A Servant of God Alone Is Free: 4. On George Orwell, Karl Popper, and Isaiah Berlin (Column 129)

With God’s help

So far I have explained the concepts of liberty and freedom, and through them the meaning of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s line Those who are enslaved to time are slaves of slaves; only the servant of God is truly free. (“The servants of time are slaves of slaves; a servant of God alone is free”). In this column I will make a few comments about the accepted explanations (such as Rav Kook’s), and especially about the Orwellian element in them, and I will connect the discussion to Isaiah Berlin’s important distinction between two concepts of liberty. The three thinkers in the subtitle are all sharp opponents of communism, and each in his own language articulates ideas of liberty (or freedom) and opposition to the communist paternalism that denies it.

Let me just note that our road is still fairly long. This Passover we are doing some deep plowing in the foundational ideas of our human and Jewish existence. As stated, in the next column I will move on to discuss Jewish identity and collectivism, and afterward art.

Another Look at Rav Kook’s Words

It seems to me that the picture I proposed does, in one way or another, capture the meaning of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s words. But in Column 126 I also cited Rav Kook’s words and, following them, a collection of explanations that are not very convincing to my taste (and, as noted, also seem somewhat Orwellian), and now I want to return and examine them in light of what we have learned so far.

Rav Kook writes in Olat Re’iyah vol. 2, pp. 288–289:

Matzah is a remembrance of liberty, whose foundation is the recognition that every path of God as set forth in the Torah is a faithful outgrowth, directed according to the truth of our collective nature, from the standpoint of the totality of the Jewish people. Therefore true liberty is to develop in accordance with our inner nature, without the admixture of alien elements that oppress it. This is indeed so in terms of the very nature of the soul, but there are also drosses that have attached themselves to us, and they do not allow the pure Jewish nature to emerge into actuality. Therefore, because of them, we must also accept the pleasant servitude, the service of a servant to the Lord, God of Israel, who formed us from the womb to serve Him, for this capacity too we acquired in the slavery of Egypt. Once all the bad aspects of slavery are removed from us, its beautiful aspect will remain—the aspect through which a person can lovingly bear even what runs contrary to his will and inclination. This is the basis of the bitter herb: to accept with love the bitterness of life when one knows that before him stands a higher and loftier moral goal. Therefore the bitter herb comes after the matzah.

He explains that what appears to us to be our desires is only an external shell, and therefore subordinating them to God’s will is not subjugation to something external, but actually the revelation of our most authentic depths. When we observe Jewish law, we will be doing what we truly want.

Rav Kook adds that our sense of servitude stems from superfluous remnants in the soul, dross and alien elements, which have not yet internalized that the service of God is true liberty. That is the reason it is important to go along with this feeling of servitude even though it is incorrect (because this is liberty, not servitude). When we enter into this servitude and “submit” to it, then we will slowly free ourselves from these drosses and discover that it actually exposes within us other desires that fit the commandments of the Torah (what we really wanted all along, in fact, was not to eat pork and to redeem a firstborn donkey. How did we miss it?!). At the end of the process we will stop feeling subjugated and understand that this is real freedom. In the ideal state we are supposed to reach, no servitude at all is required and there will be no feeling of servitude, since in such a state we understand clearly that the commandments and Jewish law are truly what we ourselves want to do and think. If so, our feeling of subjugation and the opposition between serving God and liberty is illusory. It stems from being in an inferior state and from not understanding that this is indeed our state. Rav Kook opens our eyes in this matter, and tries to give us a horizon of hope. There is light at the end of the tunnel. I have already said what I feel about these things, and below I will expand on it further.

The Concern about Orwellianism Is Justified

David writes in one of the first comments on Column 126:

I agree that the words of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi and Rav Kook can be used, and at times are in fact used, in an Orwellian way, but that does not contradict their being true in this case. If the assumption is that God is the source of the will, then deepening one’s knowledge of Him and walking in His ways will lead me to the realization of my true self. From personal experience I can definitely identify with Rav Kook’s description. Intellectually I understand the rightness of the Torah’s path and feel yearnings for a life of holiness and purity, but this clashes with various lower desires, with appetites of different kinds, that really make it hard to realize those desires.

He is essentially repeating Rav Kook’s words and agreeing with them, but adds that such an argument can indeed sometimes be used by Orwellian preachers, since to every person or group enslaved or oppressed by any system or framework of thought or politics one can say that the framework is really their true will. But he apparently thinks that in Rav Kook’s case this is a genuine argument and not an Orwellian one.

The basic difficulty here is the question of where Rav Kook himself knew this from. Does he know me better than I know myself? Why should I believe him? But one can also ask more generally: when we hear slogans like these, how can we know whether this is really an Orwellian statement or a genuine claim? Why should we accept Rav Kook’s argument (and David’s)? After all, any tyrant can explain to me that what he demands of me is actually my inner, authentic, and deepest desire, and that all I feel is just a superficial mistake. As our communist cousins did, he can always explain to me that ignorance is strength, slavery is freedom, and so on and so forth.

It seems to me that two possibilities can be raised for accepting such claims:

• We trust the power to which we are subjected, because it is the source of the system—namely God. From this we infer that what He instructs us is probably our true will.

But this is a somewhat problematic argument, for even if I trust Him, who says that what He instructs us is our true will? At most one can infer that what He commands is what is right to do. But there is no guarantee that this is also what my soul, in the depths of my heart, truly wants to do. And in general, perhaps He is not even trying to align Himself with my true will, but rather instructing me to do what is right and to act properly even if that is not my desire. From where did Rav Kook derive the conclusion that this is God’s purpose (to align Himself with our deep desires)? From where did Rav Kook derive the conclusion that this is indeed the deep desire of all of us? Does he search hearts and minds? Did he examine all human beings and see this within them?

I remind you that already in Column 126 I mentioned that Rabbi Yehuda Halevi and Rav Kook could have chosen a different line of argument. They could have said that our own desires are the evil inclination, and that serving God is the right thing and therefore we must overcome them. They could also have said that these desires do indeed have positive value, but that the service of God overrides them. But they choose a third path: to go along with these desires and not reject them. Here I wonder about Rav Kook’s words: why? What is the theological and/or psychological basis for the thesis he proposes?

Of course, one can explain that Rav Kook’s intention is merely to say that the very desire to fulfill God’s commands is itself our authentic desire. In that case, any command of His, whatever it may be, is the realization of our will by definition. But that is a trivial claim, and of course Rav Kook does not mean that. He is speaking about the content of the divine commands as fitting our inner desires (deep in our hearts we want to redeem a firstborn donkey and not eat pork), and not about the mere fact of obeying the commands whatever their content. That does not require a process of liberation from the dross and residues. It is just a simple tautology.

• We tried it and found empirically that when one immerses oneself in the system that subjugates, over time one discovers that it really does align with our inner desires. It becomes clear to us that what we wanted before was only an external shell (dross). Perhaps this too is the source of Rav Kook’s words. It is his own empirical-existential conclusion, since he simply tried it and ultimately reached this nirvana (at this point all that remains is to change his name to Rav Kook Buddha).

In any event, if this really happens, that is, if we have indeed reached such a nirvana, then of course the debate is over (except for the concern that this very feeling is itself the result of Orwellian brainwashing). But by its nature Rav Kook’s statement is addressed to those who are not yet there. He calls on them to trust the system and to assume a priori that in the end it will bring them to the longed-for feeling of liberation. The question is: why should I trust Rav Kook’s own thesis? Even if this really happened to him, who says it is a universal matter that is supposed to happen to all of us? Is there, deep inside each one of us, an unrestrainable yearning to redeem a firstborn donkey, and we simply did not know it?

Liberation from the Drives

Rachel writes, in one of the first comments on Column 126, words that are seemingly similar:

A servant of God learns to be free of his drives, and thus can acquire a perspective that enables him even more choice.

But here there is a slightly different nuance. Rachel argues that servitude to God requires us to struggle against our drives, and in that sense it builds within us the ability to overcome them. When we free ourselves from the drives, we truly become free people and do what our true will instructs us to do.

It is important to note that despite the similarity to the words of Rav Kook and David cited above, there is a difference between them and her. Rachel does not argue that God’s word is our authentic desire (that our true desire is really to redeem a firstborn donkey, or not to eat pork), but rather that serving God helps us free ourselves from inner servitudes and compulsions, and thus opens the way to action by free people. Subjugation to an external factor actually frees us from our inner drives, and as such enables us to act independently of them. This actually brings us back to the discussion in the previous column about Libet. There we saw that in a state of freedom, what determines our choices are our tendencies, drives, and inner impulses. In such a state we are slaves of slaves to our RP, and our actions are not the result of choice but of surrender to impulses. Servitude to God deprives us of freedom and thereby frees us from subordination to those drives.

But such an explanation answers only half the difficulty. Let us assume that subjugation to an external factor indeed helps us free ourselves from our internal drives and influences, but even after we have overcome them, God does not tell us: up to here. He does not now release us from the system of commandments and laws as well (although we do have the tradition that The commandments will be nullified in the time to come. (“the commandments will be annulled in the future”)). This system continues to demand that we behave according to its directives even after we have been liberated (or because we have not yet been liberated). But even if so, if we accept Rachel’s words, we have simply replaced servitude to internal drives with servitude to another external system. Moreover, if we are free people who manage to conduct ourselves autonomously within a system of external constraints (according to my proposal from the previous column), why should we not be able to do this within the internal system as well? In what way is the first preferable to the second? It is still not clear how this leads us to become free people.

It seems to me that an explanation in Rachel’s style must also resort to the previous component (that of Rav Kook and David). A full picture of freedom in Rachel’s formulation requires both components: 1. The external subjugation helps us free ourselves from subjugation to the internal drives. 2. The external system itself, to which we remained subjugated during and after the process of liberation, is not really a servitude at all, because it expresses our authentic will. Only the combination of Rachel’s and David’s words together can offer a full picture of freedom within Torah commitment.

But as I explained in the previous section, David’s addition (component 2) seems problematic to me. Therefore, bottom line, I do not see here a convincing and sufficient explanation. I still have not freed myself from the Orwellian feeling when hearing these explanations. One can always tell me about my hidden and authentic desires that are not exposed to anyone, and especially not to me. As I said, if I myself experienced this—fine. But as long as this has not happened, it is hard for me to accept Rav Kook’s words simply because he said them.

A Note on Paternalism

This kind of paternalistic argument, which explains to me what I myself think, reminds me of Rav Kook’s words about the pioneers who came to settle the Land of Israel, who in his opinion did so out of the deepest religious motives, which of course were not visible even to them themselves. They thought they were acting from national motives, but he explained to them that in fact they were serving God without awareness (as people acting without intent).

On these remarks of Rav Kook I have already written several times that unconscious motives are meaningless, since a person is responsible for and stands behind decisions that he made consciously. Only for those can he render an account and receive credit. Everything that happens unconsciously, even if it is true (who told him?), is irrelevant to our evaluation of them. It is not their decision and does not earn them any credit. Beyond that, here too I do not know from where Rav Kook derived the ability to penetrate the pioneers’ hidden desires, which were not exposed even to them themselves. Who said that this was not a national awakening in the style of the Spring of Nations, which occurred among other peoples at the same time? If we had asked the pioneers themselves, I assume we would have received that answer from them. But Rav Kook does not believe them. He knows better than they do what lies within their innermost heart, and in fact sees inside them an inner spiritual core and hidden motives that are their authentic desires. Blessed is the believer…

We compel him until he says, 'I am willing.' (“We coerce him until he says, ‘I want to’”)

It is hard to avoid associating this with Maimonides’ well-known words in Hilkhot Gerushin 2:20 regarding We compel him until he says, 'I am willing.'. There too we describe a person’s hidden will and act on its basis, even though he himself declares otherwise. I discussed this in my book Enosh Kachatzir (especially around Rabbi Nachman’s Hindik story), and here I will only say that there too the usual explanation is that we know a person’s authentic and deep will better than he himself does. This is the same paternalistic attitude described above.

But I do not think this is comparable to our case. First, even if that is indeed what is written there—I would raise the same difficulty against Maimonides (and perhaps also against the Talmudic source for his words). Second, in my book I explained that in the case of refusal to grant a divorce writ, we are dealing with a person who in fact wants to serve God, for his entire way of life proves it. (Indeed, I argued that the ability to coerce the giving of a divorce writ exists only with respect to a person whose way of life proves religious commitment. Otherwise this is an invalid coerced divorce.) He is now entrenched in a position of refusal against the ruling of the religious court, even though that is what Jewish law requires. Why does he do this? After all, this is a person who is careful about Jewish law and committed to it. From here Maimonides infers that something unusual is happening with that person. The simple explanation for this is that his anger at his wife is causing a certain blindness. He convinces himself that the religious court is really mistaken and that God Himself does not want him to divorce this “wicked woman.” He digs in on this position, and it is impossible to convince him that God’s will is that he divorce her and release her. In such a situation, and only in it, we allow ourselves to enter his mind and make a paternalistic claim about what he really wants. The reason is that here the facts support that interpretation. I also explained there in detail how the coercion works (this is simple psychology, without resorting to any metaphysics). Thus the paternalistic interpretation we make in the context of coercing a divorce writ is based on tangible, empirical evidence drawn from his behavior. But regarding the pioneers, and also regarding the deep desires of all servants of God, Rav Kook is making a speculative claim that has no factual-empirical basis (on the psychological plane: what we all really want), and no real theological anchor either (namely, that God really wants to align with our deep desires). Therefore this seems to me a metaphysical speculation, and it is no wonder that it raises in me questions about how he knows this and whether he is right.

Interim Summary

Bottom line, Rav Kook’s picture (together with David and Rachel) offers us Torah freedom and not liberty. On their view, we are not acting within constraints at all, because the constraints turn out to be our own authentic desires. But as I wrote in the previous columns, freedom has no value in itself. The value is liberty, and liberty involves functioning within an external framework that limits me and does not necessarily fully correspond to my deepest desires.

Therefore I think that the explanation I proposed for Torah liberty (and not freedom) seems far more plausible. It does not require metaphysical and psychological hypotheses that are suspect of Orwellianism. It is based on simple conceptual analysis that is open to all of us. Check and see that I am right. And if the difficulty (regarding the contradiction between freedom and Torah commitment) disappears, then there is no need to look for excuses.

On “Two Concepts of Liberty”

To conclude this column, I cannot avoid invoking the well-known distinction of the Jewish-British thinker Sir Isaiah Berlin, in his essay “Two Concepts of Liberty” (in his book Four Essays on Liberty). It seems to me that this is one of the best-known and most influential essays ever written, and it contains a sharp liberal critique of modernist humanism (with a considerable postmodern element).

Berlin begins by saying that the thought of many thinkers who dealt with the idea of liberty served tyrannical rulers (such as Rousseau’s thought for Robespierre and the Jacobins, Marx’s thought for the communists, and others). Berlin’s claim is that what made this possible was those thinkers’ conception of liberty, which he calls “positive liberty.” Positive liberty is the self-realization of the rational human being. Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Spinoza, Hegel, Marx, the Frankfurt School —all of them held this conception of liberty, what we today call “humanism.” According to Berlin, this conception, which is based on rationality, leads to the oppressive regimes created in the twentieth century. The ruler who knows better than we do what we really want and what is right for us imposes it on us by force (for our own good, of course). These philosophies are the basis of the paternalism that leads to dictatorship.

In this context it is worth reading Karl Popper’s monumental book, The Open Society and Its Enemies (warning: it cost me quite a few Sabbath prayers), which explains why Platonic essentialism lies at the basis of communist oppression and various other dictatorial regimes as well. His main claim is very parallel to Berlin’s. Karl Popper, Isaiah Berlin, and George Orwell are three prominent British thinkers of the same period (there are others, of course) who attacked communism, and through it to a large extent modernism. It is interesting to note that although they spoke in the name of modernism, and on the face of it all three rejected postmodern relativism, their critical remarks contain very deep postmodern elements.[1]

Against the paternalistic conception of positive liberty, Berlin sets negative liberty, originating with Hobbes. Negative liberty means that no constraints are placed before a person and his will (beyond the minimum necessary). This is not “liberty to_” (which is positive liberty, whose goal is doing the right thing) but “liberty from_”. Negative liberty is meant to protect us from all those who know better than we do what our authentic will is and what will bring us to the objectively proper and good (which, of course, only the ruler and his court philosopher know). Advocates of negative liberty do not aspire to an ideal model of society (because they fear that such aspiration will lead to oppression), but to a compromise between conflicting interests with minimal interference of one party in another’s affairs. This is the liberal conception that recognizes positive liberty and its value, but not the essentialism of someone who knows the absolute good for all of us. It limits this dangerous positive liberty by means of negative liberty.

In the background of these things it is easy to identify the fear of omniscients who know better than I do what I myself want. Those who explain to me that what I want is only an external shell, but that there is an objective and universal proper thing that I really want in the depths of my authentic heart. This kind of thought naturally brings us to totalitarian rule by the “correct” ideology, which imposes itself on the “mistaken” and “stupid” individual—one who does not really know what he himself wants.

Back to Us

I have a great deal to say about this essay, but here I will only note that my remarks in these columns constitute a more systematic definition of the liberal combination proposed by Berlin. Ostensibly, negative liberty is what I defined here as freedom, and positive liberty is what I defined as liberty. But that is not precise. On the one hand, I certainly advocate “liberty from_” in the sense of not coercing a person as to what to think and what to do, and in the sense that there is a fundamental value in his alone determining his own path. On the other hand, it is not true that a person legislates his own laws. I do believe in a correct ethical and religious truth (essentialism on some level), and in the fact that not all views are correct. According to the model I proposed here, the system of norms constrains us by determining—rather than us—what is right and what is not. But it does not try to enforce this upon us by force (except in extreme cases), and certainly not the way in which we will realize it. It does not give us freedom, but it leaves us to conduct ourselves within it as free persons.

Ultimately, I assume that Berlin and Popper (like Ari Elon) would also agree with my model. Moreover, with respect to the basic rules of morality, I think Berlin would concede that positive liberty (coercive essentialism) is also required. There there is a universal right and wrong, and there is even room to coerce someone who deviates from those norms. His remarks are directed more toward questions of social and governmental structure (communism, etc.), ideology, the individual’s self-realization, and the like—questions that were very much in the air in his time (the mid-twentieth century). All of these, Berlin and Popper argue, should be left to the private individual, and one should not interfere in his life. This is very similar to my claim regarding Ari Elon, who, in my estimation, would not preach the autonomy of a person who legislates his own values in the moral sphere. I assume that he too probably means ideology, not morality, and especially, of course, not religious ideology.

[1] In my books Shtei Agalot and Emet Ve-lo Yatziv I argued that postmodernism is born of the spirit of modernism, or is its legitimate child. It is basically the transition from potentiality to actuality of modernism’s deepest ideas.