On the commandments as a high necessity
Hello Rabbi,
Below is a quote from your words in the fifth notebook.
“I will offer an argument here that seems a little disturbing since it involves humanization, and yet I think it has a degree of plausibility. If God created the world, it is reasonable to conclude that He had some purpose. In essence, this is an application of the principle of causality, that if something is done, it is done for some reason or for some purpose. Furthermore, even if there is such a purpose, it is not clear why it is incumbent on us. Why didn’t God create the world in such a way that this purpose would be achieved automatically (to create us or the world perfect from the start) and left it to us? The only possibility is that this purpose is specifically related to our decisions and choices, meaning that it is important that we do it from our free decision, and this (and only this) could not be done without us. Any purpose that is not related to our free will could have been achieved directly by Him and we would not have been needed at all.
On the other hand, this goal cannot be the correction of ourselves, since there is always the possibility that He will not create us at all, and then there is no one to correct (there is no lack that requires correction). Therefore, this goal must be found outside the created universe. What could this goal be? Does morality present us with a sufficient goal or purpose? To the best of my judgment, it is not reasonable to say so. Morality is not enough to give a goal to creation, because of its instrumental nature. The function of morality is to correct creation and the human society that lives and acts in it. In other words, morality is a means to the completion of creation and human society, and therefore it cannot constitute a purposive explanation for its very existence.
The conclusion is that the very fact that we were created means that we, our actions, and our choices are also means to something outside of us, higher than us. Our actions are also supposed to promote other principles that we will now call “religious,” not just morality. Furthermore, if such other goals do exist, then morality itself can also be better understood. Moral behavior aims to reform society, and this reform is a means so that human society can do what it was truly created for (to achieve religious goals).”
According to you, the logic behind keeping the commandments is that the commandments are a high necessity. Your argument seems to go like this:
Assumption A: God created (the creation and) us with imperfect will and choice
Assumption B: If God had wanted, He would have created creation and us perfect or not created it and us.
Assumption 3: (Therefore) our purpose and the purpose of creation are not found in us or in creation, but outside of us and creation (Godhead, etc.)
Assumption 4: Religion (Torah) is a system that is (categorically) outside of creation and humanity.
Conclusion: Religion (Torah) is the purpose of creation and human existence.
\If there is anything missing or redundant in the argument here, I would be happy to correct it :)\
And now for the questions –
Regarding assumption A – Behind this assumption stands a judgmental assumption (sometimes considered trivial) of perfection and imperfection, but why agree on this judgmental assumption? What determines what is perfect and what is imperfect? Where is this measuring stick? How can this be determined and who determined this? One can say that man is complex, he is temporary, he changes and he dies, one can say, as Siddhartha claimed, that everything is empty, but this has nothing to do with perfection or imperfection, this is already a personal psychological judgment. Furthermore, one can argue the opposite assumption – God created man and the world in a way that is perfect for man and the world, and any mess he makes is not God but man, just as he gave a cell, given the circumstances, the ability to create a cancerous tumor. Beyond that, it can be argued that it is more likely to assume that the judgment of perfection depends on the psychological perspective on the world and man, that everything is initially good and that man is initially good, and that the judgment of perfection and imperfection is very narrow and in the eyes of the cheerful/depressive observer. It can be said that in depth, this psychological judgment loses its value.
And suppose we can agree with assumption A, assumption B can be argued about anything, both about the upper worlds, and also about the nobility itself, and in fact about anything. And if we say that it is God himself who is missing (let’s say in Kabbalistic terminology “the Endlessness” and not the nobility from him) there is a reason for this, isn’t there?
It follows that if we follow the circular judgmental argument of “X is not perfect (according to how I perceive perfection), x could be perfect or not = therefore x has no meaning in itself.” Assumption C can be for anything, and therefore what is outside of creation – nobility (or God) is also without any purpose or essence but beyond them.
And suppose we agree with assumptions A, B, and C, that it is correct to say that creation and the volitional man are imperfect, that the will of man has no meaning for itself, and that its meaning is outside of him. The fourth assumption is the assumption that can be said in Shofi that there are all good reasons to deny it.
Let’s assume that we do not enter into the methodological discussion about Torah as revelation and Torah and development, and take this assumption as an axiom. A. The Torah was given in a culture, the Torah was given to a people who lived in that culture, and for a people who lived in that culture. The morality and law of the Torah were 100% relevant to that culture. on. Cultural practice changes or moral intuition becomes necessary, and a biblical interpretation that was moral or appropriate for a culture of the past is not appropriate in another period. Within the halakhic enterprise, Chazal preachers provided sermons to bridge the gap between biblical reality and contemporary reality. And between their perception of the Torah as eternal and the changing reality. Therefore, the Torah was given as a social moral document, and a practical monotheistic anti-polytheistic protest document dependent on a particular culture. Not as an ascetic and fixed Leibowitzian document whose essence is beyond nature and man.
Assumption E is more obscure than assumption D, and it is based on the notion that certain Jews (Kabbalists) know how the “God system” works. They know who God is and how God operates. Where the “bugs” are and how to fix them. It’s simple. There is an elaborate system of a process of divinity (which there is no reason to think is true in any way), and the same Torah fixes this process. But there is no reason to think so, we can think that we think we know God and take Kabbalistic theological speculations very seriously, but then our Torah is based on a God that we choose to create and think that He exists. Kabbalah created the Torah as a correction to give the Torah and Jews weight and substance in the Diaspora to bring about redemption, it’s a beautiful thing mentally, but I’m not sure I would want to base my entire religious world on speculations of a God and correction.
Thank you very much and sorry for the length.
Assumption D does not exist for me. It is a conclusion and not an assumption. Because there must be a goal outside the world, God, the Almighty, apparently gave us such a goal. If He gave Torah, then it is probably this goal.
Beyond that, I didn’t understand the criticism of the assumptions. All I have is my own way of thinking. I don’t know how to think outside of it. It’s always possible to cast doubt on whether I’m wrong, but that’s true for any consideration. I do indeed assert assumption B for everything that is created. The goal is somewhere in God Himself or in something that was not created (in the sense that we are familiar with). Assumption D is incorrect, as I explained. I will only point out that there is no assumption that Jews know how the Torah works. My assumption is that if God gave us the Torah, He probably assumes that we will interpret it, and He gave it knowingly.
And finally, not all of your work is based on this consideration. It is one layer that joins many others (like revelation) that together create the complete picture, as I explained well in the notebook.
Shalom Rabbi and thank you for the response,
A. I do not agree with the assumption (trivial in many places in Jewish mysticism and Christianity) that man and the world are not perfect/corrected (temporality is not related to perfection or imperfection, impermanence is simply impermanence) because I disbelieve in this judgmental assumption that originates from a psychological judgment depending on the person and feeling, and not from a concrete philosophical judgment that can be addressed. Even though it is an excellent marketing tool to tell people you have a problem and here is the solution, I disbelieve in this basic assumption that there is a problem, at least in the initial and primordial sense of the creation of man and the world.
B. In my opinion, it is speculation (which Kabbalah really likes to do) to think about what God thinks and what his goals are. I do not see even a shred of truth in this. You claim that it is possible to know what God thinks, I claim that it is speculation. Because you claim that you know what God thinks, you claim that God has no purpose in creating a world and man who could not be/temporary, in my opinion it is the one that gives, unlike the Kabbalistic speculations, we have no idea what and how God thinks or behaves, God could not have created man and the world because that is the thing that is not causal. According to you, God must create in order to correct himself. That is nice, but where do you end this story of causality? When does the law of causality stop working? After all, there must be an end to the infinite regression in your argument about God's causality. And in general, there must be a reason for a break in God in order for there to be a correction.
C. On a real Torah and a transcendent Torah beyond the world. On eternity and impermanence.
If assumption D is not an assumption, then it encompasses within itself an assumption that I see all the reasons in the world to deny. The assumption that the Torah is outside the world. The Torah was given in culture, to a people living in a certain moral culture, with certain beliefs, and its essence is within the world and that human world. Every biblical law in the Torah will be understood in a fundamental way in the cultural logic within the world based on the culture of the ancient Near East. The heart of my argument is that the need to separate morality from law does not stem from the fact that it was created that way from the beginning, but because it was created retrospectively. It was created from the perception that the Torah is eternal and from the change of culture – these two things caused the Torah to become an extraterrestrial world-corrector. But it was not like that from the beginning.
D. Indeed, I accept the other arguments in the notebook (in a certain sense), it is simply that in my opinion the argument about the commandments as a high necessity is very speculative, based on assumptions that are, in my opinion, rational 😉 I see all the good reasons to reject them.
A. It's just a play on words. Are there things we can't do? So we're not perfect. Are there things we fail at (in our own way)? So we're not perfect. Very simple.
B. I argue that there are reasonable considerations that if someone does something, they do it for something. I didn't assume anything about their goals except that they have a goal. Sounds completely reasonable to me. You can always be skeptical and not accept something because it might not be true. Not just in relation to God.
Regarding causal regression, I explained it in my notebook.
C. If you can explain anything like that – good luck to you.
A. I don't think it's a pun. But it's no more relevant than it is to refute the argument because the argument could be based on the assumption that we could not have been. Therefore, what I wrote doesn't make much sense.
B. The point is that we have no idea how God works... and why God is subject to causality if He created it?
Did you talk about regression of causality on God in the fifth notebook? Because I read the notebook and I don't remember (this is a question I wanted to ask once), (I remember you addressed it in the second notebook) and I looked again now and didn't find it.
C. Thank you. In my opinion, it's much more reasonable, simple, and realistic than a frozen theory from an arbitrary world that corrects it.
Hello Rabbi,
Trying again..
Is there an answer to section B? Because I didn't find a reference in the notebooks.
Thank you very much
Clarification of the question in section B. 1. It is not clear what caused God to be lacking (causality?), 2. Why would God be subject to considerations of human categories (causality or randomness – which are at the basis of your argument) if He Himself created them?
And it is important to emphasize that I am not a skeptic, and I advocate the Rabbi's synthetic system, I simply do not understand what removes the assumptions about God from the category of speculation when there is no indication for these assumptions. (Unlike, let's say, the existence of an intelligent designer, for which there is an indication (the world), here we are talking about human thought (or pretense) to think what God thinks, and this is not clear to me)
In addition, I did not understand your words. On the one hand, you wrote in the comments that ”I did not assume anything about His purposes except that He has a purpose” (of God in creation). On the other hand, in the notebook you wrote explicitly that the purpose of creation is something in God through human choice in religious action (which is separate from human categories).
(By indication I also mean an idea, (like morality or aesthetics = the idea of goodness or beauty). Probability simply does not belong here because any such probability creates my ideal of God, which I create, and think is right and logical for Him to do. But we do not have the ability to fundamentally understand what God is, and therefore there is no idea and reasonableness regarding Him, and it is also not appropriate to claim anything in relation to Him. This is why I opened the question beyond disagreement about the perception of the Torah)
For some reason, a very similar discussion is taking place at the same time:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%9e%d7%93%d7%90%d7%99%d7%96%d7%9d-%d7%9c%d7%aa%d7%90%d7%99%d7%96%d7%9d-%d7%94%d7%90%d7%a0%d7%a9%d7%aa-%d7%94%d7%90%d7%9c
I think everything is answered there.
It seems to me that the answer to the question that is being asked here was not given there (and so I am responding here, with your permission). I will rephrase the question based on that thread.
Suppose a carpenter builds a table. The reason for the table is the carpenter. Similarly, the reason for the world is “God”. The meaning that the carpenter builds the table is for the purpose of placing objects on it. And you claim that just as the carpenter has meaning, so does the world have meaning. In my question, (unlike the questioner in that thread) I did not attempt to discuss the question of whether the analogy between the meaning in making a table and the fact that God had a meaning (purpose) for creating the world. My question stems from a vague logical leap you made from purpose to reason. You claimed that it is reasonable to assume that God had a meaning for creating the world. But then you claimed something complicated and vague – that God's meaning in creating the world is God's completion and correction (through the Torah/religion). And here comes my question, God is lacking, meaning that there is a reason for this lack, something that caused it (and it is a contradiction to say that a perfect God needs to create in order to fix something himself), there is causality here below the meaning that you avoid considering in the consideration of divine reasonableness in your argument.
Furthermore, let's say we agreed on the analogy of meaning to the world, I do not see reasonableness in entering into considerations of reasonableness of God because there is no indication of what God is and what his considerations are, if we can even say so. Therefore, such reasonableness about God is the God that we create, create and believe in. It is also a God whose distance from similarity is not great.
Thank you
It's hard for me to discuss such gaps, certainly between two threads. I no longer remember what I wrote and where.
In short, I don't know what the "meaning" is and what its relationship to the discussion here is. Therefore, I suggest not bringing it into the discussion here. It's just another minefield that we'll get entangled in. Here, the discussion is about purpose and purpose.
I don't remember making any jump from purpose to cause. I argue that God's actions have a purpose and no reason. The purpose is his correction. The fact that he is lacking is not a reason for his action because he decides to complete himself and is not obliged to do so by virtue of a factor external to him.
Beyond that, I think I've already explained that his perfection can be a function of time. He is perfect over the entire timeline, and is not necessarily measured momentarily. Therefore, it is not true that he was lacking and then was completed. The complete being is one that is constructed in X way up to moment T and in Y way after that.
You assume that 1. God is perfect.
But to assume that it is rational to claim that God has been revealed – you assume two more assumptions about God –
2. God is lacking – and the reason for creation is to correct God's lack. You claim that anything else could not have been created – and therefore there is no meaning to his creation. Only God is the meaning and therefore the reason must be something in him. ***
3. God is corrected by us – in an external system that he gave (religion: Torah) – i.e.: God changes.
To resolve the tension between your first assumption and your third assumption – you claim that change is a function of time (a perfect graph), or that change is between two states of the same completeness. Therefore, change does not contradict perfection.
On the other hand, you do not resolve the tension between the first and second assumptions, and the contradiction is your position –
If you claim that God is perfect, He should not be lacking.
If you claim that there is no lack here – there is only a perfect change in the time graph without lack, then your argument about the commandments as a high necessity falls apart (it does not need correction, it is perfect).
And if you claim that there is a lack here, then God is not perfect. In addition, when you claim that God is lacking – and ignore the reason for the lack – you are actually shooting in the foot the causality with which you are walking in your argument.
***
(In a sidebar: I disagree with assumption number 2 – because everything that is created could not help being created – because it was created. Everything that is created could not help being created. Therefore, the meaning of existence is existence itself. And in man too – its meaning is life itself. In my opinion, your claim that creation is meaningless and God is absent, stems from your need to assume that there is a rational basis for the concept of a revealed God – and that the Torah is a closed, acultural system (an assumption that there are good enough reasons to deny it).)
You moved the question here, and it brings me back to the previous message. I opened it by saying that I have a hard time with these time intervals, and here you have further increased the issue and opened a new thread.
To the point, I do not understand your arguments. You are repeating the points that I answered in the Hadiya. If I accept something, you should clarify what and why. The commandments are part of the same correction that makes it perfect, and therefore there is no contradiction between the commandments of a high necessity and its being perfect. This is actually my main argument here.
Throughout the entire discussion here, I have explained things in detail and clearly – what and why. You simply repeated your claims without any attempt to reexamine your claims.
I also have deep skepticism about the possibility that a solitary response from “another one asking a question here” will cause you to examine and consider your views on a subject that is one of the cornerstones of your doctrine.
Therefore, the discussion will end in disagreement.
Neria, I share your impressions.
With all the great respect that is due to Miki and with the huge contribution that he made to me personally in clarifying my thoughts,
I still feel that he occasionally makes fun of his readers. To his credit, the doses of his fun are lower than most other intellectuals I know.
Is that something too?
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