On the Moral Saint (Column 240)

With God's help

In the last two columns I discussed a Platonic approach to reality and some of its implications (see note 1 in the previous column).[1] I brought examples of Platonic approaches that see the world as a stage, with daimons and abstract ideas holding the strings and moving the puppets upon it, and that judge people according to the metaphysics that supposedly drives them. I presented an outlook that rejects such approaches, and argued that we should judge phenomena and people by what they are, not by what they represent and what supposedly drives them.

These discussions brought to mind an article by Susan Wolf[2], moral saints,[3] which I read not long ago, and which deals with a figure she calls the "moral saint." Her claim is that this figure, which ostensibly appears morally perfect, is far from that. Beyond the importance of the discussion of this point itself, I thought it worthwhile to clarify (first of all for myself) the connection between it and the two columns mentioned above. It seems to me that at the root of this association lies a discussion that took place in Column 236 on spiritual solipsism, whose connection to the last two columns (238-9) I had not yet noted. In this column I will try, among other things, to focus on that point.

"The Moral Saint": Definition

Wolf deals with a typological figure she calls the "moral saint," a person whose every action is morally perfect to the highest possible degree. Put differently, this is a person whose entire life and energy are devoted to benefiting others.[4] In the course of her discussion she distinguishes between the "loving saint" and the "rational saint." The former acts out of love. His perfect happiness comes from benefiting others or bringing happiness to others. The loving saint does not feel that he pays any price when he devotes effort and resources to the happiness and joy of others. The rational saint, by contrast, is Kantian. He acts out of commitment to the principle of perfect morality, but at times he pays a price for this. His happiness is constructed similarly to that of ordinary human beings (including elements of self-realization and various interests), but he restrains his impulse and overcomes his egoistic desires in order to engage solely in perfectly benefiting others.

Before I continue, I need to remove the "loving saint" from the table. In my view, this saint is not saintly in a moral and evaluative sense, but at most a person with whom it is pleasant to live (and even that is not certain). His goodness is not the result of an evaluative decision, but of the fact that he is simply built that way. He benefits others like a sheep that enjoys helping its companions or is not inclined to harm them. My view is that a person deserves no moral or evaluative credit for the way he is constituted, only for the decisions he makes. Therefore, from here on I will focus on the figure of the "rational saint," while the loving saint will serve only as an antithesis to sharpen certain points.

Wolf's Claims

Wolf argues that a life of moral sainthood (of both types mentioned above) is not a life we would aspire to find ourselves living. This is not the model most of us would choose to imitate, and we do not regard it as a desirable or good figure, certainly not a perfect one. There is a common feeling that a person ought to engage in other things as well, such as completing his education and fulfilling his aspirations, striving for excellence in various fields, engaging in creation and creativity, artistic or otherwise, or simply ordinary enjoyments as people commonly do. All of these are human pursuits, at least some of which are unrelated to morality and moral sanctity. The moral saint may perhaps acquire these virtues or engage in these fields as well (for example, he may devote his life to developing other people's creativity, and in the process develop his own), but for him this happens only incidentally ("a happy accident," as she puts it). This is not part of the definition of the moral saint, nor will these be ends in themselves for him.

In short, the complete and positive person in our ordinary conception is supposed to engage in fields that are unrelated to morality and do not stem from moral motives, and therefore stand in tension with the figure of the moral saint. Clearly, none of these pursuits is necessary in our ideal model, but the total absence of all of them is "barren and strange," in her phrase; that is, humanly unacceptable, and even evaluatively so. We value people whose morality appears within a more colorful mode of life, one that includes diverse pursuits and interests. Wolf writes that "there is a limit to how much morality we are willing or able to stomach." Therefore, she argues, it surprisingly follows that the moral saint is not, in our eyes, a complete person.

From this one may conclude that moral values are not the only values in our world. Our arsenal of values contains values beyond moral values, and a complete person should conduct himself in light of all of them. Moreover, she argues that there is not even any necessity to assume that moral values are the most important, that is, even the scale of values (the hierarchy among them) is not built unambiguously in the moral direction. A model in which moral values take over a person's life is troubling, because it involves a lack, or even an outright denial, of the saint's selfhood. He may indeed be saintly, but he is certainly not an ideal human being.

Wolf goes on to distinguish between two basic ethical approaches (see them in the fourth notebook, part 3): the utilitarian and the Kantian. The utilitarian approach to morality is consequentialist, grounding conduct in considerations of utility (of the person himself—egoism, or of others, or even of the world as a whole). The Kantian approach is deontological, that is, based on moral intention and not necessarily on results. Her claim is that adherents of both of these ethical conceptions oppose the model of the moral saint as a perfect person. The reason is that even the Kantian, who defines morality along the lines of moral sanctity as described here, holds that morality as a whole is only one part of his evaluative world. Therefore moral perfection is not human perfection.

The most significant claim in the article is that the term "good" is broader than moral good on the one hand, but on the other hand it is also not exhausted by what is good for the person himself (the utilitarian notion). In other words, her basic claim is that there are values beyond moral values, but the other values (those beyond moral values) are not interests but another kind of values. That is, engagement with them is not a necessary evil, a compromise we make with human nature; they are part of human wholeness from the outset. Without this addition, what the article offered would have been only a factual description (how we view one figure or another). Here an evaluative claim is already being presented (how one ought to view it).

Preliminary Discussion: What Is Wrong with the Moral Saint?

I have already dealt here several times in the past with the multiplicity of kinds of values. In Column 15 I discussed moral values versus religious values and argued that these are different kinds of values belonging to different evaluative systems (I argued that, at least in a certain sense, morality is a category foreign to Jewish law). In Column 154 (see also Column 155, and other columns and responsa on the site) I discussed what I called "aesthetic values" (values that are connected in some way to morality, but whose basis is actually a natural disgust toward certain actions and an appreciation for other actions), and argued that the root of these values is probably in social conventions.

All these kinds of values are values in the same sense as moral values. This may be a different type of values, but they are still all values. Moral values and religious values, and probably aesthetic values as well (in the above sense), are values by which we judge people, for praise or blame. One who does not act in accordance with them deserves censure and even the imposition of various social or legal sanctions. By contrast, values such as creativity, talent, self-realization, intellectual depth, or originality are not values in that sense. These are human virtues that we appreciate, but their absence certainly does not justify imposing a sanction. This is not an obligation incumbent on a person, although if he engages in them he has some human virtue (even if not a moral one). One may say that these are optional rather than obligatory moral commandments. In my book Two Wagons I distinguished in this context between values and 'values' (those that carry no sanction), and argued that in a postmodern world there ought not to be values, but only, if anything, 'values.'

If so, the novelty in the existence of different kinds of values is not very far-reaching. On the contrary, insofar as there is something novel in her words, I think it is mistaken. She wants to argue that our positive view of a person who is complete in the sense of his 'values'—that is, the conception that sees him as a more ideal figure than the moral saint (the one who devotes his life to values, without quotation marks)—is not merely a description of our (miserable?) condition. It is a normatively valid attitude. This is how it is proper to view these figures.

Personally, I was not persuaded by her argument. It seems to me that she conflates feelings/emotions with intuitions (and in my opinion this is true of several of her other articles as well). The fact that we see a person who engages in artistic creation, consumes literature, and acquires knowledge in various fields as a more complete human being may be the result of a subjective emotion or feeling on our part, that is, a fact and not a normative conception. Wolf assumes that if we have such feelings they necessarily have objective meaning and validity, but that is of course not necessary. One can of course argue this regarding moral values as well (for it is difficult to provide an objective justification for them too), but I claim that even one who accepts the objective validity of moral values (as I do) can easily deny the objective validity of these feelings. These are not even aesthetic values (which justify sanctions, at least within the society that agreed to them). Here we are dealing with some sort of mere appreciation, but it does not necessarily have objectively valid moral standing.

This is especially true if we place engagement in the other 'values' opposite additional engagement in moral values and benefiting others (values, without quotation marks). In all the above sources I pointed out that it is difficult to rank these kinds of values against one another. These are parallel systems designed to achieve different goals, and therefore it is hard to speak about which is more important than which and to establish a scale between them (even more so than a scale among values of the same type, which is itself not a simple matter). Thus, for example, in clashes between moral values and religious values, because they belong to different fields and contexts it is difficult to decide which overrides which, and which stands above which on a universal scale of values (the claim, in fact, is that there is no such scale). But Wolf definitely does rank them, since in her view one who engages only in values without 'values' stands lower than one who engages also in 'values.' That is, the 'values,' at least in some measure, are ranked above the values. But that already does not seem at all plausible. Even if we see these 'values' as human virtues worthy of some appreciation, what justifies viewing one who engages in them at the expense of benefiting others as more complete than one who engages only in benefiting others (the moral saint)? Perhaps an educated person is more worthy of appreciation than an ignoramus, but if the ignoramus is such because he devotes his life to benefiting others, is it not right to value him more than the educated person? At most one can say that morally the ignoramus is more complete, and intellectually the wise person is more complete. But if it is possible at all to establish some bottom line here that summarizes the two aspects, I do not see why the selfish wise person is preferable to the altruistic ignoramus.

Think about aesthetic values (conventions regarding repellent acts—the ones prohibited in Jewish law under do not make yourselves disgusting, although they carry no moral disgrace). Even if we accord them some importance, it is likely not comparable to the importance of moral values or religious values. This is certainly true of 'values' such as self-realization, creativity, and the like. It may not be right or fitting to demand of a person that he give up his selfhood and devote his entire life to others, but one who nevertheless decides to do so surely deserves the highest possible credit, does he not? Are Rabbi Aryeh Levin or Mother Teresa, who are perhaps the figures closest to what Wolf calls a moral saint, not more worthy of appreciation than any artist or intellectual who realizes his talents?![5]

Seemingly, the required conclusion is that the feelings many of us have toward the moral saint (as Wolf describes him) may perhaps stem from the fact that we ourselves are not on the level of moral saints, and therefore cannot contain such a level of perfect sanctity (in Wolf's phrase). It seems to us in some sense inhuman (it is not us), and perhaps even arouses envy in us. When we see perfect people, we tend to compare them to ourselves and justify ourselves by saying that moral sanctity is not human perfection. But that is our weakness (perhaps a forgivable one). I do not see how one can infer from this that there is truly something flawed in moral sanctity. As stated, it seems that Wolf is conflating feelings with objective evaluation here. If she means to describe what people feel, that is a factual claim and there is not much novelty in it. But it is clear that she intends something stronger: to make an evaluative claim (not merely to describe feelings that we have, but to point to their validity. That is, to argue that it is proper to feel this way).

And yet, at the end of the day, a fleeting feeling steals into my heart that there is something to Wolf's claim. There is something problematic about the moral saint, and not only on the level of conventions. This is not merely self-defense, or the projection of veiled envy of this complete person (because of our human weaknesses). So what, after all, is problematic in the picture of the moral saint as Wolf presents it?

A Religious Explanation: On Ends and Means

The feeling that self-realization is no less important than moral conduct may perhaps be better understood if we view it through the prism of ends and means. In the fifth notebook I pointed out that it is not reasonable to claim that morality is the purpose of man and of creation. I explained this by saying that morality is meant to ensure a healthy society and functioning people, but what are creation and people themselves for? If the purpose of creation were only to benefit them, it would have been better not to create them at all, and there would have been no need for such beneficence. I therefore concluded that it is reasonable to assume that there is some goal that those people who were created are intended to attain. When there is a healthy society and functioning people, they can act to achieve their goals. In that sense, morality, despite its importance, is necessarily only a means. Beyond it there is a greater end for the sake of which this whole game is intended. Morality is more basic but less important (that is, lower on the scale of goals, or values). There I suggested that this greater end is the set of religious goals that the commandments are meant to achieve, but even if one does not accept that suggestion, the logic seems correct to me. Morality looks more like a means than like an end.[6]

This idea can be illustrated by the charming story of the poor Chinese man who received two small coins as charity and bought with them a slice of bread and a flower. When he was asked why he had not bought two slices of bread, he answered that the bread is meant for living, but the flower gives us a purpose for which to live. There is no point in devoting our lives to worrying about the means if that comes at the expense of attaining the goal.[7] This is somewhat similar to a common reasoning that explains why Torah study, which is the most important commandment (Torah study is equal to all of them — Torah study is equal to them all; Peah 1:1), is set aside for any time-sensitive commandment (see Mo'ed Katan 9b).[8] In part of Meiri's discussion there (ibid.) one can understand that study is meant so that we may act, and if because of study we refrain from doing what we learn, then the study itself is worthless.[9] So too one should understand the Talmud in Kiddushin 29b:

The Rabbis taught: If both he and his son must study, he takes precedence over his son. Rabbi Judah says: If his son is diligent, sharp, and his learning endures, then his son takes precedence over him. (Our Rabbis taught: if he and his son both need to study, he takes precedence over his son. Rabbi Yehuda says: if his son is diligent and sharp and his learning is well retained, his son takes precedence.)

We see from here that basically the father takes precedence over the son, unless the son has greater talent. The idea underlying this rule is that the general purpose of the chain of transmission of the Torah as a whole is to increase Torah and glorify it, and if each person concerns himself with his son's study instead of studying himself and increasing Torah, then everyone is occupied with the means and no one will bring the matter to its goal (the increase of Torah). Passing the Torah onward is a means so that in the course of this ongoing transmission the Torah may grow and increase. And if everyone is occupied with the means, the goal for which all this is intended will not be achieved.[10]

From this one may perhaps understand why self-realization is no less important, and perhaps more important, than moral activity. Ultimately, moral activity is intended to create a healthy and proper society and functioning people. But people and society are intended to achieve some goal, such as knowledge, understanding, creation, intellectual depth, and the like. Therefore it is not reasonable to engage only in morality and neglect the goal for which it is intended.

Something like this is written by Maimonides in the concluding chapter of the Guide of the Perplexed, where he describes four kinds of perfection and ranks them:

And after what we have already set before you, I shall now say this: the early and later philosophers have already explained that the perfections found in a human being are of four kinds. The first, and the lowest of them—the one for which the people of the world have exhausted their days—is the perfection of possessions, that is, whatever money, garments, utensils, servants, lands, and the like a person may have. Even for a person to be a great king belongs to this category. This is a perfection that has no real connection at all with that individual; it is only a relation, and in terms of the greater benefit he derives from it, it is wholly imaginary—meaning: this is my house, this is my servant, this money is mine, these are my troops and my army. But when one examines his actual self, one finds that all these things are external to him. Each of these possessions exists independently in its own right. Therefore, when that relation disappears, that man who had been a great king can awaken with no difference between him and the lowliest of men, without any change at all having occurred in the things that had been attributed to him. The philosophers explained that one who directs his efforts and labor toward this kind of perfection has labored only for something purely imaginary, something that has no permanence. Even if he retains that possession all the days of his life, it gives him no perfection in himself at all. The second kind is more dependent on the human body than the first: it is the perfection of the body's structure, constitution, and form—that is, that a person's temperament be in the most balanced condition, and that his limbs be proportioned and strong as they ought to be. This kind of perfection as well should not be made the ultimate aim, because it is a bodily perfection. It belongs to a person not insofar as he is human, but insofar as he is an animal, and in this he shares with even the lowliest of animals. Even if the strength of some human being were brought to the highest possible level, it still would not equal the strength of a sturdy mule, much less that of a lion or an elephant. The end of this perfection, as we have mentioned, is to carry a heavy burden, break a thick bone, and the like—things in which there is no great bodily benefit, while any benefit to the soul is entirely absent from this category. The third kind is more internal to the human body than the second: it is the perfection of moral virtues, namely, that a person's traits should attain their highest excellence. Most of the commandments are only for the sake of bringing a person to this kind of perfection. But this kind of perfection too is only a preparation for something else and is not an end in itself, for all moral qualities concern only the relation between a person and others. Thus this perfection in character is as though prepared for the benefit of other people and serves as an instrument for something beyond itself. For if you imagine a person living entirely alone, with no dealings with anyone else, all his good qualities would remain idle, unnecessary, and would not perfect him in any way. He needs them and gains their benefit only in relation to others. The fourth kind is the true human perfection: that a person attain the intellectual virtues, meaning the conception of intelligibles from which one learns true opinions concerning the divine. This is the ultimate end. It perfects a person with true perfection; it belongs to him alone; through it he attains eternal permanence; and through it a human being is truly human. Examine each of the three preceding perfections, and you will find that they are for others, not for you. Even if, according to common understanding, they must also belong to you, still they are yours and others' alike. But this final perfection is yours alone; no one else shares in it with you at all. It will be yours alone and not shared with strangers. Therefore it is fitting that your efforts be directed toward attaining what remains truly yours, and that you not toil and wear yourself out for others…

He explains that morality and the repair of society, that is, the collection of duties toward others, are means to the acquisition of wisdom. Therefore the final goal for which everything is intended is intellectual-spiritual perfection, the acquisition of wisdom, and that is something a person acquires by himself and for himself. Society is a means by which the individual can attain his goal, and for this the world was created. Hence morality and character traits, whose purpose is the repair of society, are means to the great goal: self-realization and spiritual-intellectual perfection.

If so, the moral saint really is an incomplete figure, since he devotes all his life and resources to the means and neglects the end. This may perhaps explain the feeling Susan Wolf describes, according to which the moral saint is not a complete person.

Difficulties with the Proposed Explanation

But even this seems only a partial explanation. First, one can think of a division of tasks within a social framework. Even if there are other goals that society should achieve, why should there not be certain people who take upon themselves the care of society itself, thereby enabling others to achieve their goals? In the example we saw from the Talmud, for example, a father who sees that his son is more talented than he is should devote himself to the advancement of his son. In the final analysis the goals of society are thus achieved better, and therefore the father is acting correctly in sacrificing his own development for the sake of his son. And I do not see why such a father would be an incomplete figure in our eyes. Why should we demand of him that he pursue his own perfection at his son's expense? In a human society there will always be people of one sort and people of another, and it is not reasonable to demand that everyone conduct himself in the same way (that no one be a moral saint). In general, a single utopian figure for all human beings is always a problematic model. At most, one can speak about a perfect society within which not everyone is a moral saint, but it does not seem reasonable that each of its members who is a moral saint should necessarily be considered flawed (incomplete).

Moreover, Susan Wolf certainly does not write from a religious point of departure. Therefore it is difficult for me to accept that the intuitions she describes are based on the claim that the world has a purpose and that this disqualifies engagement with means. Such a purpose can be given only by a Creator. That is not the point of departure from which Wolf's philosophical inquiry proceeds. In general, philosophy, and certainly analytic philosophy, ought not to assume such a premise. We arrive at the surprising conclusion that specifically in a religious worldview the conclusion is called for that the moral saint is indeed not a complete figure. A person must engage also in his own perfection and not only in others. But in a secular outlook, according to which the world has no purposes and everything is a matter of values that we determine, it is not clear why personal completion and self-realization should override moral values.[11]

In sum, it is not likely that this is the explanation of Wolf's claim. If my sense is correct that there is justice in what she says, that is, that there is nevertheless something flawed in moral sanctity as such, it is not only because of engagement with means instead of ends. Moreover, even if on the social plane there is justification for a certain person to be a moral saint, there is something flawed in this figure on the personal plane. The question is what flaw can be found in it.

The Lord saves man and beast ("Man and beast You save, O Lord")

On the face of it, it seems that Wolf means to say something different. The feeling she describes means that such a moral saint is a kind of machine and not a human being, and therefore he cannot be a model of human perfection, in the spirit of The Torah was not given to the ministering angels (the Torah was not given to the ministering angels; Yoma 30a) or those who ate the manna ("to the eaters of manna"; Mekhilta, Beshalach). This may perhaps be a perfect creature in a certain respect, but it is difficult to see in it a complete human being (!).

Here perhaps is the place to return to the distinction she makes between the loving saint and the rational saint. Precisely the rational saint looks like a kind of machine. He does not follow his tendencies and impulses as all flesh ordinarily does; every one of his steps is weighed on the scales of morality and values. He does not flow naturally but conducts himself in a calculated and mechanical way. By contrast, the loving saint actually seems like a flesh-and-blood human being and not a machine. He is a person driven by impulses and interests, and he "flows" with the good that is ingrained and internalized within him, rather than dictated by him against his natural tendencies (in Rabbi Kook's terms[12] he is "straight" and not "conquering").[13]

But this is not correct. The loving saint is not a person who acts on the basis of values, but a person whose tendencies are naturally good. It is difficult to see such a person as a complete human being, and even to give him credit for his natural tendencies. A complete human being is one who decides on proper and good conduct even when this runs against his natural tendencies. In Kantian ethics (which, in my view, has no alternative), precisely the rational saint seems a figure of a more complete person.[14] He is certainly not a machine, but a human being in the full sense of the word. A person who takes the reins of his life into his own hands, and does not let the horses lead the wagon. He decides and directs the wagon and the horses in the direction he chooses. Precisely because this comes out of struggle, there is here a fuller human being.

So the moral saint is certainly not a machine. What, then, is so bad (or incomplete) about him? It seems to me that here, at long last, we arrive at my previous two columns.

The Connection Between the Moral Saint and Spiritual Solipsism

In Column 236 I explained that the directives of Jewish law regarding emotions are an instance of love that depends on something (love that depends on something). Thus, for example, the commandment to love the convert, which is defined as love for him because of his convert status (and not simply to love him), may lead to the conclusion that the love is not directed toward the person but toward the value or idea reflected in him and in his path. The same is true regarding hatred of the wicked or sinners. There too, the hatred is ostensibly supposed to be directed toward ideas and values, not toward people. In the terms of the last two columns, this is spiritual solipsism, that is, a person who sees around him not people but ideas and concepts. He stands alone before the ideas and before the Holy One, blessed be He, and the people, those those who dwell in houses of clay (= we, all of us), are only a means for fulfilling his obligations. Even his emotions are directed toward the ideas and not toward people. I noted there that this is actually a Platonic outlook. We do not see before us concrete people but ideas and processes.

I explained there that it is easy and tempting, from those halakhic definitions, to arrive at the (Platonic) formulation according to which love is not supposed to be directed toward the person but toward the decision or the values he expresses. Spiritual solipsism is usually derived from a Platonic approach. We saw there that from the spiritual solipsist's point of view, other human beings are extras (background figures in a movie), whose entire role is only to constitute a field of conduct for him before his Creator. He gives charity in order to be righteous (before his Creator), and loves people in order to discharge the obligation of the commandment to love them. So there is actually Platonism here. From the solipsist's point of view, there are no concrete human beings around him, only ideas and values. People are at most human-shaped targets, and the world is a playground or shooting range through which the Holy One, blessed be He, puts us in order to test us. This is a Platonic (and also Marxist) outlook that sees the human being as the concrete expression of ideas, where what matters is mainly the ideational foundation and not the person.

Kantian ethics as well (which, as stated, in my view has no alternative), which holds that a moral act is an act done out of a voluntary-rational decision (responding to the categorical imperative) and not out of emotion or other motives, can easily lead to such a view. The emotion of pity, for example, is no exception to this. When I see a poor person, I should give him charity because that is the right thing, not because I pity him (though of course there is no defect in such pity existing). Giving that comes from pity is an action that places the giver at the center (see Column 236) and not the poor person. Such a person gives charity in order to relieve a distress that exists within himself and not because it is the right thing to do. That is why Kant does not see this as a moral act. The same applies on the religious-legal plane. A person is supposed to observe commandments by force of the command, and not because of identification, or love and attraction of one sort or another to things. Seemingly, a Platonic conclusion is called for from here too. A person is supposed to act on the basis of values and not on the basis of emotions, and therefore the focus of his activity should be the ideas and values and not the people who are the objects of those ideas and the bearers of those ideals.

But as I explained there, this is a mistake. Even in the Kantian conception of morality and of Jewish law, where the commands place the ideals at the center, in the final analysis emotions are supposed to be directed toward human beings. By the same token, I now claim, moral values in general are supposed to be directed toward human beings. We all know people who are moral saints in the sense that their entire life and energy are devoted to the realization of values and ideologies, but they live wholly within the sphere of values. They do not see human beings before them. Idealists are people with whom and beside whom it is very hard to live. They are demanding, tend to ignore human weaknesses, and focus on values and ideals. Someone I know once said: "I have no friends; I have only companions for the road." From his point of view, the road overrides friendship. This is how the communists conceived of the individual human being as "grease on the wheels of the revolution." Although the revolution as a whole is meant to benefit the individual human being (to equalize his condition with that of other people), on the way it is willing to sacrifice all individual human beings, especially those who do not go along with it, but also those who do, in order to achieve the goal. This is ideological derangement, which from an excess of ideology has lost its relation to human beings. In the communist revolution this had extreme expressions, but anyone familiar with ideologues knows that there is something of this in almost all of them.

It is important to understand that this really is a kind of moral saint, since he devotes his entire life and energy to the realization of ideals, and in fact ideologies. But precisely because of this it is difficult and unreasonable to see him as a perfect person. A perfect person is a person who sees human beings before him. Usually this means that he will not be a moral saint, if only because he too is a human being, and therefore he himself is also one of those whose impulses and interests must be taken into account, and of course also whose self-realization and desire for self-perfection.

The moral saint in this sense is a spiritual solipsist, and there is no wonder that we have difficult feelings toward him, that is, that we do not see him as a perfect person. This is not because he is focusing on means and not on ends, nor necessarily because of our weaknesses (though perhaps yes?…). It is simply not truly a complete figure. A figure that lives and dances with ideas instead of interacting with people is not a morally perfect figure.

If we return to the distinction I made above, this is another kind of mechanicity. I said that the Kantian is not a mechanical person, but I was referring to a person who acts in a Kantian way. By contrast, the figure I described here is indeed flawed because of a mechanical mode of conduct, but the mechanicity is not on the side of the actor but on the side of the recipient. I explained that a person who decides rationally is not mechanical, and there is no defect in that. But if he lives facing ideas, then what stands before him is ideas and not human beings. In that sense there is mechanicity here (not on the side of the actor but on the side of the objects of his activity), that is, ideology and not an approach to people, and in this I do see a defect or deficiency in moral perfection. Perhaps this is why we see the moral saint as a flawed (incomplete) person.

I must say that this description is not necessary, because it does not fully explain the problem with the moral saint. In principle, a moral saint may indeed relate to people and not to ideas. Not every moral saint is a spiritual solipsist. There may be a moral saint who truly and sincerely cares with all his energy and resources for people and not for ideas and ideologies. About such a person I truly have no bad word to say. Regarding him, I really think Susan Wolf is wrong, and that he is indeed a complete person. What I am offering here is only an explanation for the general feeling she describes, as though there were a defect in moral sanctity. I am suggesting that perhaps this feeling refers only to a certain kind of moral sanctity, namely spiritual solipsism.

If we return to the two examples I mentioned, Mother Teresa and Rabbi Aryeh Levin, it seems to me that their figures (not exactly the concrete people they were, who certainly were not perfect) do represent genuine moral sanctity. They were not spiritual solipsists, since at least in my estimation they definitely saw human beings before their eyes and not ideas. Such a person is indeed a complete person, and if we have difficult feelings toward him, that is probably only because of envy, or because of an unjustified projection of the attitude that is appropriate toward moral solipsists (that is, the implicit assumption that every moral saint is a spiritual solipsist, that is, a fanatical ideologue—and that is not so). In these cases, such feelings do not reflect a valid moral evaluation.

Conclusion: A Note on Emotion and Morality

I have already clarified this in the past, so I will do so here briefly. The distinction I proposed does not overlap with the distinction between action out of emotion (a loving saint) and action out of intellect (a rational saint). I am speaking about people whose morality is Kantian, that is, who act out of evaluative decision and not merely out of natural emotion (though of course there is no obstacle to their also having natural emotions that move them to benefit others). Still, the values and duties by which they conduct themselves should be directed toward people and not focus only on ideas and ideologies. Thus, for example, giving charity should be done in such a way that we see before our eyes a flesh-and-blood human being and not only an idea and value of helping the weak. But this does not mean that what moves me is emotion toward the person, but rather decision and response to the moral command. This is the sense of duty (and not emotion), but it is directed toward human beings and not only toward ideas.

[1] For a systematic analysis of the phenomenon, see the series of columns 178–184, and especially Column 180, on Popper and Platonism.

[2] Mentioned in Column 238, note 4.

[3] For those interested in a concise summary, see here.

[4] These two are not necessarily equivalent definitions, and this is not the place to elaborate.

[5] See Column 139 (and also 231) on Gauguin's dilemma.

[6] See Column 122 regarding consequentialist explanations of morality.

[7] Compare the explanation I proposed in Column 153 for the Talmudic dispute over why saving a life overrides the Sabbath.

[8] See an overview here.

[9] This does not necessarily contradict the claim I have repeated here several times, that Talmudic study is not merely a means to observance of the commandments. Study reaches its culmination in fulfilling what one studies. Not that study is a means to observance, but that study that leads to action is the most complete study. Put differently, action is the completion of study.

[10] Compare my claim in the article in the book The Rabbi and in Column 139.

[11] To the extent that moral values can exist at all in an atheist world. In my opinion this is impossible (see on this in part 3 of the fourth notebook).

[12] See Ein Aya, Berakhot ch. 1 – 73, 165 ; ch. 3 – 36 ; ch. 5 – 86 ; ch. 6 – 24 ; Shabbat ch. 5 – 82 ; ch. 6 – 32. The source of these remarks is in Maimonides' Eight Chapters in chapter six.

[13] In this context it is worth seeing the analysis of Taoism versus Kantian morality in Raymond Smullyan's book, The Tao Is Silent, especially the amusing dialogue between man and God brought there. See on this also at the beginning of the third chapter of my book Sciences of Freedom.

[14] This seemingly does not fit with Maimonides' conclusion in the sixth chapter of his Eight Chapters, and this is not the place.