On Religious Experience (Column 259)

And to add further explanation, one should understand well the term “grasping” that Elijah used: “No thought can grasp You,” etc. For every intellect, when it understands and apprehends some concept with its mind, that intellect grasps the concept and encompasses it within its mind, and the concept is grasped, encompassed, and clothed within the intellect that apprehended and understood it. And the intellect is also clothed in the concept at the time that it apprehends and grasps it with its mind. For example, when a person understands and fully apprehends a certain halakhah in the Mishnah or Gemara correctly and clearly, his intellect grasps and encompasses it, and his intellect is also clothed in it at that very moment. Now this halakhah is the wisdom and will of the Holy One, blessed be He, for it arose in His will that when Reuven claims such-and-such, for example, and Shimon claims such-and-such, the ruling between them should be such-and-such. And even if this matter never was and never will be—namely, that these claims and counterclaims actually come before a court—nevertheless, since this is what arose in the will and wisdom of the Holy One, blessed be He, that if this one would claim thus and that one thus, the ruling would be thus, then when a person knows and apprehends this ruling with his intellect, as a halakhah set out before us in the Mishnah or Gemara or the halakhic decisors, he thereby apprehends, grasps, and encompasses with his intellect the will and wisdom of the Holy One, blessed be He—He whom no thought can grasp, nor His will and wisdom, except through their being clothed in the halakhot set out before us. And his intellect is also clothed in them. And this is a wondrous union, the like of which there is none, nor anything comparable to it at all in physical reality: that they become truly one and united from every side and aspect.
(Tanya, ch. 5)

Seemingly, Tanya too expresses the same understanding as Rabbi Chaim regarding Torah study, no? Learning, the absorption in the mind—that itself is cleaving to God. And this seems quite prominent, especially when in other writings from roughly the same period by prominent rebbes one finds an approach according to which it is דווקא in breaks during learning that one attains devekut through some sort of thought/feeling.

Indeed, on this point the Tanya is very similar to Nefesh HaChaim. I’ve already written about this in several places (and also in the trilogy).

The argument in favor of emotion is that just as in other areas the emotional component finds fulfillment, so too should it be in religion, which is so significant. We should not skip over it. It is just like the other areas of life. It needs to be within life. A Torah of life.

Emotion and experience, in their role as merely a means (I doubt that, but let it pass), are the sweet coating on a bitter pill—they make it easier to swallow. Life itself is not made up only of moments of intellectual pleasure, and it may be boring or bitter.
In addition, a social and experiential (emotional) basis is a platform that softens automatic oppositions and allows unbarriered acquaintance with other positions. A person who has formed his views tends to defend them and lock himself into a matching social milieu that reinforces those views. When that circle is broken, and he becomes friendly with “strangers,” the opinions too may soften, and change or develop. (That argument is formulated according to the view of one who thinks positions are indeed more important than social ties.)
But there is something more here. The old world blocked the voices of emotion and the psyche because of the chaotic dimension they contain. Art was almost the only channel for expressing them. Then Freud came and explained fairly well the costs and consequences of those various blockages. The modern world internalized Freud, continued developing the psychology that came from his school, and since then has continued to be careful to remove the restraints from those blockages. All this Carlebach-style religiosity, the digging into the soul, the approaches that emphasize experience—they are reactions to that old blockage that the human psyche rebels against. Some would argue—to the point of exaggeration.

I didn’t understand how the intellect can teach us about values (and I’m not claiming that emotion or experience can).

A remark from A.Tz.G.:

The Song of Beautiful Landscapes

Why are landscapes beautiful, and the approaches to the forest at evening
drawing into the melody of the organ warmed within you,
and a stream beyond the railway tracks brushes
the trembling strings in the heart, and the body longs to walk along its banks
as if once, in childhood evenings, one had wandered there…?

Because every body in the world has its souls joined to it
with the finest longings and the sweetness of heartfelt song,
from waters of love rising like spring and summer blossoming together,
and from shining tear-waters of late summer in the secret of separation,
and the deep-red of late fruits in the orchards…

No landscape is beautiful in itself—in its forest, its river, its well.
Its beauty, its hues, and the delight of its scent it took in abundant plenty
from the souls of those who walked within it in steps of yearning,
and song in the blood and the little harps of livingness in the body…
Like this weaving, the beautiful souls wove this sky,
and stamped into it the flowers of its hues and mixed wines of myrrh into the down of its clouds.

Shimi,
I brought that argument in the column.

Chayota, what you wrote here is about the usefulness of emotion, or about its being a means to good things. I didn’t deny that. The question is whether it itself constitutes a value.

Ofir,
In my view this is a kind of cognition (in the eyes of the intellect). One can recognize values, and that is an intellectual act because it is an observing intellect.

And let us say amen.

Many commandments in the Torah are commandments concerning emotion: love of God, fear of God, “love your neighbor as yourself,” “do not covet,” “and walk in His ways” (which Hazal and Rambam interpreted as a commandment to acquire good character traits), “Serve the Lord with joy,” and more. And this is very understandable, because emotion is a very significant part of a person, and the Torah wants to refine it just as it comes to refine actions. Therefore it is clear that emotion has significant religious value, and any action that comes to arouse a positive emotion is an action of religious value.

Is there also value in good feelings that arose on their own and not as the result of some chosen act? From the standpoint of moral judgment, perhaps not, because it is not the result of choice. But it is still a positive state of affairs, just as rain is a more positive state than drought, and health is a more positive state than illness, etc., even though they too are not the result of human choice.

See column 22.

Developed and balanced emotion has value in itself. The value is a complete human stature. Health and wholeness. Its opposite (lack of emotional capacity, emotions without control and balance) is a defect and a blemish.

By the way, is sound judgment a value? Does it have intrinsic value or is it only a means?

Do you see a connection between scientific empiricism and subjective existentialism? They are both conceptions in which human experience is the measure by which we know our world, and there is nothing else.

Even the experience of abstract things is grasped through a sense. It is just different from the ordinary senses in that it merges with our personality. That is, this sense is the soul. The value of experiences is connected to the fact that a person acts toward some goal and needs to know (to experience) whether it has been achieved or not.

What the rabbi here calls religious experiences, at least in Einstein’s case (his famous description of standing alone on the mountain), is indeed an experience of God (the name Elohim)—that is, of the Creator of the world. But not of the Holy One, blessed be He (the Tetragrammaton)—that is, of the Giver of the Torah (the commanding God). And the truth is that anyone who studies physics seriously and deeply and understands it, at some point feels (experiences) this. It is in fact the experience of order and intelligibility in the universe (which in itself is not at all understandable—why it should be intelligible). This is the experience of God that creates the quality of love Rambam spoke of in the first chapters of Sefer Mada. (He did not distinguish between Hashem and Elohim, and that is a question.) The love that precedes awe. It is quite possible that these are also the experiences of artists and various atheists (they experience God without knowing that it is He).

I don’t know what to do with these statements. If you develop emotion, then we’re talking about actions that you perform, not the emotion itself. The emotion there is an expression of something, not a spontaneous matter that arises as a result of a mental structure. As for its absence being a defect and a blemish, I don’t deny that. After all, I wrote that someone who has a defect in his brain is blemished. The question is whether such a defect is a moral deficiency or merely an illness (lack of health). Missing a leg is also a defect. But defective values are not a blemish; they are a moral deficiency. That is a matter of judgment, not of fact.
Sound judgment is a tool.

I didn’t understand the question. Ordinary empiricism (as opposed to skeptical empiricism) sees cognition as an expression of reality. Clearly reality is mediated to us through cognition. So what? Existentialism focuses on the experience itself and not as an expression of something else.

All this is true, but what does it have to do with the discussion? The question is whether there is value in that experience, or whether it is an expression of a perception, and the perception is what is judged on the axiological plane. Is someone who perceives reality like Einstein but does not have his religious experiences morally defective? At most he has some sort of defect (and even that is debatable).

I greatly enjoyed your determination that decisions cannot be made by emotion, just as they cannot be made with the eyes or the legs. This refutes the popular claim that the superiority of intellect over emotion is itself a distinctly intellectual conception to which emotion strongly objects, and if we do not accept the superiority of emotion—this conception has no authority.
This argument is valid only if there are two decision-making systems, but as stated, there is no basis for that at all.
Now, just as everyone understands that one does not make decisions based on appearances when there is opposing evidence from hearing, so it is clear to all of us that it is not advisable to make decisions on the basis of data gathered only by the emotional system, and one must include additional data in the set of considerations. I assume that when we are aware that emotion is sometimes misleading, we should prefer intellectual data over emotional sensations.
Even so, it seems that your way in general, and this column gives expression to it, is to completely dismiss the data known to you from the emotional system alone.
As a limited example, my emotion, and that of many people like me (as you describe in the column), does indeed see inherent value in religious experience. In their view, religion is deficient without an experiential dimension. True, there is no intellectual grounding for this, but just as there are things that cannot be heard and the only way to know they exist is through sight, so I assume there are conclusions that arise only through feeling, and this conclusion is among them.
Would anyone claim: it is irrational to relate to things on the basis of sight alone, without taking into account hearing, which as stated is irrelevant?
I think that including the experiential dimension in religion need not be based on this or that logical consideration; it is enough that human emotional intuition sees value in it in order to determine that there is value here. Maybe not obligatory, but certainly significant.
More broadly: in order to grasp things in the intellectual system, there are built-in rules of logic. The intellect has advanced analytical tools including proof and refutation, experiment and measurement. Emotion uses none of these; it simply feels. It feels because it feels.
I agree that the rational person should decide also according to the intellectual data, and if their analysis points in a direction against the conclusion that would be reached on the basis of the emotional system alone, it is proper not to ignore that (as in the decision to marry based on love alone). But it seems to me that there are conclusions for which there is no intellectual refutation at all; they are not in the measurable sphere at all, they cannot be refuted, and therefore indeed there is no proof for them. Why in such a case should we not accept the conclusions of the emotional system?
Is this not an extreme suspiciousness that attributes to emotions a scheme of deception, similar to someone who has often been burned by visual illusions and therefore refuses to accept any conclusion that must rely only on what he sees (which, it seems, is an emotional rather than intellectual decision)?
I would be glad for your response.

There is a misunderstanding here. First, I am not talking about emotion, because emotion is not a cognitive tool (it is emotion in the affective sense). Experience is perhaps an expression of cognitions. And about that I wrote that if it is indeed a cognitive tool, there is no obstacle to taking it into account. Where did you see me reject this entirely? I raised suspicions that of course should be taken into account.
On the question of intuition I will only say that intuition is indeed a very important tool, but when there are conflicting intuitions or logical considerations against it, one should not regard it as sacred. The fact that intuition says something does not necessarily make it true. And I write this as someone who has written extensively in favor of intuition and its use.

First of all, I only wanted to add and clarify. But indeed, as the rabbi said, he is defective (whether morally or not doesn’t matter. There is a flaw and a lack). And wholeness is a value. Therefore there is value in not being defective.

I was responding to what you wrote, and this is your wording:
“Then what do people mean when they say that one makes decisions with emotion? There are people who make decisions intellectually based only on data from emotion. They mistakenly call this emotion making the decision. Now one can also understand that such a way of making decisions is mistaken (unsuccessful), because emotion provides only some of the parameters relevant to the decision. Thus in the example I gave above, even if there is chemistry and love with the partner, it is still not certain that this is enough to decide to marry them. There are other considerations that are important to take into account, and emotion is only one of them. A decision based on only part of the picture is usually a less good decision.”
Now, just as an example, we have a discussion whether value can be attributed to experiences. I have no valid intellectual argument for or against. You brought various arguments and rejected them in one way or another. We are left in a situation where we have no logical reason at all to invent that there is value.
Nevertheless, I, and many like me, still feel that there is value. Call it emotion, call it feeling, call it intuition. Once we have such an emotional-feeling-intuitive sense, I do not think it is absurd to base our intellectual determination on those data. Since data of another kind are simply not relevant to the present discussion, as has been shown.
In the present case I do not see a conflicting intuition (perhaps this exists for you, but I think we agree that many people feel as I do).
Nor are there logical considerations against it (that is, ones that would force us to regard it as false or mistaken), so why not accept the intellectual conclusion based on this feeling?
But if you say that you are in favor of using intuition in a logical vacuum (I did not get that impression, though I still haven’t gone through the whole site…), then we have no principled disagreement, only one in this particular case. Do you have a logical consideration against the value of religious experience? Is the consideration that one cannot determine absolutely whether the experience actually present is the one required—that this is the consideration?

By the way, I was speaking only about the value of experience as a perception of reality, and not about emotions, of course. Einstein’s experience was not emotional in my view. It was simply the physical equivalent of “perceiving and seeing the exaltedness and greatness of the Creator.” But part of the encounter with something greater than you is always, the first time, accompanied by amazement (an emotion). In itself it expresses the weakness and smallness of the perceiver and experiencer. But afterward it disappears. (Isaiah son of the city.) But the experience of exaltedness and greatness of course remains.

In any case, as the rabbi said, lack of pangs of conscience does indeed indicate a defect—not immoral, but a defect all the same. And the other emotional arousals too (anger, hatred, romantic love, etc.) are, in my opinion, raw material from which—and which—one is supposed to shape into a fixed cognitive imprint in the soul (in consciousness), and not simply continue to be swept along in the currents of the sea of emotion or fly like a leaf in the wind (the סערת הרגשות, storm of emotions). That is, they have a conscious and developmental role. In the end, someone who transforms pangs of conscience into awe is on a higher plane (more developed) than a robot whose operating system is programmed with moral doctrine, and in practice he is also more moral. In fact, it seems to me that lack of empathy is the result of the most immoral reality there is, and not merely a neurological problem (lack of recognition of the existence of other people). Someone who has no empathy at all seems to me to have no soul at all. One cannot speak of morality in such a context. Just as animals are not moral (they do not really have empathy; they have instincts).

The principled division between intellect and emotion is not clear to me. Moral feeling “demands” that I act; it does not exist passively for itself. What distinguishes it from other, non-moral emotions is the emotional charge it arouses in me. The intellect cannot decide this question before my intuitive cognition ranks the importance of the different emotions. And even that ranking is arrived at through emotional tools. The “intellect” speaks only in this language; its moral commands are the internalization of an intuitive recognition of values. For example, how do I know that murder is immoral? There is not, and cannot be, a rational source for that. It must be a primary reason whose content we know only through inner illumination.
Consider this: even if we accept that intellect has an independent abstract existence, why do I act in accordance with it? The only answer is that this is what I “want.” I do only what I want. This very wanting here is factual, so even on your account I obey my moral principle because that is how I am, my emotion is built that way. The naturalistic fallacy presents a paradox from which it itself cannot escape.
A logical way out of this duality: emotion exists in me and moves me to act; intellect describes what emotion experiences and translates it into a real and defined command. It accompanies the process and organizes the degree of my attention to the various experiences.

Rabbi, thank you, and I enjoyed it very much as usual.
How is a person supposed to judge what God wants from him without experience?
You, who greatly enjoy studying a sugya and experience the light in its study, subordinate yourself to a book that does not obligate you at all (the Gemara and rabbinic literature) only because of the experience in it. I assume you would not like the learning experience of the tannaim (derashot, etc.), and therefore you and the other sages decided to change the ways of halakhah and learning so that there would be a good experience.
Therefore asking whether there is value in experience is like asking whether there is value in faith; experience is the basis of values. It is the glasses through which we look and choose the “good.”

Another example: how can one decide between conflicting values without inner experience?

There are definitely good reasons against seeing emotion as a value. Emotion is some state that is created because of my mental structure. Such a thing has no value. Value belongs to an action that I decided to do and carried out myself. So if you have a feeling or intuition that there is value in emotions, I would ignore it. Mere illusion.

It’s simply not true that it doesn’t obligate me. It definitely obligates me, and that is part of my enjoyment: clarifying what is supposed to guide me.
As for methods of derash, I dealt with this for years and published a lot of material about it. How did you conclude that it doesn’t interest me? Nor do I accept that they changed the methods of study so there would be a good experience. They changed them because they thought that was correct.
As for experience as the basis of values, I don’t think I understood what you meant. If you think experience is a tool for perceiving values (like conscience)—I said what I think about that.

What you call inner illumination is ethical cognition. It is not emotion (in the affective sense). If you call that emotion, then our dictionaries are not synchronized.
If emotion causes you to act, there is no value in your actions. You are not doing them; you are being acted through emotions that arise within you. What value is there in that? If you mean that you recognize some value (and that is what you call emotion)—then once again we return to the need to synchronize our dictionaries.

1. I cannot do something without wanting it. 2. Can I want to do something without there being an emotion that moves me to act? The need to be moral is not intellectual. This is not merely a verbal disagreement, because intellect as such is perceived by most of us as an analytical-mathematical process; it is not identified with need and obligation. The motivation for action will always be emotional. Precisely the principled distinction you drew between “ethical remorse” and “emotional conscience” is only a lexical distinction. Remorse arouses conscience; its ethics seeks conscience just as much as it seeks the deed. Conscience is the manifestation of remorse itself. There is no theoretical possibility of remorse without conscience. Why would I ask forgiveness if I do not feel guilt? In what sense is the experience of conscience separate from logical remorse?
In Rambam, in the laws of repentance, after he explains that the proper path is to do the truth because it is truth, and he calls this service out of love, he goes on at length to explain this mode of service and compares it to love of a woman, such that one’s mind is never free of her…

1. True. 2. Definitely yes. The essential meaning of will is a force created from nothing. If something created it, then it is not will. That is the meaning of free will.
Intellect in this context includes thought and values/willing, and will is the basis from which everything begins. The two halakhot you cited in Rambam are of course an internal contradiction. And the only way to solve it (and I have already written this here) is precisely by understanding that you are not right. The description from Song of Songs does not come to describe emotion, but the degree of intensity required by intellectual love (commitment to truth).

With God’s help, 8 Kislev 5780

There is no contradiction at all in Rambam’s words. A person’s recognition that his God is the good and the truth—that is what brings a person to a feeling of intense love toward the source of goodness and truth, and to a desire to devote himself to Him and give Him pleasure without any calculation of personal benefit.

And so it is also with true love between human beings. Recognition of the excellence of the beloved soul brings the lover to a powerful desire for unceasing connection with the object of his love and to a willingness for endless sacrifice on its behalf. Such is the love of parents for their children, and such is the love of husband and wife, to which the proper love between man and his Creator is compared.

The insight that knowing the excellence of the beloved is what arouses the feeling of love toward him and brings one to a strong desire to give him pleasure also underlies Rambam’s guidance for marriage (in Hilkhot Ishut ch. 15), that the basis for a successful marriage is mutual appreciation. When he “honors her more than his own body” and she sees him as a “king and prince,” that mutual appreciation is translated into mutual devotion.

Regards, Shatz

Hello R. Michi.
I understand experience as a tool that helps internalize learned or emotional contents, raising them to awareness and enabling renewed thought and feeling.
For example, a person engaged in a learned sugya or watching a film / listening to music may, after some period of engagement, find himself experiencing (“observing”) the contents with which he is occupied, whether intellectual or emotional. This experience is an additional dimension in cognition that will allow a kind of internal, almost physiological construction of the contents.
Therefore, in this sense, experience certainly has value, because it can help—if one knows how to use it—in assimilating the contents with which we have engaged.
I cannot refrain from writing that in the kabbalistic world, the non-Hasidic one (Hasidic = psychologizing interpretations, some good and useful, some nonsense that degrade the soul), the use of experience is necessary, though they do not make it the main thing. That is, after studying a sugya in Rashash in depth and deciding what the practical halakhic (kavanah) conclusion is, one cannot advance in carrying it out without the experiential tool. But indeed most kabbalists I have spoken with keep the experience in the intimate realm, and there is no talk of “come, let us learn to experience what we have studied.”

Completely agree.

If for you intellect is associated with willing, why shouldn’t I call love of God / of a woman (respectively) an intellectual cognitive act? The desire and longing to cleave to the object of my love are rational just as they are emotional. This brings me back to my first question: emotion ~ intellect—are they really two different concepts?

The question is not terminological (what to call things). My claim is that there is value only in a person’s decisions and his intellectual activity, that is, in will (not in the sense of interest, but evaluative will—what are the evaluative goals that I want to realize/reach) and intellect. What I call emotion does not belong to either of these, and therefore has no value.
If you call something else emotion, then of course the attitude toward it should be updated accordingly.

Above you mentioned that the love referred to in Rambam is not an emotion but the degree of intensity of commitment to truth. Is the love of a woman also included in that definition?

See column 22.

With God’s help, 8 Kislev 5780

If we discuss the relation between intellect and emotion (which experience cultivates and intensifies), a person may be compared to a vehicle. Emotion is the fuel without which the vehicle is stuck; it gives the “burn” that energizes and gives power to act. Intellect is the driver holding the steering wheel and deciding where the vehicle will turn, and it supervises the gas and brakes and determines whether to speed up or slow down.

Just as it is impossible without an alert driver who exercises supervisory judgment at every moment, and he must under no circumstances let the “engine” lead him—so too he must not neglect the vehicle’s continual refueling, for without fuel the vehicle is immobilized.

Accordingly, the Torah includes the world of halakhah, which sets norms and “lines of demarcation” and regulates between the opposing demands posed by the world of emotion. Emotion demands the attribute of justice, which calls for maximizing the service of God without concessions or compromises; and on the other hand emotion demands acting with kindness and mercy in view of man’s understandable weaknesses. Here the judgment of the intellect comes and gives each side its proper place.

But no less than this, the Torah deals with cultivating the religious and moral emotions, which breathe into a person a spirit of life and motivation to do what is good and right. Not for nothing are most of the holy writings not devoted to detailed “halakhah,” but to “aggadah,” which arouses the heart to love of God and fear of Him, to love of people, and to faith in God and in man.

But besides the fact that faith and religious and moral feeling are an “engine” for good action—they are also an “end” in themselves. The Torah, after all, does not make do with correct actions of the human body. For the essence of man is his spirit and soul—not only a person’s actions need to be good; his soul needs to be good as well.

Therefore the Torah also ultimately deals with “duties of the heart,” cultivating love of God and love of people, and cultivating awe and carefulness. When a person invests in cultivating his consciousness and emotions together with good action, his soul is purified and becomes better.

What would a woman say if her husband supports her, provides for her, brings gifts for every occasion, and helps at home, but lacks one tiny thing—he doesn’t love her… or doesn’t express his love? Would her life be a life? And children whose parents give them everything—money and food and clothes and classes and outings—but have no time to show the child that they love him and take interest in him—will that child be happy?

A person is not only one who performs actions. A person is spirit and soul, heart and neshamah; these are the essence of his being, and that is what he must cultivate.

Regards, Shatz

Until now we have spoken of experience as the result of intellectual cognition, which helps internalize intellectual awareness and motivates translating it into the language of the heart and of action. There is also the religious experience of prophecy, in which a person has certainty that he has received a divine message. But here one needs the guidance of a prophet or sage possessed of divine inspiration, who teaches his students how to distinguish between pure divine revelation and fantasies or a mixture of impurities.

Regards, Shatz

Your entire profound article raises for me a question about your criticism of existentialism:
If you admit that feelings can be evidence of an evaluative reality outside us, why do you define existentialism as psychology and not as a philosophical inquiry into evaluative positions by means of emotional description?

I was speaking about experience, not emotion.

Rabbi, what about the column on psychology? Some post about its value and its scientific domain—this is somewhat relevant to our discussion here. It would be worthwhile to write something.

That requires a lot of work. Its time will yet come.

Rabbi, in light of the distinction made here in the comments between intellect and will, and the claim that will is what makes the evaluative decision ex nihilo, why give the intellect a categorical status different from that of emotion? Would it not be more correct to say that both intellect and emotion only provide us with data (that is, the intellect can say whether there is an internal contradiction in a claim, whether the conclusion follows from the premise, and the like), while the decision is concentrated in the will alone?

There is also in the intellect what is called “judgment,” so it is not correct to see it as an automatic mechanism (as they treat it in artificial intelligence). See columns 35 and 175. But that is judgment regarding true and false, not regarding worthy and unworthy. The will deals with judgment regarding the worthy, not regarding the true.

Like the remorse you explained—even though it is not emotional—it is instrumental.
Is faith an intellectual understanding that one ought to believe, with no emotion or experience at all?
When I encounter something (intellectual, or a hard event) for which at that moment I have no answer, does that mean that at that moment I am a heretic until the difficulty is resolved for me, and then I am righteous again, and then again a difficulty and again a heretic, and then an explanation and again I am righteous? What is faith according to your view—intellectual, experiential, emotional?

In my opinion there is no commandment at all concerning emotion or experience (see column 22). I wrote this. If it affects the experience, then fine, but it is not a condition of the commandment.
I did not understand your last question. On the contrary, it is difficult for your position. If the issue is experience, then sometimes I have the experience and sometimes I do not. But understanding is something continuous: if I have reached the conclusion that I believe, then I believe. It does not change from moment to moment.

“If I have reached the conclusion that I believe, then I believe. It does not change from moment to moment.”
If I am a believing person who observes even the minor and major commandments alike, and sometimes thoughts of heresy pass through me and I struggle with them—at that moment am I still considered a “believer”? If you examine that temporary moment specifically, I am in doubt like any secular person and heretic. What is my definition in those moments? Thanks.

You did not address my question: according to your view, if at some moment you do not have an experience of faith, what is your status at that moment?
I do not judge a person by his opinions, nor do I see inner struggles as a state of faith but as clarification. Therefore the question of what his status is at this or that moment is not relevant.

Is the claim that emotion has no value the claim that “a person does not deserve moral credit for the existence of emotions”? That is, since emotion is not connected to a person’s choice, it is not part of evaluating a person’s efforts to become better? And if a person refined his emotion (assuming this is possible), then the emotion (or the act of refinement) would have value?
It seems that the claim that a person does not “get moral credit” for something not dependent on him is a banal claim, but can the thing itself not still be moral greatness, just as a landscape can be objectively sublime (without getting credit for it)?
In the same way regarding love: why does the fact that one cannot get credit for love mean that it has no moral content?
Is a person born without some moral capacity morally inferior to other people?
I hope I understood correctly what you mean when you say “value” (something with positive moral significance?), but I am not sure, and I would very much appreciate it if you would explain.
Thank you very much.

With God’s help, 22 Kislev 5780

To Yair—greetings,

I think what you wrote in the first paragraph is very correct. A person’s noble emotion usually does not come naturally. Without cultivating awareness and much practice, a person will generally be wild and selfish. Nobility of love and devotion to others usually comes only after much labor in cultivating them. Just as genius is 10% talent and 90% labor—so too is the nobility of emotion.

Regards, Shatz

I don’t understand the question. Don’t you agree that a state that is not the result of effort is not worthy of appreciation?

If the statement that emotion has no value means that emotion is not the result of a person’s effort (and if that claim is true), then it helps in the moral judgment of the person, but it does not help at all in judging the importance of emotion.
When people say that emotion has no value, it sounds as though emotion is unimportant and at most a person without emotion would be like someone who is color-blind—but that does not follow from this claim.
Is a sociopathic murderer who lacks moral capacity not inferior to a person with moral capacity? (Just as a cat is inferior to a human even though the human may be guilty of immoral acts, whereas the cat is never guilty.)

These are just word games. When I speak about value, I mean something for which one should be given moral credit. If you want to speak about value in another sense—be my guest.

Thank you for the answer.
In that sense of value, would there be value in refining emotion, and is there value in seeking excitement (negative or positive value depending on the thing one gets excited about)?

In my opinion, no. At most instrumental value, meaning it can help me behave properly. Excitement in itself has no value.

Why?
I know that one has to justify why something is a value and not its negation, but emotion is perceived in the world as something of value and we tend to attribute value to it. So I am interested whether you have a reason why emotion (or the act of attaining emotion) is not a value, as opposed to other things to which we instinctively attribute value, or whether you simply do not see value in it and the other side needs to justify itself.
Another question: is understanding reality a value?

Emotion cannot be perceived as something of value (except perhaps as an asset). Someone who thinks so is simply confusing concepts. There is no value to things that are not in a person’s hands and do not come through his decision and action. Someone who sees value in it does not need to justify it. He is simply mistaken.
Understanding reality is an asset (a spiritual one), and the action of attaining it is a value. And the practical difference would be someone who can attain insights into reality through hypnosis or Elijah’s revelation. There would be no value in that, though the insights themselves are an asset (so it is certainly worthwhile to do it).

Perhaps one can suggest here a more complex and balanced picture: emotion / good deeds and their results have absolute significance, though they have no moral value because in themselves they are not voluntary actions. What grants them their moral valence is the primary will (choice) that drives them—whether directly in the practical category or indirectly on the emotional/intellectual plane—so that there are essential reciprocal relations here. The significance of the deed/thought/emotion gives the choice its teleological importance, and the choice gives the deed/thought/emotion its moral valence. It seems to me that this parallel, dual-significance conception can bridge the gap between the need to define morality as something voluntary and chosen, and the need to give deed and emotion an existential significance toward which choice is directed.

If I understood correctly, that is already a formulation similar to mine.

And just as morality obligates one to care for another’s needs so that he feels good, so too it obligates a person to care for himself so that he feels good. And the more a person is filled with love for others, the better and happier his own life is.

With Chanukah greetings, Shatz