if you manage to clearly articulate the two options and the trade-offs between them, you are welcome to upload it here and then we can discuss it.

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ע replied 1 year ago

Why do you think inherent meaning is philosophical nonsense?
Perhaps we can say that in the objective and pure sense, a person has no value, but it is something that he creates and gives to himself. But on the other hand, a person is born with static qualities (in the sense that it cannot be taken away from him or denied) such as a certain talent, a certain amount of intelligence, a special character, so he does have a basic meaning even before he has determined what his own meaning is. We can say that a person is born with a “specification” of who he is and what he is. He is not exactly born a blank slate without meaning. We see this in his tendencies, in his abilities, in his behavior pattern. In my opinion, a person has meaning in himself to a certain extent.

מיכי Staff replied 1 year ago

I referred to column 159.