Ethics: Between Emotion and Reason (Column 734)
In recent days a video has been circulating on social media featuring part of stand-up comedian Udi Kagan’s performance, in which he speaks about his post-trauma following his military service. Kagan presents his experiences with great courage and considerable charm, and he does so as a stand-up comedian. Despite the humor—and perhaps because of it—he manages with great talent to pierce the hearts of listeners, helping them better understand the world of a veteran with PTSD, thereby doing an excellent service to the phenomenon, to those who suffer from it, and to the broader public among whom they live.
Precisely because I so appreciated the video, an important point that appeared in it almost in passing slipped by me. This morning I watched a video by my friend Roi Yozevitch, in which he raises a point that may escape the viewer’s eye or ear. He rekindled in me several insights I have discussed here before, and I thought it appropriate to revisit them specifically in light of Kagan’s powerful video.
Yozevitch’s Critique
Although in Yozevitch’s video he didn’t fully sharpen that this is what he meant (a pity), I understood that he wished to raise a critical point about Kagan’s words. But even if he didn’t intend that, I wish to comment on Kagan’s remarks. In the course of his talk, Kagan describes his feelings about what he went through and says he doesn’t understand how he was capable of doing the things he did (see the segment in Yozevitch’s video at 2:50). He doesn’t forgive himself for it, and this leads him to think that he doesn’t know himself. That it’s not the same person who was there, and that someone who did such things doesn’t deserve to live.
Yozevitch rightly emphasizes that Kagan isn’t speaking here about how he viewed what he did or how he experienced it, but about how he could do such things. This is moral self-criticism, beating one’s breast, and not merely trauma due to a difficult experience. Yozevitch argues that part of what causes trauma—or at least intensifies it—is moral remorse. A person who goes through difficult experiences in war but fully identifies with its aims and with the decisions made within it (including the acts he himself did) can still undergo a difficult emotional experience; but if at the moral level he identifies with his actions and sees them as justified, he has a better chance of coping with the difficult experiences and a smaller chance of developing post-trauma. One who participates in a battle that in his view is unjustified, or who carried out actions within it that he considers immoral (such as harming non-combatants), has a greater likelihood of experiencing post-trauma.
I don’t have clinical or research data on this and I haven’t checked it, but he cites this in the name of Jordan Peterson (I’m not entirely sure Peterson actually says this there), and to me, small as I am, it also sounds quite plausible. I would be very interested to see results from a systematic examination of the correlation between the percentage of combat stress casualties and PTSD among soldiers from the “Swords of Iron” war who oppose versus support the fighting and the decisions made within it. My impression is that among soldiers there are relatively few who oppose it. Usually, the moral halo descends upon these prophets only after they’ve been discharged. Soldiers and officers up to the highest ranks, to my impression, don’t truly share the views of the “formers” (even though the newspaper Haaretz occasionally quotes anonymous officers full of criticism of the army. For some reason they are partners in war crimes and do not refuse to take part in them, but they give interviews to Haaretz to air harsh criticism. I don’t know if that’s more strange or more suspicious—decide for yourselves). I would bet that among religious and/or right-wing combat soldiers the rate of combat trauma is significantly lower, but I haven’t checked.
A few days ago I heard an interview with a soldier’s mother who voiced harsh criticism of the war, but said that at home she doesn’t speak about it so her son won’t enter conflicts and will keep focused on fighting. I couldn’t tell whether she was being disingenuous or truly naïve when she spoke on the most popular news magazine on Network B and thought her son wouldn’t hear about it just because she doesn’t talk to him about it at home. But it seems clear to me that her words increase her son’s likelihood of experiencing trauma. And the same goes for all critics of the war. They talk about trauma victims, but by their very criticism they also contribute to its creation, of course. This doesn’t mean one mustn’t voice criticism, and nothing I’m saying here is a moral criticism of them. I am mainly noting a fact, and also criticizing the logic of their critique. The use of post-trauma as a basis for criticizing the fighting is logically problematic, since the criticism itself participates in creating the trauma. It would therefore be better to focus on substantive arguments against the war and policy and not entangle post-trauma in this context.
A Critical Viewer’s Response
It is very hard to remain critical when faced with a clip like Kagan’s. A person has gone through difficult experiences—especially when it happened in public service, i.e., in our service—and it is hard to tell him he is in the wrong. The same is true for families of hostages who oppose the fighting and cry out “injustice” (or “Hamas”) against its prolongation and demand an immediate stop. It’s clear this actively assists Hamas and drastically lowers the chances of the hostages’ return, and it’s also clear there are various interested parties driving these processes and riding on the families’ distress in order to topple the government. It seems that to these manipulators it is indeed worthwhile to sacrifice the hostages in order to topple the government. But when you hear a hostage’s family member, it’s hard to voice criticism (not to mention the hysterical media pile-on awaiting anyone who does).
All the same, we must clearly distinguish between these planes. One can and should fully empathize with the pain and suffering, with the longing for a loved one in captivity, and with what he and his family are going through—and at the same time hold the view that it is wrong to surrender to those feelings and let them run us. Our stance regarding the fighting and regarding a hostage deal should be formed according to substantive, rational considerations and not according to these emotions. With all the sorrow and empathy, in my view it is not reasonable to sacrifice state interests in order to free twenty people who are suffering terribly; and I have explained more than once why, in my opinion, stopping the fighting means relinquishing essential interests of the state. In any case, if that is your view as well, your empathy with Kagan should not blur it, and certainly not change it.
Morality: Between Emotion and Reason
I have often noted that it is common to identify morality with emotion, i.e., to see emotion as the supreme yardstick for the morality of an action or policy. The feeling is that if I have a stomachache—or, more mildly, pangs of conscience—in the face of a given act or policy, then it must be immoral. Not for nothing do people post photos of suffering children in Gaza as an argument for why we should stop the fighting and why this is genocide. Well, no—even if those images were accurate (some of them probably are)—they still do not establish that we are acting immorally. The question is the context and the overall considerations that accompany it. The images evoke a powerful moral emotion, but it is very important to learn to separate that moral emotion from the formation of one’s position, which should be done with reason and not with the gut.
I have written more than once that in my opinion there is a strong correlation between right- and left-wing worldviews and moral conceptions (see, for example, Column 727). The left tends more to identify morality with emotion, and therefore uses emotional arguments to ground a political and moral position. For them, the number of non-combatants killed in Gaza is a decisive argument, and the pictures of suffering and hunger even more so. Heart-rending personal stories of those who are suffering are the measure by which one should set moral positions and military and political policy. By contrast, the right does not see all this as a sufficient basis for forming a moral stance and policy.
On the left they are inclined to accuse the right of a callous heart, alienation, and moral indifference. Sometimes that may be true, but by no means necessarily. It is possible for a person whose heart breaks at the sight of suffering still to refuse to let emotions run his reason—even in the moral domain. These accusations themselves suffer from that very fallacy. The accusers do not consider the possibility that my heart might break over the suffering and yet I still do not think it is right to stop fighting and thereby cause it. For them morality and emotion are one and the same, and that is how they judge others. Above I noted my conjecture that the rate of combat trauma among soldiers with a right-wing worldview is lower than among those who criticize the war (and it remains to be examined regarding left-wingers who do identify with it—there are such people as well). Of course, even if that is correct, the left will explain that religious/right-wing people are morally indifferent—and we are back to the same fallacy.
We must understand that the fallacy that mixes human empathy with suffering and conflates it with identification with the values (that lead to the suffering, as we have seen) is not merely an intellectual-philosophical mistake. If I am right, then it is a practical disaster. To stop a just war and to forgo important state interests because of misleading emotions is a serious problem. Moreover, it leads to conclusions and actions that are morally flawed. The tragedy is that the very desire (usually sincere) to act morally brings about the opposite. See again Column 727.
Emotion, Reason, and a Postmodern World
I have often written that morality belongs to reason and not to emotion, and that emotions (identified with conscience) are at most one of the inputs we should take into account when making moral decisions; but it is not emotion that should determine the bottom line. Decisions are made with reason and not with emotion. And yet our world is moving more and more in emotional directions. More and more people identify morality with emotion and, in fact, give excessive weight to emotions in general. I have previously shared an amusing story of mine: I was watching “The Voice” with some of my children. Shlomi Shabat was one of the judges, and after watching two contestants he said that his reason leaned toward A but the heart, the heart… it was going with B. Needless to say, the audience burst into applause, and I innocently wondered: what was the decision? Shlomi Shabat didn’t bother to say whether he decided to go with the heart or with reason. Why not? Because it was obvious to everyone that if reason says one thing and the heart another, you follow the heart. That was self-evident to Shlomi Shabat, to the entire audience there, and also to my children sitting with me. When I voiced this question aloud, they fell off their chairs laughing (I don’t recall whether I raised it jokingly or seriously; in any case, my intent was entirely serious).
Which of course brings me to Dov Sadan’s quip, which I have also cited here before. He said that the next person to make a revolution in the world would be a Jewish orthopedist. Why Jewish? Because almost all the revolutionaries are Jews. But why an orthopedist? Because the first Jew to make a revolution in the world was our forefather Abraham and after him Moses, who taught us to think with our heads (“Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these”). The next Jew who made a revolution was Jesus, who taught that everything is in the heart (“The Merciful One desires the heart”). The next Jewish revolutionary was Marx, who taught that everything is in the stomach (capital, economic interests, and needs run us). The next was Freud, who taught that everything is managed below the belt. So if we descended from the head to the heart and then to the stomach and below the belt, the next revolutionary will apparently be a foot orthopedist (a podiatrist).
Beyond the jest, to my mind the process he describes is entirely real. There is indeed a deterioration from reason to heart, to needs and drives. This doesn’t mean people in recent generations have become more foolish; it does mean they have lost faith in reason and see the heart as a substitute meant to make decisions and form positions in place of reason. This is part of the postmodern world, based on despair of reason, and because there is no vacuum, it inserts emotion and the heart in its stead. When I speak here of a postmodern world, I don’t mean only those avant-garde groups identified with postmodernism. Our entire world is governed by this spirit, and many of us, who philosophically do not identify with this vacuum, are still influenced by it without noticing (cf. Shlomi Shabat and the audience of “The Voice”).
Halakhic People and a Rational Approach
As I told Raz Zauber in a podcast recorded a few days ago, a halakhic approach helps us stand against this murky current. A person accustomed to acting within the framework of halakha gets used to examining his instincts and emotions in light of principles and to making decisions in a measured and rational way. People disconnected from halakha can more easily slide down the slippery slope I described. Not for nothing is there a very strong correlation between rabbis and halakhic people—and religious Jews in general—and opposition to hostage deals. This is not necessarily moral callousness, as they are wont to accuse them of, but rather a rational, cool approach that makes moral decisions with reason and not with the heart.
There are two kinds of rabbis many of whom don’t fall into this category: Haredim and more liberal rabbis. If you see a rabbi who supports a hostage deal, he likely belongs to one of these two groups. This is a fascinating phenomenon, and in light of what I have written here it calls for explanation. They, too, were educated on the knees of halakha, and I would expect them as well to link morality to reason and not to the heart. So why is it different here?
Among liberal rabbis I think this phenomenon is prevalent because they are more exposed to the broader world and its values. Many of them internalize those values, which in itself is, in my view, a blessing, but sometimes it takes them too far. They somewhat lose the salutary influence of halakhic, rational, cool education and place too much emphasis on emotion (not only in the moral domain but in general). Among Haredim it is more complex. I think there it stems from two main reasons. The first is separation from the broader public, which leads them not to enlist. In such a situation it is harder to insist on continuing the fighting (since that will raise the question of Haredi conscription all the more). The second is more substantive: they do not think in large scales and long time horizons. For them the consideration is mainly the here and now. Considering a state’s long-term interests versus the fate of individuals is not part of their toolkit (see a detailed discussion in Column 720).
Back to Udi Kagan
I think the fallacy I have described appears not only among Kagan’s viewers. It may be that Udi Kagan himself also has such a conflation. Let’s return to the sentences I quoted above. Even if he understood and justified the military action in which he participated at the rational level, it may be that the difficult emotional experience of killing people (especially if non-combatants are harmed) is instinctively tied for him to immorality. My impression is that he is flesh of the flesh of the Israeli left (cf. “Eretz Nehederet”), and therefore it is entirely possible that he perceives that if he did such things, he is not moral—even if rationally he would justify it. He may be imposing what arises from emotion onto what reason says. We have seen that rational justification for things that run counter to emotion is perceived among leftists as alienated, cold, and morally indifferent, and my impression is that he definitely belongs to that milieu.
It is so complicated that I am not sure Udi Kagan even meant to say that these were immoral actions. It may be that, in his view, the very fact that he was capable of doing this means he is not a mensch. I’m not sure he even held himself to account as to whether he favors or opposes those actions, since that very discussion can seem superfluous (and perhaps even alienated and morally indifferent) when the emotion is so clear. Thus it is possible that even if he were to address that very question, he would answer in the affirmative (i.e., he understands the need and justification for those actions), and still might say sentences like those he said in his show. In such a case, can we regard those sentences as expressing Kagan’s moral position? I don’t know.
Needless to say, all this is of course only hypothetical analysis. I do not know Kagan or his views, and the issue is not Udi Kagan but a principled discussion. My claim is that, as a representative type of the Israeli left, this description is certainly possible, and that is what matters for our purposes.
Discussion
Obviously this is not binary, and obviously difficult experiences have an impact even without the moral-intellectual dimension. The claim is that moral conceptions also contribute.
In the past I mentioned the well-known example of Nazis who got drunk before the mass slaughter of Jews. It was hard for them. It is not clear whether in their view it was justified and this was only emotional trauma, or whether deep down they understood that it was not morally justified.
As for the Haredim, it seems to me that דווקא adherence to halakha is what leads to the position of ending the war, etc.
Because in the Shulchan Arukh there are no laws of war, only the redemption of captives; the highest public level in the Shulchan Arukh is the level of the community. So it is no accident that one often heard Haredi public figures say that there is no greater value than redeeming captives. Indeed, in a communal reality that is true; an independent state, by contrast, fights and prevents the next abductees.
That is more or less what I wrote.
About this it was said that the Haredim (originally this was said about Lithuanians) serve the Shulchan Arukh and not the Holy One, blessed be He.
As a psychologist who works with post-trauma, I learned a lot from the column. What emerges from it is that there is a connection between philosophy (what I think) and psychology (what I feel), which is basically the rationale of the cognitive-behavioral therapy I practice (CBT). And indeed, in many cases recovery from post-trauma passes through changing the way I perceive the meaning of the traumatic event.
I recommend reading Ariel Seri-Levi's post exactly on this. It is both insightful and honest, and it also tries to talk about the value-based aspect in the context of emotion and post-traumatic injury. Even so, in my opinion he too fails when he smuggles into the value discourse, as it were, a position that leaves no room for self-criticism, and thus דווקא opens the door to the rule of emotion.
Many thanks. Glad to hear it. I understand from you that I am right in saying that there is a connection between your moral perception of the event and the intensity and likelihood of a traumatic crisis?
When Ariel Seri-Levi wrote “yes, there was a October 7,” I stopped reading. There is something about these over-sensitive people who violate “do not add” and “do not subtract.” By coming to add, they end up subtracting.
I remember being told in my childhood that once they asked Rabbi Aviezer Pilz, head of the Tifrach yeshiva, how he is able to answer in the face of a mother’s tears as she pleads before him to accept her accomplished son into his yeshiva. He replied that before his eyes he sees all the mothers of the boys already in his yeshiva, crying and pleading with him not to accept that particular boy.
As for the Haredim, it seems more to me that this stems from the fact that even their commitment to the cold and considered halakhic world is not a self-conception but a result of an emotional basis called reward and punishment; and consequently there is no internalization of the content of the specific halakha, only its observance in the spirit of that reward-based foundation.
I think the reason among the Haredim is that they internalize the values of halakha and its rational, cool way of thinking less, because they approach it from an emotional basis of reward and punishment, and that also gets mixed into their thinking about the specific halakha.
Absolutely. That is what emerges from CBT, and apparently also from Viktor Frankl’s approach.
Here, straight from the horse’s mouth: https://www.ynet.co.il/judaism/article/ya9ovfj5g?utm_source=taboola_internal&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=internal
And here is more of this female malady (from minute 25:50): https://youtube.com/watch?v=e8ihcbv4ZLE&si=3Bn1D5VQFsp36TOw
Rabbi Michi
Why is the left in Israel and around the world identified with thinking people, scientists, and professors?
Is this a historical association that is no longer true today?
Is there a logical argument in favor of following emotion and the heart?
That is completely true even today. There is a difference between education and intellect, and there is a difference between intellect and rationality.
I did not merit to understand the second question.
Begging your pardon, it is a bit misogynistic to claim that this is a female malady. Oversensitivity is a cross-sex phenomenon (see the case of Ariel Seri-Levi), and on the other hand I know women whose intellect has absolute control over emotion.
The question is not whether it is misogynistic but whether it is true.
My impression is that women tend more toward emotion, and I even think the current general drift toward emotion is a female influence (connected to the improving status of women in society. Cause or effect?).
The fact that there are contrary examples proves nothing. We are talking about 50% of the world’s population.
Also, when I taught Gemara to women for quite a few years, I saw their emotional mode of relating.
But of course this is my subjective impression. I have not examined it systematically or in depth.
Even if it is true, you do not have to be insulting.
Here is another example of someone who subjects emotion to intellect:
https://x.com/oritstrock/status/1962413118090260815
Professor Amy Wax speaks a great deal about the feminization that American academia has undergone as a source of many of its ailments.
Why is that called insulting? It is no accident that Strock is regarded by people as a masculine type. Lacking “feminine” sensitivity. But as I said, an example one way or the other proves nothing.
There may well be a connection, as someone said. It does not seem to me that the Nukhba terrorists have post-trauma because of the horrors they perpetrated. It is probably connected to the question of what I am here for. In the Second Lebanon War I definitely did not understand what was going on here, and I experienced mild post-trauma that lasted through the following year. I volunteered for reserve duty in Gaza willingly and joyfully, and indeed even fire directed at me did not deter me. At the same time, sometimes it does happen because this is a sensitive personality structure. I have a very right-wing friend who was happy about the operations he took part in and lives with significant post-trauma, nightmares at night. In his case it is the experience of his friends’ deaths and the vivid memory of the danger.
In the introduction to the Da'at Mikra commentary on the Book of Proverbs there is an attempt to explain who the evil and the kesil in the book are (also the scoffer). The evil—that is how he explains it—is the primitive person. But that is still only a heading. Later he characterizes him by “being impressionable/excitable,” that is, emotionality. A gut reaction. “Thinking” from the gut. And indeed, if you read Proverbs, this definitely explains all the verses in which he appears. Also, the word comes from the word ul, meaning belly, abdomen (and it is mentioned in Psalms 73—“and their body is healthy,” and it is also connected to the ram that walked at the head of the flock, and also to the ulam, the structure before the sanctuary. Likewise in the gates of the courtyards in Ezekiel there was a structure before the gate called eilam). So yes, the left-wing public is an emotional public. A public of fools.
Later he explains that the kesil is the stupid person, but he does not elaborate too much. From his commentary it seems that the kesil is someone who is closed off. Someone incapable of listening. And it seems to me that he is closed off because his worldview does not allow him to listen and to entertain the possibility that maybe he is wrong. So it seems to me that the kesil is the one who is sure he is right. Sure without a shadow of doubt. And indeed, in several places in Scripture the root כ.ס.ל is used in words whose meaning is confidence, such as “For the Lord will be your confidence, and will keep your foot from being caught,” “If I have made gold my confidence, or said to fine gold: You are my trust,” and more. And this derives from the fact that the kesalim were the loins of the animal, which in the Bible were considered a source of strength. This interpretation too explains many verses in Proverbs, such as “A wise man fears and turns away from evil, but the fool is reckless and confident,” and also in Ecclesiastes—“The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.”
Indeed, the left is made up of fools and dolts. I do not know why the rabbi is incapable of saying this outright.
You are not the only one who has that impression. And it is no coincidence that according to Kabbalah too, the woman is considered the left side (the man is right, and also center, and this is not the place to elaborate). And the identification is well known: man is form and woman is matter.
Post-trauma is not really my area of expertise, but the psychology of morality (which falls more under social-cognitive psychology) definitely is, so here are my two cents.
Generally speaking, post-trauma is not only a response to an external situation, but to an interaction with an internal state. Thus, for example, police officers and doctors are often exposed to difficult external situations, but they do not suffer from post-trauma, because their internal state inoculates them—they come to the event as the responsible body, with the ability to affect the situation, and the sense of responsibility and control prevents the development of post-trauma, which certainly would develop in an ordinary person off the street who was in their situation.
Returning to morality, then—we know that moral values are among the strongest characteristics of a person’s identity. Hence, if a person acts against the dictates of his conscience, presumably he will experience it as something external imposed upon him, whereas if a person acts according to his conscience he will experience it as something internal that gives him a sense of control over the event and inoculates him against it.
All this analysis, on its face, does not really enter the question of emotion and intellect—it is not clear whether this sense of control is a rational perception of reality or an emotion. Even when we get into the question of morality itself, the question of the relationship between emotional and cognitive processes and moral judgment is one of the hotly disputed questions. Incidentally, this is not a phenomenon unique to morality; even with things like “trust,” for instance—when a person feels trust, is that an emotional feeling or a cognitive process? Therefore, even if there are no emotional-cognitive differences at all between conservatives and liberals, we would still expect someone who feels connected to the mission to experience less trauma than someone who does not. So prima facie we should expect to see, say, more post-trauma from the evacuation of Gush Katif among those on the right side of the political map than among those on the left side.
But this is where things also start to get complicated—until now I have spoken about morality in general, but if one accepts Haidt’s moral foundations theory (which of course has its critics in the literature, but let us brush that aside for the moment), conservatives and liberals have different moral foundations that they hold. Specifically, one of these foundations is obedience to authority, which conservatives usually hold more strongly than liberals. If so, it is not clear to what extent, from the standpoint of a conservative person, there is any moral difficulty at all in accepting an order to do something he disagrees with—not because of belief in some general righteousness of the cause, but specifically because he sees value in obeying authority. Therefore it may be that, from his perspective, as long as he obeys authority he will always feel some connection to the mission that will inoculate him to some degree against post-trauma. If that is the case, then we would indeed expect right-wingers to experience less post-trauma in such a case. Alternatively, we know that one of the recurring motifs among people who experience post-trauma is the motif of “why did he die and I survived,” which, if we take it as a moral question, is basically a question of fairness—it is not fair that he died and I survived. Here too, liberals generally hold the value of fairness more strongly than conservatives, and therefore one can expect more post-trauma in a case where this motif is present.
All in all—I think that even if we see a different pattern in the rates of post-trauma between right-wingers and left-wingers, I would not rush to connect it to the difference between emotion and intellect. In fact, I am not at all convinced by the attribution of emotion to left-wingers and intellect to right-wingers, nor by such a division between religious and secular people or between women and men. The problem, psychologically, in answering this question is that there is a gap between emotion as a motivator and emotion as an external marker. Returning again to our acquaintance Haidt and to the image he likes to use, intellect and emotion are like a man riding an elephant—the man does not really influence where the elephant goes, but he is very good at explaining after the fact why the elephant went where the rider wanted. The fact that right-wingers, religious people, or men are better at producing after-the-fact rationalizations for why the decisions they made were intellectual rather than emotional does not mean that this is really what happened.
1. That is a somewhat caricatured description. Right-wingers may be more attached to authority, but if they too receive orders that contradict their conscience they will find themselves in the same problem. See, for example, traumas following the disengagement. On the contrary, since they have more values (quantitatively), they have more chance of entering such tensions.
2. Haidt’s rationalization with the elephant and the rider seems to me like an after-the-fact processing of his own emotions. My impression from reading his book was that he too falls heavily into that same common linkage between morality and emotion, hence the elephant-and-rider description.
3. This kind of argument, which tells a person that even if he thinks something, it is only a processing of some primal emotion, is paternalistic—which leftists usually do not especially like (paternalism is a common silencing term there, like whataboutism and the rest of the arsenal of accusations via labels whose purpose is silencing). I have no principled problem with it (that is, in my opinion paternalism can be an accurate description, since a person is not always aware of what drives him), but it does not allow for discourse. Because instead of dealing with an argument, they explain to me that I myself do not really think that.
It is possible that the association made between anti-moral acts and the post-traumatic experience is made after the fact, as a kind of rationalization by the person suffering from the syndrome, without any real connection between the two. For example, sometimes there are flashbacks in which the sufferer tries to explain to himself why he is having flashbacks and excuses it by saying that these were acts that went against his moral code (whether the one he had then or the one he has today). By the way, I understand that they have found PTSD also in military and police dogs that took part in combat, and they of course are not suspected of moral thinking.