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moral

asked 1 year ago

Does the rabbi know how to define morality?
Or at least how do we know what falls into the category of morality and what doesn’t?


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0 Answers
מיכי Staff answered 2 months ago
I don’t understand the question. It’s too general. Define what the dilemma is and what the options are, and then we can discuss. It’s also a good idea to provide examples.

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אנונימי replied 1 year ago

How can one talk so much about morality without knowing what one is talking about?
After all, Rabbi Kook and Kant apparently defined morality differently.
So how can one define morality anyway?
Because some people say that the entire Torah is moral and some say that there are also matters there that do not belong to morality.
So can the Rabbi say what he means when he says morality?

נוה מיכאל אוחנונה replied 7 months ago

I would be happy to join the question and perhaps clarify according to my understanding.
The rabbi talks about the division between halakha and morality and that these are two parallel axes.
If there is no dependence between halakha and morality,
On the axis of morality - the question arises of what is moral, or what is the criterion for a moral act.
Much has been written about this in the issues of the philosophy of morality and there are different approaches to the matter, as in the religious world, which tries to claim that halakha is morality and then presents morality in certain forms and then shows that the Torah is identical to the definition of morality (in his opinion).

I would love to understand from Rabbi Mikhi what morality is, or how the Rabbi determines the question of "is the act morally right?"
Given that we understand that this is not a halakhic command, this is not what would be accepted at Sinai, and I appreciate (but do not know) that the Rabbi also does not go in the direction of Edward Moore-style itannotationism methods that speak of "good because I see it as good as I see yellow" (in my understanding, this is something that is very much about the arbitrariness of the heart and in any case leaves a vacuum regarding the question of the moral act).

I will conclude with an example - the Rabbi determines that the halakha says that one should not save a gentile on Shabbat, and this is a contradiction between the halakha and morality.
If so, not saving a gentile on Shabbat is not moral, and the question is how the Rabbi determines what is moral, and what is moral (these are of course interrelated questions)

If the Rabbi could refer to the columns he wrote on the subject there, I assume that the Rabbi broadly interprets the matter, I would be happy to do so.
Thank you

מיכי Staff replied 7 months ago

You failed to clarify. I can tell you what is moral in my opinion, but of course there are different opinions on this. Everyone should act according to their understanding of morality. Just as there are disagreements in halacha. So how do you determine what halacha is? Everyone acts according to their understanding of halacha.
What does all this have to do with the question of the relationship between halacha and morality? No matter how you understand it, everything is in our eyes.
And by the way, I completely follow an intuitionist method and even advocate moral realism. In my opinion, anyone who believes otherwise is simply confused. But that too has no bearing in any way on the discussion.

אפי replied 7 months ago

Halacha has principles that we act upon. We try to understand and arrive at the truth according to what is written in the Bible or Talmud, the divine commandment. When there are disputes, we base ourselves on the principles and try to decide.

Is there a similar mechanism in morality? A set of principles that are followed? Or is it subject to the complete interpretation of each person and their method? Is there a consistent method that can be formulated in principles so that if we come to a new situation, even a robot would know how to rule on it?

אפי replied 7 months ago

There is an article you wrote about Jewish identity and whether there is a definition at all for the concept of Judaism.
The same question is asked here: what is the definition of morality.

You are welcome to read the article and replace the word Judaism with the word morality. And that is our question.
https://mikyab.net/posts/69070/

מיכי Staff replied 7 months ago

In my articles on what Judaism is, I dealt with difficulties rather than questions. Even if you don't have a clear definition of a concept, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. On the contrary, we don't have a definition for all of our basic concepts (that's why they are basic concepts: they define the other concepts). Regarding Judaism, non-religious definitions are empty, and it's not that I don't have a clear and formulated definition. That's the problem there. Regarding morality, there is no sweeping definition that includes everything, and there are arguments about its boundaries. So what? It doesn't touch our discussion in any way. Why does there need to be a set of formulated principles for the field to exist? There is none in Halacha, and there are disputes in Halacha as well.
But I feel like we've exhausted it.

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