A Look at the Euthyphro Dilemma in Light of the Debate (Column 457)
In the previous column I presented the debate between me and David Enoch (see the recording here) on whether God is required as a basis for the validity of morality (or: whether without God everything is permitted). In the discussion, the moderator (Jeremy Fogel) raised the Euthyphro dilemma, which at first glance did not seem directly related to the debate. Later I was reminded that in Column 278 I had already discussed the dilemma and its implications for the argument from morality (the grounding of morality in God). In that discussion I briefly answered the question, and here I return to this topic to clarify its connection to the debate with Enoch and to sharpen distinctions I made there and in the previous column.
It is important to preface that the concept of God with which I deal in this column is not necessarily identical to the “thin” God discussed in the previous column. Some of the proposals I raise here constitute additions that are not part of the “thin” God required to give force to moral norms. I will return to this point at the end of the column.
The Euthyphro Dilemma
In Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro the following question is posed: Is the good good because the gods will it, or do the gods will the good because it is good? In other words, is there an objective meaning to “good,” or is what makes it good the gods’ decision—who could just as well have decreed that any other conduct is good or bad? Everything would then be subject to their arbitrary will. A similar question can of course be raised with respect to God, and Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, in their book Religion and Morality, conduct a very detailed discussion of the issue. Their conclusion is that almost all Jewish thinkers espouse the second possibility. I shall not enter here into all the nuances and arguments raised in that book and elsewhere (in my view there are several inaccuracies), and will suffice with a brief survey of the basic rationales for both sides.
On the one hand, theologically we assume that God is omnipotent and subject to nothing. There is none besides Him. He created the world and set the laws that prevail within it. This means He could have set them differently, in any way that might have occurred to Him. From here it follows that there is no objective meaning to good and evil. On the other hand, if we adopt this view, the conclusion is that we cannot say that God is good. The statement that God is good assumes that goodness is defined independently of Him, and the claim is that His conduct and demands align with that objective criterion of goodness. But if His decision is what defines the concept of “good,” then the statement “God is good” is merely a tautological definition (or an analytic truth) and not a claim. Its meaning is essentially: God wills what He wills. But that is true of each of us.
Many theologians (and I humbly join them) tend to think this is a problematic position. God truly is good and could not have been otherwise. This of course presupposes that the good is defined objectively and that God Himself is subject to that definition. He could have confused us and blinded our eyes so we would not distinguish between good and evil, but He cannot decree good and evil otherwise. As I noted, despite the theological difficulties, it seems that most thinkers in Jewish thought hold the second view.
Sense and Reference
One could slightly soften the first view and formulate it thus: we have an intuition about good and evil. The claim is that God’s will aligns with that intuition. But that intuition was implanted in us by Him; therefore there is no truly objective concept of good and evil. In this way we can say that the statement is indeed a claim (and not a definition), yet at the same time it is a claim about our concepts and not about the world itself. As far as the world itself is concerned, the statement “God is good” says nothing (it is an empty identity, a tautology).
This is a special case of the problem of the relation between sense and reference. Take an example that analytic philosophers frequently use (see, for instance, here): the claim “the Morning Star is the Evening Star.” These were once thought to be two different stars (one seen in the evening and the other in the morning), but ultimately it turned out that they are the very same celestial body. Now we may ask: is this statement a substantive claim or an empty definition (an analytic sentence)? Does it have any content, or is it an empty tautology? Seemingly such a sentence says nothing, since it is an identity of a thing with itself. But our sense is that there is some novelty in this sentence. It teaches us something about our own concepts. The two stars we thought were different are the very same star. This sentence changes our knowledge of the world, even though in terms of its objective content it appears to be an empty identity.
Notice that this is so for any identity claim of the form A is B. Assuming the claim is true, its meaning is: A is A—an empty tautology. The analytic solution to the problem of the meaning of identity claims is the distinction between sense and reference. Analytic philosophers (following Frege) say that such an identity claim has sense but not reference (or, more precisely, its reference yields only a trivial identity). It has a non-empty, non-trivial sense for us, but if one looks at what it points to in the world, it is a trivial identity.
We can now return to the Euthyphro dilemma. According to the side that holds God is the one who defines good and evil, we may argue that the statement “He is good” has sense but not reference. With respect to reference (the “pointing” to the world) it is empty, since He is good by virtue of the very definition of “good.” Whatever He would do would leave Him under the definition “good,” and thus the statement that He is good is contentless (analytic).
Conclusion
Yet I find it hard to accept even this mitigated formulation. The straightforward intuition is that God indeed ought to be good, namely that the claim that He is good is not an empty definition but a substantive claim. Were this not the case, there would be no point in discussing God’s goodness, and no questions would arise from behaviors that appear to us immoral (such as the Binding of Isaac, the destruction of Amalek, and the like). One must understand that if what God wills is by definition “good,” then there is no room for moral doubt regarding Him. He commanded the binding of Isaac; therefore the binding of Isaac is good. The very sense that there is a dissonance between a divine command and morality points to a presupposition on our part that God is good. Just as the existence of ethical disagreement points to the objectivity of ethics (otherwise, what would there be to argue about), the existence of ethical criticism points to the objectivity of ethical facts (otherwise there would be no room for criticism of unethical positions and behaviors).
The conclusion is that simple religious intuition directs us to the second side of the Euthyphro dilemma, according to which the good is defined objectively and binds even God. In other words, God wills things because they are good, and not the other way around. Only thus can we claim that He is good, and also criticize Him (or seek explanations) for cases of conduct that are not good. But as we have seen, this approach raises the opposite difficulty, to which I now turn.
Between the Laws of Physics and the “Laws” of Logic
This approach raises a contrary theological difficulty. How can it be that God, who created everything and by whose power all is done, is nonetheless “subject” to an external set of laws that He did not legislate? To grasp this, we must return to a distinction I have drawn in the past between two kinds of laws (see, for example, Column 278). God is of course not subject to the laws of physics, for He created them, and “the mouth that forbade is the mouth that permitted.” He is certainly not subject to the laws of the state (if only because He is not a citizen of it). By contrast, He is indeed “subject” to the laws of logic. The laws of logic are “imposed” upon God. He cannot make a round triangle or violate logic, simply because there is no such thing as a round triangle and no such thing as a violation of logic. A triangle, by definition, is not round. This does not follow from some legislation imposed upon the triangle against its will, but from its very nature. From its very definition as a triangle it follows that it is not round and cannot be round. Therefore the inability to create a round triangle is not due to an external constraint imposed upon God, and thus it is not a limitation of His omnipotence or a deficiency in Him.
An omnipotent being can do anything that can be conceived, even in imagination. But a round triangle is an empty concept. There is no such thing and it cannot be conceived. Therefore God’s inability to create such a thing is not a deficiency in His power. Imagine someone asking whether God can make a round triangle. I would first ask him to explain the concept to me, and then perhaps I could answer him. He will of course fail to explain it (does it have sharp angles or not? what is the sum of its angles? are all points on it equidistant from a single point?), and therefore the question falls away.
As I explained there, what underlies the confusion is the term “law,” which is used in these two contexts with different meanings. The laws of physics are laws that God legislated into the nature of creation. That legislation is His decision to create a specific nature for the world He created, among various possible options. He could also have created different laws of nature. By contrast, the laws of logic are not “laws” in that sense. The use of the term “law” in the logical context is borrowed. It is simply the definition of the things, not something external imposed upon them. [1] A triangle is not round not because someone forbids it and not because it is prohibited. By virtue of being a triangle, it simply is not round. Hence it is not correct to say that God chose one logical system among several possible systems. There is no alternative logical system. [2] Therefore, from here on, in a context similar to that of the laws of logic, I shall use the term “law” in quotation marks.
The Status of Moral “Laws”
The question that now arises concerns the status of moral laws: Are these laws in the sense of the laws of physics, or are they “laws” in the sense of the “laws” of logic? Those who take the first side of the Euthyphro dilemma believe that moral laws resemble the laws of physics, and therefore God determines and defines them. The second side of the dilemma, by contrast, assumes that moral “laws” resemble the “laws” of logic (they are “laws” and not laws), and therefore they are imposed upon God. He could not have created a different system of moral laws. Thus, for example, He cannot create a world in which a different morality prevails (where murder or torture would be positive acts). Morality, by definition, forbids murder.
He could, of course, create a world in which people enjoy torture (would it even be correct in such a world to call it “torture”?), and then perhaps there would be no moral problem in causing suffering. But there the causing of suffering would not be distressing. Causing people sorrow is bad in every possible world. That pertains to a world different in its reality, i.e., a world where suffering does not cause distress. One may also think of a world in which causing suffering is defined as good; but such a world is not one with different morality—it is a world in which people are blind to moral norms (and the God who created it is not moral). One can change any parameter in the world’s nature and create a different world in which that parameter is different. But given the nature of a particular world, the moral norms are derived from it in a determinate way (they are imposed upon us). It seems to me that this underlies the Ramchal’s well-known dictum “the nature of the good is to bestow goodness.” God, by His very nature, must bestow goodness. He has no other option (this is imposed upon Him).
This means that the statement “Murder is bad” is analytic, just like the law of non-contradiction. It is indeed an ethical fact, but it is not contingent (rather, necessary). Therefore there is no impediment to claiming that it is imposed (more precisely: “imposed”) upon God, just as logic is “imposed” upon Him. This differs from, say, the laws of nature. Take, for example, the law of gravitation: any two bodies with mass attract each other by a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This is not an analytic statement, and it could be false. There could have been a world in which the law of gravitation is different (e.g., a force proportional to the cube of the distance). Therefore such a law is up to God, and only His decision determines its content.
How This Fits with the Previous Column
In the previous column I argued that there can be no valid morality without God. Does that not contradict my claim here that morality is imposed upon God and precedes Him, and thus is not the product of His will? Seemingly there is a direct contradiction. I now understand that this is probably what our moderator Jeremy Fogel meant when, in our discussion, he raised the Euthyphro dilemma and asked my view of it.
In the discussion itself I briefly explained that I distinguish between the definition of good and evil and our obligation to them. The definition of good and evil is imposed upon God and cannot be otherwise. Even He cannot decree that murder is good or that helping others is bad. But the obligation to do the good and refrain from the evil does not exist without God. In other words, the normative claim that murder is forbidden—that the ethical fact of the prohibition of murder has binding force— is not imposed upon God. It derives from His command and is brought into being by it.
If we return to the notion of “ethical facts,” we can put it thus: they may exist in and of themselves, as David Enoch argues (i.e., God did not create them), but as I argued against him, even if they exist and sit there in some corner of the world of ideas (is), that still cannot be binding for me (ought). I remind that in the previous column I distinguished between the question of who created the ethical facts (Enoch’s concern) and the question of who gives them binding force (my concern). What I have described here is that while God did not create the ethical facts (they are imposed upon Him), only His command can give them binding force.
One can now ask: what obligates God Himself in morality? If He is good, then He, too, ought to be bound by morality (by His categorical imperative). Is He bound by His own command? That is very strange and, in fact, contradicts my claim in the previous column that a separate agent is needed to confer de dicto authority upon a law.
I think it is correct to say that God is indeed not obligated by morality, but chooses it. He does not choose what morality is (for that is an absolute, rigid datum not in His hands), but He chooses to will and to demand of His creatures moral conduct. This is similar to what I argued in the previous column against Ari Elon: a human being can legislate for himself whether to be moral or not, but he cannot legislate the moral laws themselves (define what is good and what is evil). If so, both humans and God are constrained by the moral laws. The definition of good and evil is imposed upon them and is not theirs to determine. But God can command morality and thereby confer binding force on those definitions with respect to us, whereas a human being cannot do even that. [3]
I will now add another layer to the picture. It is hard to speak of temporal priority of ethical facts (the definitions of good and evil) to God, since He has always existed. There was nothing “before” Him because there is no time prior to Him. There is and can be no world, not even imaginary, in which God does not exist. But in theory there could be a world in which God does not command us to be moral (unless we assume that His good nature compels Him to bestow goodness and to require it). Note that we have now learned that morality indeed precedes the divine command, but not God. That is regarding temporal priority. There is, however, also a qualitative (essential) priority.
The ethical facts do not depend on a divine command, and they are not the handiwork of God. Yet there is still no meaning to the claim that morality exists without God. Assuming that God is a being whose existence is necessary (and here I mean the religious God, not the “thin” God of the previous column), one cannot speak of a reality in which a necessarily existing being does not exist. Therefore, even if morality (or the ethical facts) exists without a command, one cannot say it exists without God. Even if both exist in parallel, the ethical facts do not necessarily depend on God.
But now we can perhaps reach a slightly different definition: moral facts are of God’s very essence; they exist as He exists, and just as He exists necessarily and always, so do they exist necessarily and always. And still, their binding force is not permanent and not necessary. They do not have binding force unless He commands them.
Between One Who Serves God and One Who Does Not
At the opening of this column I noted that the concept of God considered here is not the “thin” God of the previous column (the God required to confer validity on moral laws and ethical facts). You can see this when you review the various proposals raised here: that He is a necessarily existing being who has always existed, that ethical facts may be part of His essence, that His nature is to bestow goodness, and more. All these are additions that somewhat “fatten” the minimalist, “thin” being I discussed in the previous column.
The reason is that the discussion in this column takes place entirely in the theological sphere, and not only in the meta-ethical one. In fact, the Euthyphro dilemma itself belongs to the theological sphere. Without theology there would be no problem claiming that God defines the moral laws (for there would be no need to assume that the statement “He is good” is a substantive claim about Him rather than a definition), and then the dilemma would not arise. In addition, in the philosophical sphere, no contradiction would have surfaced with what I wrote in the previous column. If God defines good and evil (the ethical facts), that fits perfectly with what I claimed previously, and this whole column would have been unnecessary. My aim here was to reconcile my meta-ethical claim from the previous column with the God of the theological (Judeo-Christian) plane, about whom the assumption is that He is good. This is a distinctly theological discussion (and not a meta-ethical one).
The Euthyphro Dilemma for Religious Values
More than once in the past I have pointed out the difference between religious values and moral values (see, e.g., Column 15, the beginning of my book Walking Among Those Who Stand, and much more). The solution I propose to contradictions between halakhah and morality lies in the fact that these are two independent systems of values. An act X can be halakhically obligatory (because it advances religious value A) and at the same time morally forbidden (because it harms moral value B). Religious values are a-moral, and sometimes they can stand in direct opposition to moral values and sometimes only in conflict (when the clash arises only in certain circumstances). My claim is that there is no impediment to such tensions arising, and, in fact, it is more correct to say these are not contradictions (there is no theoretical difficulty here) but conflicts (it is difficult to decide what to do in practice).
Following this, Tirgitz asked the following question (in a comment thread to the previous column):
Meaning that in the next column you will address Euthyphro also with respect to religious values and other values, which, according to you, are values by virtue of which God allows Himself to shrug off any moral obligation. And that would seemingly mean that these too were not arbitrarily legislated by God.
I will explain his question. According to my view, God commands us anti-moral commandments to advance religious values. If so, Tirgitz argues, it appears that religious values are also imposed upon Him and are not the result of His arbitrary will (His sovereign legislation). If the commandments were not “halakhic facts” imposed upon God but were created by His legislation, then He could have legislated them differently. In such a case I would expect that, given His will (and nature) to bestow goodness, He would not legislate laws that run counter to morality. The existence of conflicts indicates that the laws of halakhah (or the religious values that halakhic laws promote) are also imposed upon God, and thus He finds Himself (or places us) in these conflicts against His will.
This is an excellent question, and in my opinion he is indeed right. Just as there are ethical facts, there are also halakhic facts. Both do not depend on God and are imposed upon Him. [4] At the beginning of the third book of my trilogy I discussed the comparison between the Kantian picture of moral behavior as honoring the categorical imperative and the halakhic picture I propose of performing a commandment as honoring the obligation to the command. Here we see that this analogy goes even further. [5]
This brings me to another question by Tirgitz, asked a few days earlier (see the unfolding discussion in the thread here). In the moral context it is customary to think that in cases of conflict between values, even if I had justification to do X and thereby violate Y, there remains a problem in having violated Y. I should feel sorrow or sadness at having harmed a person or done something immoral, even if I was compelled to do so. Tirgitz asked whether such sorrow should also appear in the halakhic context (as it is said: “Your pain and My pain”). That is, should I regret that because I was engaged with a met mitzvah (a corpse with no one to bury it) I did not wave the lulav (or that because I was ill I did not fast on Yom Kippur), just as I regret that because I went to war I had to kill people (and sometimes civilians)? In short, his question is whether, in this respect, there is a difference between halakhah and morality.
I answered him there that I think there is a difference between the contexts: in the moral context, even if some value is overridden by another, I should still feel sorrow or dissonance that I violated the overridden value (I harmed a person). By contrast, in halakhah, if there is no obligation and I did what is incumbent upon me, there is no reason to regret what I did not fulfill. It is entirely permitted and no one was harmed.
However, this distinction assumes that in halakhah there is only the command; when there is no command, nothing happened. But in light of the picture that emerges here, it seems I must retract that distinction. If we assume that the halakhic command is intended to advance religious values, then even if I justifiably violated a halakhah (because another halakhah overrode it), something in the spiritual world is nonetheless harmed (I acted contrary to a halakhic fact and brought about spiritual damage). Seemingly, from the picture I present here it follows that there is indeed no difference between halakhah and morality in this respect. [6]
Yet, upon further thought, one can argue that in halakhah, if I did something permitted, then the spiritual damage is also prevented (see my article on citric acid on Passover, where I brought sources that write this). One may say that God performs a miracle and prevents the damage so that no mishap should come through a righteous person like me, who is faithful to halakhah. This of course does not occur in the moral sphere. There, even if I was compelled to harm a moral value, the damage is unavoidable. The difference stems from the fact that in the moral context we are dealing with physical facts, whereas in the halakhic context we are dealing with spiritual facts. God does not change physics because He does not intervene in the operation of the physical world, but He does change spiritual facts (for in the spiritual world He does intervene; there it does not operate mechanically). [7] It is important to note that although, as we have seen, ethical facts are not physical facts, they depend on physical facts (harm or suffering to a person, for example). For instance, if I stole money from someone to save a life, then even if it is permitted and perhaps even a mitzvah, the harm to the one robbed occurred and there is room to regret it (here no miracle will occur whereby God returns the money to him).
The implication will be for cases like those I described in the previous column, where the categorical imperative tells me I must not do X even though it has no negative consequence. In such cases, it seems that if the matter is overridden by another value, there is nothing to regret. This is similar to the situation in the halakhic sphere. For example, suppose I evade 1,000 NIS of taxes to save a person’s life. In such a case I have nothing to regret about the tax evasion, since it has no negative consequences (as I explained in the previous column). Beyond the absent problematic consequence, what we have here is only a transgression of the categorical imperative, but of course that was justified under these circumstances. Indeed, it is more correct to say that I did not violate the categorical imperative at all in such a case. The universal law says that everyone should evade tax to save a life.
[1] In the previous column I explained why the law of non-contradiction as a logical-analytic claim requires no justification. This is the same idea from a slightly different angle.
[2] Consider the question whether God can create a wall impervious to all bullets and also a bullet that penetrates all walls. The answer is, of course, negative, because if the bullet He created penetrates all walls, then there is no wall impervious to it; hence there is no wall impervious to all bullets—and vice versa. God’s inability to create these two objects simultaneously is not a defect in His power. Simply put, such a state of affairs does not exist at the logical level. See here for implications regarding the “stone God cannot lift” question, and here on the problem of natural evil (see also the second book of my trilogy, ch. 10).
[3] The conclusion is that God’s “goodness” differs from ours. For Him there are no binding laws by which He acts; rather, He is the one who confers them with authority. A person is obligated by the categorical imperative, whose validity is a given for him, and therefore he must decide to act accordingly. By contrast, God is not obligated; He chooses to confer that validity. The Ramchal would say: His nature is to bestow goodness.
[4] At the beginning of Column 278 I discussed the concept of nehama de-kisufa (“bread of shame”), and it seems to me that the discussion there also addresses this question.
[5] See my article on the categorical imperative in halakhah, which shows a continuation of the analogy between halakhah and morality—but this time it concerns content and not logical structure. There I argue that the categorical imperative has halakhic standing.
[6] I will raise here a preliminary thought that still requires clarification. I think there is nevertheless some difference. In the moral sphere there is the obligation to moral values, whereas in halakhah there is both the obligation to religious values and the obligation to obey the command by virtue of its being a divine command (regardless of the fact that it also advances religious values). The assumption here is that in morality there is no divine command but only divine will that we act thus. The categorical imperative does not have the status of a command within halakhah (though, in my view, it does have halakhic standing—see my article here).
And thus it follows that when I do not fast on Yom Kippur because I am ill, the dimension of command truly does not exist, since in such a case the command is to eat and not to fast. Therefore, from that eating no damage occurred and there is nothing to regret. By contrast, in the moral sphere, even if a certain value is justifiably overridden, the moral obligation to fulfill it remains in force (except that it is impossible to comply). In fact, I claim that in moral conflict it is always “deferred” (dekhuyah) and not “permitted” (hutrah). But in halakhah there is also the consequential dimension (the repair brought about by a commandment and the corruption from a transgression), and with respect to that there seems to be a similarity to what we saw in the moral context. This relates to the distinction between de dicto fulfillment and de re fulfillment, and this is not the place to elaborate.
[7] See a note on this in my article on punishment in halakhah, ch. 4, where I argued against mechanistic approaches to heavenly punishment.
Discussion
I think there is no proof from the fact that there are moral questions directed at the Holy One, blessed be He, that morality is imposed upon Him.
Those questions merely assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose to command morality as a supreme principle, and therefore ask how it could be that He contradicts Himself.
To sharpen the point—the question is clarificatory, not confrontational. That is, it is clear to her that there is a moral justification for it, since she assumes that morality is the supreme principle that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose.
Regarding Tirgitz’s question—this really is a good question, because the feeling is that halakhah is different from moral obligations (just as Maimonides distinguishes between rational commandments and revelational commandments, etc.). One way to explain this is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to an entire spiritual framework that is beyond our grasp—and then the question naturally arises: if the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to such a complex system of laws, then ostensibly that system of laws is a higher entity, a kind of impersonal and indifferent Spinozist God, but in a “natural” non-physical world. It seems to me that the question of God’s subordination to laws is very weak, almost nonexistent, regarding the laws of logic, as you explained (that they are not really “laws”), and it is somewhat stronger regarding moral laws, because you argued—somewhat strainedly, but still in a way I can accept—that they are necessary in the same way. But regarding halakhic laws it is a bit harder to accept this, in my opinion. Because their necessity includes creating a world in which they are necessary, apparently, and on the face of it that does not look necessary. (The claim is that they are necessary at the highest level possible, but still cannot be understood—and that is very forced, unless the world was created together with these laws, in which case the original difficulty returns.) This is true also of moral laws (“causing pain is bad” is a claim relevant only in a world where there is pain—and the big question is why the Holy One, blessed be He, created pain in the world, not why He said it is forbidden to cause pain), and yet somehow it seems stronger to me in a halakhic world where the rules look more arbitrary. In any event, this places the Holy One, blessed be He, within a world that preceded Him and over which He has no control. By the way, there is also another theoretical possibility for dealing with this question, and I do not know what I think about it—to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, could have chosen a world in which only moral laws were relevant as human obligation, and He could have chosen a world in which those very laws are overridden by other values, whose content could be anything and is subject to His choice. And He chose the second possibility because without such a situation, we would hardly reflect on these laws at all; they would be self-evident (as Maimonides writes regarding the Tree of Knowledge—study this carefully). According to this possibility, the existence of a halakhic world that sometimes contradicts moral laws is justified for some external reason, not a necessary one, and does not require an entire system of rules to which the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject. On the other hand, as stated, the very decision to create such a world may itself look dubious.
I completely understand that sorrow, and in my view it certainly has a place. What I discussed was the question whether there is any interest/obligation (not a halakhic one) to be upset. In short, I am dealing with the normative plane, not the psychological one. If people are upset because they missed a soccer match, then all the more so here, no?!
I didn’t think she was being confrontational. Besides, if it’s a good question, the motivation doesn’t matter. But I think you are missing the tune of these questions: you present them as logical questions (about His coherence), but these perplexities are ethical. It is like Abraham, who was commanded to sacrifice his son, wondering only about the consistency of the Holy One, blessed be He, who had promised him that through Isaac his seed would be called, while ignoring the question of how it could be that the Holy One, blessed be He, commands such a thing. From your perspective, these are two similar logical questions. That is not what the poets mean.
I didn’t understand the claim. I will only comment on two points in your remarks (which I hope I understood):
1. Laws are not entities. The definition of good and evil is not necessarily a thing; it may be a fact. So there is no room to ask whether they are above the Holy One, blessed be He, or not.
2. Moral laws too are laws only in our world. If another world had been created, entirely different, with creatures built completely differently (they would have had no sorrow or suffering), then different laws would apply there. But if they were moral laws, then they would be applications of our same moral laws to those circumstances. That is exactly what you described regarding halakhah, so apparently there is no difference.
I did not ask whether you understand the sorrow, but whether you see in it a value close or similar to the loss of a moral value. Not the sorrow of missing a soccer game.
Not to the same degree, if at all. According to what I wrote in the column, on the assumption that the Holy One, blessed be He, prevents the spiritual damage if someone acted properly, then nothing happened. And if he is sorry about his loss (the loss of the experience)—that is of course his right, but that does not necessarily have value. Perhaps it expresses a kind of fear of Heaven, since the sorrow shows that these things matter to him. But moral sorrow is something beyond the expression that the value matters to him. The claim there is that something genuinely problematic happened here, only I am not to blame. In the halakhic context, nothing problematic happened. At most, you lost an experience.
“Every identity claim of the type: A is B. Assuming that this claim is true, then its meaning is basically: A is A, that is, an empty tautology.”—I am having trouble finding the problem here. Assuming that this claim is true, it is logically equivalent to the claim A=A, but also to the claim 1+1=2 and to every other true claim. If the meaning of a sentence is the information it adds, then no sentence has “meaning assuming it is true.” If we assume/know that it is true, then saying again that it is true adds no information, and therefore is not meaningful.
In other words: it has sense but no reference.
With God’s help, eve of Shabbat Kodesh Pekudei, 82
The Euthyphro dilemma is a fine one for the gods, where it is entirely unclear to what extent they are identified with morality. On the contrary, according to the mythological stories it is clear that they are full of jealousy and aggressiveness.
By contrast, the God of Israel is the source of truth and the source of goodness. He is not “subject” to morality and truth. He is truth and morality in their complete purity. We, His creatures, whose knowledge is but a tiny fragment, know a little through our senses, feelings, and reflection, but what we know is a minute fragment of the complete picture, which only the Creator of the world knows in its fullness, and only He knows its purpose.
Our moral objections to the Creator’s ways of conduct are like the objections of a child who does not understand why his father strikes his hand when he was only trying to stick a hammer into an electric socket, and who does not understand why his father hands him over to the cruel gang in white coats who pull out their knives and tear the flesh of the miserable child.
Regarding human parents, we have already merited to understand that the blow to the hand came to save the child from electrocution, and that the “knife-wielders in white coats” are performing a life-saving operation on the child. All the more so with regard to the ways of the Creator of the world, which took humanity hundreds of years of research to understand even a little of the depth contained in them—that we may allow ourselves to give a little “credit” to our Creator, that even the suffering and afflictions He brings upon us are for our good, to prepare us in the “corridor” so that we may be worthy of the “banquet hall,” and that we may know in our hearts that “as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you.”
With blessings, Euthyphron Nefishteim Halevi
Obviously there is such a thing as a square circle. It is something that has all the properties of a square and all the properties of a circle.
Something that is a square circle is both circular and made of three straight lines.
True, this contradicts everyday logic, but fortunately reality does not dance to the tune of our logic. Otherwise, we would not exist.
If in the Creator there is complete identity between His will and the objective good, then in man there may be a gap between his feeling of what is good and just and the instructions he receives from his Creator. And this gap is not only “possible” but necessary, though it narrows the more a person deepens and understands the will of his Maker.
At first glance one could have sufficed with accepting the yoke out of certainty that the Creator of the world acts justly even if man does not understand, but that is not enough. For a person must be not only a faithful “servant” of his Maker, but also a “disciple” who knows how to decipher his Maker’s will even in situations about which he has received no explicit instructions.
For a “servant,” it is enough to dictate “do this” or “do not do this.” He will not move a step without an explicit instruction. But in order to be a “disciple” who knows how to align himself with his master’s will even when he must “infer one thing from another,” there must be an understanding of the rationale of the matters, by means of which he can apply the principles even in changing situations.
For this reason, the Written Torah was given, dictated from on high word for word, “engraved on the tablets,” but there must also be an “Oral Torah” that strives to understand the reason and logic in the laws of the Torah, and from understanding the depth of the Torah’s laws one can also grasp their spirit and apply them in changing situations.
Through the Oral Torah, which explains the engraved law, man gradually frees himself from the “Euthyphro dilemma,” for the Creator’s will, which began as an “acceptance of an external yoke,” increasingly becomes for him “his own Torah,” which he understands and with which he identifies.
With blessings, Chanokh Hanekh Feinshmaker-Palti
I do not think that the picture you described implies that religious values are imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He. By virtue of being what He is, He Himself is an authority that can determine that certain religious values (which He created) are important enough to override moral values. The fact that moral values obligate does not entail that they necessarily come first in the hierarchy of priorities.
It seems to me that you did not understand my argument (or Tirgitz’s). Assuming that the religious values are in His hands, meaning that He can determine them as He wishes, there is no reason in the world for Him to determine a religious value that contradicts morality. Why do that if He can determine the religious value in a way that fits morality? From here it follows that the religious values too are not in His hands.
If so, then indeed I did not understand before, but even from this it still does not follow, in my opinion, for two reasons:
1. It may be that there is no possibility of creating a religious system that perfectly accords with morality (something like your remarks about creating a world with no evil). That does not mean it is imposed on Him, since He can forgo it altogether, unlike the case with morality. But assuming He wants such a system for some reason, it must clash with certain moral values. He presumably chose the one that clashes the least, and that also explains the significant correlation between the values of the Torah and moral values.
2. The Holy One, blessed be He, can compensate, in this world or the next, everyone who is morally harmed as a result of fulfilling a Torah value. He can ensure that in the final accounting, his measure of happiness will be exactly as it should have been without the Torah value.
1. Then that means it is imposed on Him. If He determines the system as He wishes and there is no constraint, then what prevents alignment with morality?
2. That He can compensate may be true. But there is no reason in the world to do so. He can determine those values so that they align with morality.
1. He determines the system as He wishes, but that does not mean that within the space of possibilities there exists a system of religious values with zero harm to morality. He can refrain from determining any religious system, or choose from among those that harm morality the least.
Just as He could have chosen not to create a world, but (perhaps) could not have created a world with all the benefits of this one but with zero evil. That does not mean that creation of the world is imposed on Him, but that if He wants (!) to create a world with free choice, then it will also contain evil.
I do not understand this insistence.
If there is no limitation that does not depend on Him, what prevents Him from not determining that a priest’s wife who was raped must be separated from her husband? He could have determined the opposite (given us a Torah without that detail). What constraint prevents this? In the context of evil, I explained that rigid laws of nature perhaps cannot exist without points of suffering and evil. No other system exists. But systems of religious laws have no constraints on them. They are arbitrary. So in the religious context, what prevents Him from determining only 612 commandments, without the law of the priest’s wife?
Rabbi, it seems to me you should write a column (or perhaps you already did and I’m not aware of it)
on the part about halakhah being necessary, and “permitted outright” versus “overridden,” etc.
I did not understand the request.
“But when man sinned [by the Tree of Knowledge]… he was punished by being deprived of that intellectual apprehension… and therefore it is said, ‘and you shall be as God, knowing good and evil,’ and it was not said ‘knowing falsehood and truth’ or ‘apprehending falsehood and truth.’
And with regard to necessary things, there is no good and evil at all, only falsehood and truth” (Guide of the Perplexed, Part I, ch. 2).
Perhaps Maimonides here too is speaking about ethical facts and thereby rendering the Euthyphro dilemma superfluous?
See column 177, where I explained that he is dealing with etiquette, not morality.
Thanks for the reference; I read it. Maybe I didn’t understand, but I did not see a problem in Maimonides’ words.
It seems to me that the sentence should be divided in two:
“And you shall be as God, knowing good and evil”—this is about the awareness that developed in you concerning conventional notions, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil. So now morality too appears to you as good and evil.
“And [the verse] did not say falsehood and truth or apprehending falsehood and truth, and with regard to necessary things there is no good and evil at all, only falsehood and truth”—here Maimonides means morality. That is, in this sense you became distant from God and lost the intellectual ability you had before to grasp morality in a factual—divine—category of truth and falsehood.
It should be read as a question and answer—why didn’t the verse say “falsehood and truth”? Answer: because you lost that. But know that in truth, for God, necessary things (morality) are not good and evil but falsehood and truth. And here the Euthyphro dilemma becomes superfluous.
I no longer remember the exact wording, but I understood him to be dealing only with etiquette and not morality. In any case, even if you are right that there is some statement in Maimonides, that does not render the Euthyphro dilemma superfluous. At most, you could claim that Maimonides had his own position regarding the dilemma.
[You made someone who did not deserve it come out as though he did. I only felt something vague (and even that came out of your own words), not in the sharp form in which you formulated it.]
From the picture that emerges, there is no difference between halakhah and morality regarding conflicts, but after all all people recognize this difference, so why take their intuition only halfway. Even if people regret the loss of a positive commandment they did not merit, or the special feeling that accompanies its fulfillment, I have never heard of anyone regretting that he was forced to transgress a prohibition due to override (whether an essential override, such as shatnez in tzitzit or levirate marriage, or a contingent override, such as cutting off a leprous spot during circumcision. By the way, it seems that Hazal derive contingent override from the law of essential override, and this apparently requires study), whereas in morality normal people do regret even having transgressed a moral prohibition, such as refraining from saving a non-Jew on Shabbat when he is fit to be saved.
So you explained this with a theory according to which in halakhah God goes and repairs the spiritual damages, whereas in morality He does not repair the physical damages. But how does that answer the question? If there is no moral command, then why do people care about the physical damage? Are they (myself included) simply mistaken, and there is no normative tension here at all, only a mere feeling?
To explain this, one would apparently have to add that the commandments remain forever, and even when they are overridden, each individual command remains in force. That is, the command is not the practical instruction “now do this,” but the principled instruction, and in a case of collision there truly is a command in this direction and a command in that direction, and therefore even in a case of conflict and explicit decision there is still a problem. (But if so, apparently there is no need at all to get to spiritual facts of various kinds.)
And this is basically what R. Akiva Eger says (it is indeed written in Derush VeChiddush in the section on Chagigah, as you referred me. I did not study the section, I only saw that he says that if someone blows the shofar on Rosh Hashanah that falls on Shabbat, then he fulfilled the mitzvah of shofar-blowing and only transgressed a rabbinic prohibition of rest). Namely, the command is not the practical instruction but the principle. I really do not understand this at all—could you explain it to me? (In your reply there you wrote that you do in fact think so.) A command is a practical instruction; I see no sense in saying that on the one hand I am commanded A and on the other hand I am commanded B, while in practice I am commanded B.
I do not understand why you do not see sorrow over the loss of a mitzvah. Of course that is relevant. Like someone who does not fast on Yom Kippur because he is ill. There are well-known stories about rabbis reassuring him and telling him that this is his duty in his condition. Beyond that, in the case of a positive commandment overriding a prohibition, this is a routine situation and people are used to it. For example, in wool and linen tzitzit, nobody remembers that there is shatnez there. But in the case of an ill person on Yom Kippur, that is a rare situation, and therefore people are upset.
Of course people care about the physical damage and the suffering of the other. What does that have to do with my having acted properly? If a person suffers because of natural harm, do I not feel sorrow over that? So when I am responsible for it (even if justly), of course I am sorry. Go and see people in an accident for which they are not at fault, and even when the injured party himself is at fault—how much sorrow they feel over the damage they caused.
I no longer remember my words that you are quoting about the command’s remaining in force, but I wrote about this at length in the third book of the Talmudic Logic series. The whole book is devoted to the distinction between the command and the practical instruction. A command is a kind of reality, and the practical instruction is only derived from it. An actual halakhic fact. You have now reminded me of that.
The “quotation” from your words was in a reply in that thread, when I tried to infer from R. Akiva Eger that the command is not only the word of God (because if it were only the word of God, then it would make no sense to fulfill a mitzvah in a situation where God ultimately commands in practice not to do it and even forbids doing it—namely, forbids blowing the shofar), and you replied: “I agree with the analysis that sees the basis in conceiving the mitzvot as a kind of reality and not merely fulfillment of the word of God.” Perhaps I did not correctly understand your intention there, but in my eyes R. Akiva Eger’s words are still utterly unintelligible. If you help me understand this idea, I would be very grateful.
Regarding the sorrow, it seems to me there is a difference between people’s mistake due to habit (traditionalism versus halakhah from the books) and a real basis, for they regret only in a matter that they have not trampled underfoot, whereas they do not regret in tzitzit and levirate marriage even if you remind them. But I withdraw that point.
And the main thing—if morality obligates only because of the command, then in a place where there is an anti-moral command there is not the slightest normative problem even in causing a thousand harms. What is the answer to the fact that people feel a conflict and even direct it toward the Holy One, blessed be He, as you described in the column? As I understand it, your answer is that this is a mistake, and indeed there is no normative problem at all in causing harm when God has withdrawn His moral command to refrain from causing harm. And the theory of repairing spiritual harms versus not repairing physical harms is intended only to explain people’s feelings, not to justify them. Is that really so?
This can be understood through my suggestion about spiritual benefits. These remain in place even when I have no obligation to perform the act that brings them about. But of course the benefit by itself is not enough to define a mitzvah. Metaphorically I would say that the command too exists forever. It is just that at times it must be violated because of another command.
An example is time-bound positive commandments for women. Almost all decisors agree that there is value in performing them, and most even see this as a non-obligatory mitzvah (the Ra’avad at the beginning of his commentary to the Sifra writes that it overrides a prohibition). But from the standpoint of God’s command, women are exempt. They are not obligated to do it—so what mitzvah is there here if they did it anyway?
I think there is a normative problem in causing harm, and the sorrow is real and not merely psychological. Moral harms, as distinct from spiritual ones, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not erase even if you did what you were supposed to do.
The metaphor that the command exists forever but sometimes one must transgress it illustrates the problem. That is possible when the source of validity comes from spiritual facts silently sitting in the corner, and it does not seem possible when the commander is an intelligent entity that is supposed to tell me, bottom line, what it wants me to do. In the case of time-bound positive commandments, you compare optional mitzvot to shofar on Rosh Hashanah that falls on Shabbat, where the Holy One, blessed be He, in practice forbids me to blow (commands me to obey the Sages. Every normative principle, on your view, always gets its force from the Holy One, blessed be He, and certainly so in halakhah). I admit it is hard to define the distinction, but nevertheless it seems to exist. To say that I am doing God’s command while at the same time I rebelled against Him and blew the shofar despite His honored eyes in defiance of the prohibition—that is a strange thing. In any case, if so, I will reflect on it. (By the way, it is interesting to compare this to a mitzvah that comes through a transgression, and to the discussion you brought concerning R. Asher Weiss; I will reflect on that too. And at first glance, R. Akiva Eger’s words are only about a rabbinic prohibition, but if it is a Torah prohibition—for example, he has his paschal offering to eat and pork flavor was absorbed into it in a way that prohibits it by Torah law—perhaps even R. Akiva Eger would agree that he did not fulfill the mitzvah of eating.)
I did not understand what normative problem there is in causing harm if, in the case under discussion, there is no command of the Holy One, blessed be He, forbidding that specific harm. That is, you mean that in morality too the command not to harm remains in force, except that one is obligated to violate it. If the command is an intelligent entity that knows everything and decides what to command, then this matter is incomprehensible to me, as above. As stated, I will reflect on it; perhaps I have been afflicted with square analytic thinking.
Regarding a Torah prohibition and a mitzvah, a better example than an offering that became forbidden meat (does one who eats it unlawfully count as one who eats notar and has fulfilled no mitzvah at all, or has he both fulfilled a mitzvah and committed a transgression?) is the rival wife of one’s daughter for the brothers. Bet Hillel forbid it and the offspring is a mamzer. Is it possible that in their view too, one who performs levirate marriage with the rival wife of his daughter thereby fulfills the mitzvah of levirate marriage?! (One could distinguish between rules within the mitzvah and rules across different mitzvot. But the whole point is that to me this seems exactly the same thing.)
There are spiritual facts, as I wrote in the column. But they have no validity without there being some factor that legislates them and/or commands them.
For our purposes, there is no difference whatsoever between a prohibition and the absence of obligation. You yourself admit this, and then press a forced objection. Amazing!
What is your initial inclination—do R. Akiva Eger’s words apply also to some Torah prohibition that is not overridden by any positive commandment, such that if he fulfilled the positive commandment and transgressed the prohibition he thereby gained the mitzvah and discharged his obligation, or are his words only about a rabbinic prohibition that nullifies a Torah mitzvah?
You do not need conjectures and first impressions. It seems to me there is evidence for this from the fact that a mitzvah that comes through a transgression is disqualified. And the Rishonim already addressed the difference between this rule and the rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. In any case, according to most opinions, when the prohibition is not overridden for some reason (for example, because it is not simultaneous), this is a case of a mitzvah that comes through a transgression.
On your view, there would be no need for a verse for this, since by the very nature of the situation such a mitzvah would have no value. But the Gemara derives it from “I hate robbery in a burnt offering.” Moreover, according to Tosafot in Sukkah, a mitzvah that comes through a transgression is only rabbinic (and therefore a verse is needed to disqualify a stolen sukkah. Another verse against you).
I commented above about a mitzvah that comes through a transgression, but I was thinking only of the example of a stolen sukkah, where the mitzvah act itself is not a transgression (and there is also your discussion on top of R. Asher Weiss’s remarks and ve-hachiluk tzarikh limmud). Now I saw on Wikipedia the example of eating untithed matzah on Passover, and they claim there (I did not check the source) that one does not fulfill the obligation of matzah and does not perform the mitzvah of matzah. And that indeed proves your point (perhaps only if it is a case where he has no other matzah, so it is clear that the Holy One, blessed be He, forbids him to eat the untithed matzah).
Without a verse we would not know what prevails—that is, what the Holy One, blessed be He, commands in practice; perhaps in the case of untithed matzah He commands one to eat if there is no other matzah. I am not familiar with the matter, but “robbery in a burnt offering” seemingly is novel even after the robber has acquired it and the offering is his in every respect and he is allowed to eat it with full appetite, yet it is still unfit for the altar. [Aside from that, the idea of proving that otherwise “there is no need for a verse” is rather dubious, especially in light of the column about a verse that teaches the opposite, for we clearly have reasoning in both directions; and I of course admit that R. Akiva Eger said what he said, and you even think his words are sensible, so certainly I have no problem thinking that a verse is needed to extract us from this reasoning.]
In any case, let us assume as you say: it comes out that one who eats untithed matzah has not fulfilled the mitzvah of matzah at all and has transgressed the prohibition of tevel. But one who blew the shofar on Rosh Hashanah that falls on Shabbat, according to R. Akiva Eger, did fulfill the mitzvah of shofar-blowing and transgressed a rabbinic prohibition of rest.
The implication is that within rules of override inside the Torah, the mitzvah “itself” is defined only for situations in which it is not overridden. But within rabbinic rules of override, the Torah mitzvah “remains,” except that in practice it is forbidden to fulfill it, as in the metaphor that the command exists forever, only that sometimes one must violate it.
Regarding your suggestion that religious law too, or at least the values at its foundation, derive from independent facts imposed on God—it seems to me that instead of introducing an additional dimension that obligates God, with the theological difficulties that follow from that, one can base this on the idea of the supreme need for human self-perfection, an idea that the rabbi also accepts. In order to maximize human self-perfection and choice, “the Holy One, blessed be He, gave them many Torah laws and commandments,” including some that are in conflict with morality. I recall that you wrote in one of the columns that precisely a multiplicity of values gives greater meaning to choice, because there are more possible combinations among the values.
What I call a religious value, you call human self-perfection. So how is that different? Do you mean to say that there are no goals in the object itself except the perfection of the subject? That would mean that all the laws are completely arbitrary (He could have chosen other laws, even the opposite ones). But then Tirgitz’s argument returns: why are there cases where He determined them against morality?
You write that religious values are imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He, but nevertheless in a case of contradiction between religious values He performs a miracle and prevents the religious harm caused by committing a transgression. If so, I do not understand how religious values are imposed on Him—for He can nullify them whenever He wants. And if He does not want to intervene in nature (even in religious nature), why does He intervene in cases of contradiction between religious values?
It is not imposed on Him to act this way. What is imposed on Him is that this is the value. In morality too, it is not imposed on Him to act this way, only that this is the definition of good.
Regarding what you wrote here:
“However, on further thought one could argue that in halakhah, if I did something permitted, then the spiritual harm is also prevented. One can say that the Holy One, blessed be He, performs a miracle and prevents the damage so that no mishap should come through a righteous person like me, who is faithful to halakhah.”
If so, then why shouldn’t He always perform miracles to prevent all the spiritual harms people cause, whether they do something permitted or forbidden?
Regarding what you wrote in this paragraph:
“Let me explain his question. According to my view, the Holy One, blessed be He, commands us to perform anti-moral commandments in order to promote religious values. If so, Tirgitz argues, it seems that the religious values too are imposed on Him and are not the result of His arbitrary will (His sovereign legislation). If the mitzvot were not ‘halakhic facts’ imposed on God but were created by His legislation, then He could have legislated them differently. In that case, I would expect that if it is His will (and nature) to do good, He would not legislate laws that conflict with morality. The existence of conflicts indicates that the laws of halakhah (or the religious values which those laws promote) are also imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He, and therefore He finds Himself (or places us) against His will in these conflicts.”
Your words imply that all the mitzvot and laws of halakhah are imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He, but from your argument one can infer this only regarding the laws and mitzvot that stand in opposition to morality. A command such as reciting the Shema does not stand in opposition to morality, and therefore there is no necessity that it be imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He, or that it be a halakhic fact.
Beyond that, it may be that even in cases where the Holy One, blessed be He, commands something that is seemingly not moral, it is in order to prevent a greater moral injustice. For example, the matter of sacrifices. Seemingly the Holy One, blessed be He, commands the killing of animals unnecessarily. But it may be that without this command, people would have rejected religion entirely because it would not have contained an important component of religious life that preceded the giving of the Torah. That is, the transition to the Jewish religion would have been too abrupt, and that would have endangered the transition itself from taking place.
Additionally, it may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, sometimes prioritizes His own desire (which is not imposed on Him) as something more important than moral harm to His creatures. For example, let us take the desire of the Holy One, blessed be He, to perfect Himself. If for that purpose He sometimes needs to harm one of His creatures, it may be that He is willing to do so in order to promote that desire, even though He could have given up that desire at some point; He still prioritizes it as something more important than the moral harm. That is, it may be that even mitzvot that stand in opposition to morality are not imposed on Him and are not halakhic facts, and yet He chooses to command them because that matters more to Him than the moral harm. And if you say that this is an immoral choice and contradicts the assumption that the Holy One, blessed be He, is always moral, I will answer that the Holy One, blessed be He, must be moral toward Himself as well. That is, when He gives up one of His desires, there is self-harm in that (something like the consideration that your life takes precedence).
Because He has an interest in the fate of the world depending on our actions. It is like asking why give us choice and not cause us always to act well without choice (which in effect would mean not creating us at all).
Indeed, the argument deals only with anti-moral halakhot.
As for sacrifices, I did not understand the question. You are simply offering an explanation for the commandment of sacrifices. Fine. And if your intention is that this is an indirect moral explanation, in my opinion that is not plausible.
When you say that something is preferable in His eyes, the meaning is that He has some objective goal that is not merely the result of the Holy One’s arbitrary will.
The world will indeed depend on our actions; it is only the spiritual damages that do not depend on our actions, because there, according to what you wrote, He tends to intervene. And beyond that, if the Holy One, blessed be He, wants spiritual damages too to depend on our actions, then why, in the case of someone who did something permitted, would He intervene to prevent the spiritual harm? That contradicts His policy that the world should depend on our actions.
Regarding sacrifices, I meant that there are mitzvot that appear to us anti-moral, but in fact, in their depth, they promote morality. We simply do not understand how or why, but it may be that there is a deep explanation behind them that contributes to the advancement of morality (not all anti-moral mitzvot are necessarily like this, but at least some of them may be).
As for what is preferable in His eyes, I mean the Holy One’s “personal” desires and aspirations. That is, not something imposed on Him from outside, but an inner desire of His. I am not sure the term “arbitrary” is appropriate here regarding the Holy One’s will. Just as someone’s desire to become an accomplished chess player is not called an arbitrary desire (nor is it imposed on him from outside). It is a personal desire. Perhaps the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to “be an accomplished chess player” in some area, and for that purpose He is willing, at times, to sacrifice even moral harms to certain people.
Depending on our actions means depending on whether we did something permitted or forbidden.
Perhaps.
I find it hard to discuss the Holy One’s personality and aspirations.
I am not speaking about the personality or the aspirations themselves. I am saying that there may be some desire of the Holy One, blessed be He, which, although not imposed on Him from outside (a halakhic fact), is still more important to Him than moral harm to His creatures, and therefore He commands it.
If it is not imposed on Him and there is nothing objective dictating it, then it is His arbitrary decision, and the original difficulty returns. Either it is arbitrary or it is imposed (in the sense that moral values are imposed on us: their validity is imposed, not conduct in accordance with them). I do not see a third possibility.
If a person wants to become an accomplished chess player, is that his arbitrary desire? Or is it imposed on him?
Simply speaking, an arbitrary desire. If it derives from his nature, then it is imposed on him.
There is the matter of the esoteric doctrine of divine service for a higher need, and the Holy One’s desire to perfect Himself. In both, the Holy One, blessed be He, needs us in order to achieve these goals. It may be that for the sake of achieving these goals there is no avoiding the fact that moral harm will be caused to someone. Just as human beings conduct experiments on animals for medical needs, the Holy One, blessed be He, may also use us for His needs, even if that sometimes harms us.
Indeed. Then that is imposed on Him. To perfect Himself means to be more perfect, and the definition of perfection is not in His hands.
Why must that necessarily be imposed on Him? It may be that He chooses it. After all, the whole necessity to say that it is imposed on Him comes from the reasoning that the Holy One, blessed be He, would not choose something immoral. But I brought an example that where there is a need, human beings too choose something immoral for their own sake, and justifiably so (medical experiments on animals).
Human beings do this out of compulsion. The disease is imposed on them, and so is the path to the cure.
They can experiment on human beings or forgo the medicine. That is, there is no necessary value or some value-fact that compels experiments on animals.
There is the fact that experiment is necessary in order to learn, and there is the moral fact that animals are preferable to human beings.
So why do we need to arrive at halakhic facts imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He? We can say that there is a moral fact that says that where there is a clash between the Holy One’s need and moral harm to human beings, there is a moral fact that says it is preferable to harm human beings rather than compromise the Holy One’s need.
The Holy One’s need too is imposed on Him, or else it is not a need and does not justify overriding moral values.
In my opinion there is no way out of this: either imposed or arbitrary. And the arbitrary does not override morality. Each time you come from another direction, but the answer is the same. The blanket is too short: you can cover your feet or your head, but not both.
Okay, but a need is not in the category of a halakhic fact. From what I understood from you, halakhic or moral facts are facts in the domain of ought and not is.
That does not matter. There are still things imposed on Him. But beyond that, this need is a fact that creates OUGHT. The claim is that halakhot are imposed on Him like moral values. It does not seem important to me whether this is compulsion through facts and needs or directly. I still think these are values, but why is that important?!
That is what I argued in the previous comment: that this fact of need creates ought, but it is an ought from the sphere of morality and not from a halakhic or other sphere. Just as experimenting on animals rather than on human beings is a moral ought and not a halakhic one.
Not necessarily morality. Some kind of need or value, moral or not. For example, the Holy One’s self-perfection is not a moral need in the accepted sense. Nor does the prohibition against eating pork look like an expression of a moral fact.
What I meant is that the Holy One, blessed be He, commands anti-moral mitzvot out of some need that exists in Him. But before He commands, He is in a dilemma whether to prioritize His need or avoid moral harm to human beings. That dilemma lies in the moral sphere. Just as the dilemma whether to experiment on human beings or on animals lies in the moral sphere.
Then there is a religious value (which you choose to call a need) imposed on Him, and only the decision in the dilemma between it and morality is an ethical decision. Suppose you are right—so what? Where is the dispute? Beyond that, in my opinion the decision between a religious value or need and a moral value is itself not on the moral plane.
As I understand it, Rabbi Michi argues as follows:
A. God wants the good because it is good.
B. A religious command is not identical with a moral command.
C. In a clash between a religious command and a moral command, one must sometimes choose the moral command.
Why not claim that the clash is merely apparent (as in the approach of Rabbi Lichtenstein and, in my humble opinion, the prevalent approach in religious circles)?
D. As I understand it, it follows necessarily that the religious command too is imposed on God, otherwise why would He command contrary to morality?
What remains to be understood is why we are permitted to choose the moral command in a case of conflict, for God chose the religious command in that very conflict?
A possible solution is that the religious command was given by God, but since then it has become static, and we assume that in the present reality He would not command it, and therefore we choose the moral command.
All this according to the method of our mighty master Rabbi M.D., may he live long, faithful to his approach that does not recognize freedom of will in God (see The Sciences of Freedom). Study carefully; and it requires further clarification.
If you had read the words of your mighty master, you would have seen that I write that we are not permitted to do so, precisely because He Himself has already chosen. Therefore there is no need to look for solutions.
The meaning of this is that there is no identity between halakhah and morality.[1] These are two categories that are in principle independent (even though of course they do not always conflict). The judgment whether an act is moral or not, and the judgment whether it is permitted or forbidden halakhically, are two different and almost independent judgments. The halakhic category and the moral category are two different categories. Of course, in cases where one reaches a conflict between the moral and the halakhic instruction, one has to resolve it in some way (and it is not always in favor of halakhah), but the very existence of a conflict is not itself problematic. There are such conflicts also between two moral values (as in the example of saving life by causing pain), and there is no reason they cannot also exist between a halakhic value and a moral value.
A quotation from column 15. And similarly your words about homosexuals in the interview with London. Do these not indicate that sometimes one does not fulfill the religious command? Could you please clarify the difference for me?
I used to mention in discussions about same-sex inclinations in Judaism that your view is that in this case one should choose morality over the Torah, unlike Rabbi Riskin, who makes an ukimta in the Torah, and traditional rabbis, who make an ukimta in morality. And the custom of Israel is Torah.
Just kidding—really, I would be happy if you clarified your opinion. In a case of an explicit Torah law that stands in conflict with morality, is there room to choose morality? And what about a rabbinic law? Shall we make an ukimta in a Torah law so that it will not contradict morality, even against halakhic tradition?
I dealt with this at the beginning of the third book of the trilogy. In brief, when there is an essential conflict, halakhah always prevails. For example, wiping out Amalek. The Torah itself took the moral price into account and nevertheless commanded it. But when the conflict is contingent, such as preserving life and Shabbat, one cannot infer from the very command about Shabbat that it overrides preservation of life, or vice versa. In such situations, one must decide for oneself.
And all this is when the command is clear in the Torah. If it is the result of interpretation or exposition, then the doubt enters that perhaps this halakhah is not correct.
I clarified it. As for ukimtot, of course it is possible. The gates of interpretation have not been locked.
With God’s help, “Surely goodness…” at the conclusion of the holy Sabbath, 5782
The oppositions are not between “religion” and “morality,” but between a “morality of compassion” and a “morality of deterrence.” The side of compassion requires caution against disproportionate harm to the sinner and the granting of an opportunity for repentance and correction. By contrast, the morality of deterrence requires bringing cruel vengeance upon the sinner that will remove from the future sinner any “hava amina” of repeating the crime.
Here we need the “divine order” to give the right measure that will bring balance between the need for meaningful deterrence and the divine will to show compassion and allow correction.
Thus, for example, deterrence requires uprooting the nations that developed an ideology of hatred and evil—Amalek and the Canaanite nations—while compassion requires first calling to them in peace and allowing them escape through “changing direction,” by accepting the basic values of faith and morality—the seven Noahide commandments.
With blessings, Chasdai Betzalel Duvdevani Kirshen-Kvas
A simple question. The fact that there is valid morality (divine, for example)—where is this morality written? Are we inferring it from our intuition that murder and theft are forbidden? That is, if this is something learned from human intuition or from traditional social conventions, then again it makes no sense to compel a person who did not receive that intuition. And if it is somehow connected to the Torah, then again this is written divine law, so where is the distinction between Torah and morality?
It is written on the tablet of our hearts. The Torah instructs us, “and you shall do what is right and good,” but does not spell out what that means. It assumes that everyone understands the meaning of the moral command (it is written on the tablet of his heart). The content of morality is learned from moral intuition, but the obligation to conduct oneself accordingly comes from the divine will, as I explained in the column. If there is a person who does not have this intuition, then he is a sick person and there is nothing to do with him. Exactly as there is nothing to do with a blind person who cannot see.
The difference between halakhah and morality lies in the command. The commands in the Torah deal only with halakhah, and morality is not under command. It is a divine will without command, and therefore it remains outside halakhah. That is also why its content does not appear in the Torah but within us. By contrast, in halakhah the contents too are written in the Torah. Therefore “and you shall do what is right and good” is not counted among the commandments by any of those who enumerate them.
So there is an assumption that “what is right and good” is something every human being understands in his basic intuition, meaning the things accepted by us such as murder and rape. But the same question you directed at atheists—what would you say about a mercenary who thinks that part of his professional ethic is to murder? You proved from this that there is a moral system external to man, divine—but again, that system does not specify what is included in its “right and good,” and again we would ask you what you would say about a mercenary who thinks that murder is what is right and good. In short, I would appreciate a sharpening of what problem you solve with the assumption that morality needs God.
You are conflating levels. I asked a question not about someone who does not understand that murder is forbidden, but about someone who understands that it is forbidden yet does not feel obligated by it. That is a completely different question. Someone who does not understand is blind. What can I say to him? The same thing I would say to a blind person who does not see reality and denies the existence of colors, for example.
What I asked them is what, in their view, is the source of morality’s validity, not what the laws of morality say.
Without God, even I—who do feel the validity of moral laws—would not be obligated by them. I would dismiss that feeling as an illusion instilled in me that has no real validity. Only God can give it validity.
I understand. You are basically saying that what is included in morality is known to every human being; it is ingrained in us that murder and rape are immoral. And you are also basically claiming that this morality must at its base be accepted by everyone, despite changes of cultures and periods. The difference between the atheist and the believer is that the believer also explains why this morality obligates him. Did I understand correctly?
Exactly so. I think I explained this both in the column and in the original discussion.
Thank you
I only have two little questions:
1. In order for there to be an interface and fruitful dialogue between believing people and those who do not—could you define moral laws in some way that does not use terms from the religious sphere (God, commandment, halakhah, etc.)? (For example: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.”)
2. In your opinion, is it permissible for a believing person to harm a non-believing person who violated religious law in a way that does not involve harming anyone else? Full disclosure: Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh and the Mishnah Berurah think so (and God likewise).
1. I did not understand what kind of dialogue you want to have. As I explained in column 456, in my opinion there is no room for valid and consistent morality without belief in God. On the other hand, I do not use God in defining the moral laws in any way. Moral laws are universal and are not supposed to change from person to person or from society to society (except for disagreements, of course). There is no such thing as Jewish morality or halakhic morality, etc. There is morality.
2. God does not think so (although you, as someone who does not believe in Him—by your own testimony—represent Him faithfully), and as I understand it, neither do Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh. Nor do I, insignificant as I am. I am speaking, of course, about someone who transgresses religious law innocently, not someone who believes and nevertheless transgresses, who is liable to punishment like in any legal system. Beyond that, a person who transgresses religious law does indeed harm others, at least in standard religious conceptions (I will not repeat here the parable of the hole in the ship).
And I will only add a disclosure against myself (which in this case also happens to be true, unlike yours): there are different legal systems and societies that have acted this way, and until not long ago most of them were like this. See the attitude toward homosexuality, and to this day prohibitions on incest and sexual relations between relatives, polygamy, and so on.
God calls for stoning one who desecrates Shabbat, without distinguishing whether he believes or not. Maimonides calls for killing one who says the Torah is not from Heaven—that is, one who does not believe—without trial, without witnesses, and without warning. The Shulchan Arukh holds the same opinion. As for harm, I am talking about harm that is agreed to be harm even by the non-believing person (which is why I would very much like to formulate moral principles acceptable to both sides). The claim that there is no room for valid and consistent morality without belief in God is very strange. After all, Muslims also believe in God, and I am not sure you are willing to accept their morality, or that of Christians, as is. I too, as a vegan, am very hurt by every person who eats meat because, to me, he is eating my friends. Even so, I cannot conduct a fruitful dialogue with such a person, and although I would very much like to punish people who harm my friends, I feel that under current conditions this is not acceptable. Beyond that, there is a huge leap between believing in some higher power and believing in ancient writings that say that this higher power created the world in six days, brought the Flood, chose the people of Israel, and gave them the Torah. Your treatment everywhere is not of general God, but of that narrow one described in those ancient writings called the Tanakh, whose authorship is not very clear. This is a huge logical leap that you do a good job of blurring.
There are several confusions here. When I speak about God as the basis for valid morality, I am speaking about belief in a general God, with no connection to this religion or that. The fact that I believe in the Jewish God is irrelevant to the matter. Without God there is no morality. Which God do you believe in? It could be any one. So you do a fine job of seeing blurring where there is none.
As I wrote to you, there is no Muslim, Jewish, or Christian morality. There is morality. There are different halakhot in each religion, but that is not relevant to morality.
You decided that God instructed us to stone every desecrator of Shabbat without distinction, but halakhah says otherwise (even an unintentional transgressor is not stoned, certainly not one under compulsion, who does not even bring a sacrifice). So if you choose to describe God in such a way that you can hate Him, health to you. But do not put your words in my mouth. One does not build objections on unfounded assumptions.
The rest of your assumptions are equally unfounded.
I have no problem with the general God. He has never said a word, and if He shows His power it is in nature—in thunderous silence. This God shows Himself, among other things, in terrible natural disasters that consume people and animals and bring destruction without any distinction. Such a God cannot be a basis for morality unless you speak in His name and narrow Him down in one way or another. The Jewish God is a human creation—and more than that, a creation of Jewish man, just as the Muslim God is a creation of Muslim man. It is not God whom I hate; it is various parts of the Jewish human creation that display boundless cruelty. What is the point of killing every living thing on the face of the earth in response to human sins in the Flood? What is the point of killing all the Egyptian firstborn and all the firstborn of the livestock in response to Pharaoh’s sin? And yes—stoning a man who gathers wood on Shabbat is cruelty as well. This is not God—these are the writers of the Tanakh and their interpreters. The verse itself does not mention compulsion or inadvertence. What you are citing is already a softening, the work of man.
And yes—Maimonides in Hilkhot Mamrim 3:2 says what I quoted:
“And those who say that the Torah is not from Heaven, and informers, and apostates—all these are not included among Israel, and there is no need for witnesses, warning, or judges; rather, whoever kills one of them has done a great mitzvah and removed the stumbling block.”
And the Shulchan Arukh follows and reinforces Maimonides (Yoreh De’ah 158:2):
“And the heretics—and they are those among Israel who deny the Torah and prophecy—they used to practice in the Land of Israel to kill them. If one had the power to kill him by the sword in public—kill him. If not, approach him by stratagems until you bring about his death.”
These are not unfounded assumptions—it is written in black and white, and if there is any softening of these words, it comes only years later by human beings like you and me who interpret Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh. We have no shortage of Yigal Amirs—the words of Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh permit people’s blood. That is what angers me, and rightly so.
You keep sailing freely from one question to another, and one cannot conduct a discussion this way.
There are many interpreters, and they do not interest me very much. Both secular interpreters of morality and religious interpreters of the Torah. Both can arrive at all sorts of conclusions, and I do not see why you think I am supposed to represent any of them.
The problem of evil has been discussed at length in several places here on the site, and I see no point in repeating it here. And certainly I see no point in repeating again and again things I have explained. If you disagree, that is of course your right. But what is the point of going around in circles here? Create for yourself a god as you wish so that you can hate him (=the nonexistent god) to your heart’s content, and that will settle the matter.
I’ll ask here a question connected to the previous column with Enoch, because this seems to me an important continuation of it.
Enoch did a YouTube debate for the Yedaya Institute with Moshe Rat and asked him a question that I think could also be raised against your approach.
You agree that the difference between you and Enoch is that for you the source of morality’s binding force is not the existence of necessary ideas that command the good; rather, however much those ideas of the good may “hover” in being, they are at most an is, so one also needs a thin God in the background—a being with a will—to command us to act morally in accordance with them, the source of ought.
To this he asked him: why do you see will as a factor that can create a normative command? It is no more than a fact! For example, your wanting to be rich does not create for you a value that you ought to do so. Likewise, if someone else wants you to do something, that does not create for you a normative obligation to do it. So why claim that we need a thin God with a will? Will adds no normative obligation. If so, stop with the ideas of the good and that is it. And in general, from his perspective the existence of the good requires no more explanation than the existence of the number eight.
Second, if God were to whisper in your ear that He does not exist, what would your attitude toward morality be?
(If you would continue to behave as usual, wouldn’t that show the lack of necessity for that hypothesis…?)
The authority of God creates obligation. That is not IS but OUGHT. I am not obligated by your will, but that too is not because the will is IS, but because you have no authority for me. Just as, in Enoch’s view, ethical facts are not IS but OUGHT. I agree with him about that; I only claim that there are no binding ethical facts without God.
So in practice, according to your claim, every command is an ought; the only question is what level of authority it has?
Because it sounded to me like Moshe Rat accepted Enoch’s argument that the command of an ordinary person is an is, and only God, who is the creator of the world and defined a purpose for the world, is different.
I do not think you agree with him that the ought is contained within the ethical facts; rather, their binding force comes בעקבות the command.
At least that is what you wrote in this column.
Of course. That is my dispute with Enoch. I pointed out that in Enoch’s own view he has the same problem.
Today I thought of an example and an objection to your words.
On the one hand, in honoring parents (beings with will and authority), it seems that you do see in their words a statement with normative force.
So we see that “will” has the power to constitute a normative claim. (Which Enoch vehemently denies.)
The problem with this is that one could say it comes from the understanding that one ought to honor parents.
On the other hand,
According to your words, the obligation toward God also comes from ontic gratitude.
And not from something intrinsic—if so, that is really a contradiction.
We would have expected you not to seek a second-order reason for why one should listen to God.
I thought to resolve it by saying that authority comes from facts (like ontic gratitude), which is usually connected to the plane of the moral idea “that preceded God,” but obligation comes by way of will.
——-
Also, you did not answer the question that I think contains a lot,
and that is: if God were to whisper in your ear that He does not exist (despite the absurdity), or that there is no factor commanding morality, what would your attitude toward morality be?
(If you would continue to behave as usual, wouldn’t that show the lack of necessity for that hypothesis…?) and that there is no reason to make distinctions at all!?
Enoch does not necessarily deny this. He only argues that there is no need to get there, because ethical facts have validity even without it.
It is not will that creates obligation, but the authority of the one who has the will (the fact that he wants can itself be considered a fact). This is not a reason but the definition of the thing itself. Just as obedience to morality does not derive from a duty to obey morality. It itself is the duty to obey. That is a description, not a reason. The claim is that the one who created me is one to whom I have an obligation. That is not a reason but a description.
The last question is entirely meaningless. The question is not what I would do, but what I would be obligated to do. Perhaps I would behave morally even then, because I would feel like it. But the obligation to do so would not exist without God. Just as an atheist behaves morally even though in his doctrine the moral command has no validity (and if he thinks it does—he is mistaken).
First, after hearing the debate with Rat, I am almost certain that he does not accept that will is connected to a normative statement. He sees it as an is like any other is.
In any case,
If will is not a condition for normative obligation, and the only relevant thing is authority, then there is no reason not to accept Enoch’s words and stop the authority at the idea of morality without God.
Second, to the best of my knowledge, you do not necessarily connect the God of morality to God the creator. (You only use Ockham’s razor to argue for this.)
If so, the statement that you have an obligation to the one who created you is only a description and not a reason, and it is not correct.
As for the second question, I understand.
P.S.
The debate is attached,
I think around minute 35 one can see that for him will never constitutes a normative statement at all; it is always an is like all the other is’s in the world.
We are repeating ourselves. An idea has no authority in itself. It is an object, nothing more. Why should I care whether it tells me to do or not do something? The creator has authority.
I would appreciate some sharpening of what is meant by saying that morality has no validity “without His commanding them.” Do you mean a command within the framework of halakhah (which you define as a separate system), a “command” that arises from the moral intuition He implanted in His creatures, or a command in some other way?
Also, following your conclusion that “the halakhic facts too are imposed on Him,” I would appreciate some sharpening regarding the saying of Hazal that “the commandments will be nullified in the future to come.” Should we infer from this that the “future to come” too is imposed on the “halakhic facts” (or on some of them—depending on the exact interpretation of the “nullification”), and therefore also on Him?
Thinking about it, I suppose one could say that the binding validity will be nullified in the future to come, but the halakhic facts will remain as they are.
I did not understand the question. You stated that in my view morality and halakhah are two independent categories. So what are you asking? Was there a “Mount Hermon revelation” where we were commanded regarding morality?
I do not know about the future. Hazal need not be right. But mitzvot also did not exist before the giving of the Torah, so there is no reason they should not cease to exist in the future to come. Your two formulations seem similar to me.
If I understood you correctly, the validity of morality derives from God’s command. My question is: where were we commanded regarding morality?
In the conscience implanted within us.
A woman who has given birth is upset that she was prevented from fasting on Yom Kippur. From the standpoint of the commandment, she is completely covered—she is exempt. On the contrary, the mitzvah of safeguarding her life and the life of her fetus is greater. But she is distressed, even though she knows perfectly well that her mitzvah right now is to eat, because she did not merit to fast. She misses the day of fasting, purification, and atonement. Would you dismiss these feelings as the dust of the earth, and wave them away with the excuse of “psychology”—arguments you do not consider significant? Or is there some other substance here that in some way resembles sorrow over a moral failing?