On Aesthetic Values (Column 154)
From the previous post: why emotions initially seemed outside value judgment
In the previous post the discussion was about types of people and emotions, not about actions. The starting point was therefore that emotions as such are not subject to moral judgment: they are not chosen acts, and morality usually deals with behavior that affects others. That is why the contrast between the gentle football fan who accepts a loss and the agitated hooligan initially looked like a purely aesthetic distinction. But this post adds that once one looks at the two character types, it is hard to avoid the feeling that the gentle and restrained one is not only more beautiful but also, in some sense, a better human being, even without appealing to the practical consequences of his character.
From character refinement to the value of personal wholeness
To ground that claim, the post returns to the discussion of character refinement. The commandment to cleave to God’s ways, on the proposal here, is aimed mainly at behavior and not at the inner structure of the soul; that is why Rabbi Hayyim Vital’s question—why the Torah does not command inner character repair—still stands. From here comes a basic assumption: a person can behave correctly and still not be inwardly repaired. Good character traits have intrinsic value, not only instrumental value, just as morality is not merely a tool for creating a more comfortable world. From there the post takes one more step: there are values whose content is not doing good to others at all, but rather being a more whole, refined, and restrained person. That is not social morality but a human value.
When the response is disgust: not every aversion is morality, but sometimes it points to human deficiency
Against that background the post reexamines Haidt’s examples: eating the dead family dog, or having sex with a dead chicken. Earlier the claim was that there is no moral problem here, because no one is harmed. Now the post revises that claim: there may still be no social-moral defect here, but there is coarseness, lack of refinement, and human deficiency. So it is wrong to identify every feeling of revulsion with morality, but it is also wrong to reduce it in every case to a psychologically conditioned reaction with no validity. In the same direction, the post offers an understanding of the prohibition of bal teshaktzu: not merely a ban on offending other people’s sensibilities, but a ban on an intrinsically repulsive act, as an expression of human elevation or degradation.
Homosexuality, adultery, and incest: the post does not rule on every case but defends the category
From there the post returns to more charged examples. It argues that people sometimes call homosexuality or adultery immoral when in fact they are struggling to distinguish disgust from value judgment, and so they produce rationalizations about being unnatural, disease, and the like. At the same time, the revision proposed here is not that everything is permitted so long as there is no harm. Rather, there is an intermediate category: a given act may harm no one and still express a human defect. Regarding homosexuality, the post stresses that it is not sure it accepts that claim, but it now better understands what people are trying to say. Regarding adultery and incest, it more seriously suggests that there may be a defect in the human or familial structure even if all parties consent and even if, theoretically, all harmful consequences could be neutralized.
Why this is not just semantics: a normative claim without turning everything into law
The distinction between human values and mere disgust is not just a change of terminology. If something merely repulses me, at most I can ask others not to trigger that feeling in me. But if it is a case of human degradation, the post makes a claim about the person himself: that he is acting in an unworthy way and is humanly obligated not to act like that. Even so, unlike ordinary social morality, it is doubtful whether such values should be enforced by law. Not every moral norm should be legally enforced, all the more so when what is at stake is a human excellence that is supposed to grow out of choice rather than coercion. Hence the suggestion that perhaps this is why there are no lashes for bal teshaktzu: the point is not a punitive regime but the shaping of the person.
From Maimonides on Adam: human values are context-dependent yet still binding
To explain how such values can change historically without becoming arbitrary, the post turns to Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed and his distinction between intelligibles and accepted conventions. Before the sin, the human being knew truth and falsehood; after the sin he acquired sensitivity to the ugly and the seemly, that is, to the plane of human norms such as shame about nakedness. The post proposes reading this not as empty conformity but as a category of context-dependent good and bad: if the social norms are of a certain kind, then walking naked is genuinely unseemly in human terms, even in private. So the content of the value may change when circumstances change, but that does not cancel its validity. The analogy is to logic and halakha: just as an argument’s validity is absolute even though its conclusions depend on its premises, and just as a legal rule can depend on a changing factual presumption while the halakhic principle remains, so too the Torah teaches the relation between a social state of affairs and what is humanly proper, not always the same bottom line forever.
Back to love of homeland: the value lies in the minor key, not necessarily in nationalist content
From here the post returns to its point of departure. Love of homeland or attachment to one’s people can express a human value when they appear in a gentle, restrained form that is willing to live even with non-fulfillment; the criticism is directed not at nationalist content as such but at the major-key mode, the craving, and the refusal to compromise. That is why a cosmopolitan or an anarchist can also be no less elevated a person, if his position carries the same character of restraint and minor-key refinement. In this sense the post links the discussion to Maimonides’ middle way: the value lies not only in what a person loves but in the psychic form in which he loves it.
Modesty as a concluding example: a human value is not a technical rule but sensitivity to context
The conclusion stresses that this judgment is not only a description of inborn traits but also an area of effort and choice. That is why the aesthetic here resembles looking at a work of art, yet it does not end with beautiful and ugly; it moves into the plane of worthy and unworthy. Modesty is a prominent example: there is no simple identity between modesty and covering, so even a major-key, conspicuous, obsessive modesty like that of the shalim women can itself be immodest דווקא because it lacks the minor-key dimension. And in another context, more revealing clothing may still not express immodesty. Whoever looks only for rigid criteria has difficulty seeing how a human value can be context-dependent and yet still binding.
With God’s help
In the previous column I discussed love of the homeland and described two kinds of characters: the tempestuous one, who is unwilling to compromise until his love (or lust) is fully realized; and the more minor-key one, who loves unconditionally and is willing to compromise and live with his love even if it is not realized. I ended that column by distinguishing between two planes of discussion, and argued that the distinction between these types belongs to the aesthetic plane rather than the ethical one. My claim was that there is something more aesthetic about the minor-key type than about the tempestuous one, but I did not enter into ethical judgment of them. In this column I would like to continue the discussion from that point, and examine the possibility that perhaps there is nevertheless an ethical or evaluative dimension here.
A Change in the Point of Departure
In the previous column I explained that the comparison is being made between two kinds of feelings and characters, not between two kinds of behavior. The hooligan football fan is presented here in terms of what he feels, not what he actually does. His emotional world is less subtle and less restrained, and so there is something less aesthetic about it. What he actually does (hooliganism) is of course reprehensible by any standard, but that is not our concern here. We are dealing with personality and character traits, not behaviors and actions.
My point of departure was that feelings have no value-status, and there is no point in judging them. They are simply what they are, that is all. Ethical and normative judgment is relevant only to things about which we make decisions. One may add that, prima facie, ethical judgment is relevant to a person’s behavior, especially behavior that affects others. Benefiting another person is a moral act, and harming him is an immoral act. Feelings are a person’s state and not his action, and as such it seems that ethical judgment is not relevant to them. For both of these reasons, I argued, one can compare the two types on the basis of aesthetic judgment, but not in an ethical-evaluative sense.
But looking at the minor-key person (the one who sheds tears over the loss in the game) raises the sense that here, after all, is someone superior in some sense to the hooligan who is frustrated and agitated by that loss. The one who refuses to compromise and refuses to live with an unrealized bond. Restraint and refinement are blessed qualities of soul, and one who possesses them somehow appears to be a more complete person. Again, I do not mean to ground this in their behavioral consequences (practical moderation), but in this character structure and disposition as such.
Cleaving to God’s Attributes
In column 13 I discussed the question of the importance of refined character traits (interestingly, there too it was following a discussion of football. Tama, where are you when one needs you?!). I cited there the words of Rabbi Chaim Vital, the Ari’s disciple, at the beginning of his book Sha’arei Kedushah, where he asks why the Torah does not command us to refine our character traits. I mentioned there a difficulty that troubles me regarding this question. Maimonides, after all, in positive commandment 8 counts the commandment to cleave to God’s attributes: Just as He is merciful, so you too should be merciful; just as He is gracious… (“Just as He is compassionate, so you should be compassionate; just as He is gracious…”). So too many other enumerators of the commandments, and these things are also cited by the halakhic decisors. Why then does Rabbi Chaim Vital assume that there is no commandment concerning the refinement of character traits?
I argued there that cleaving to God’s attributes means behaving like Him on the practical plane. God’s attributes do not describe His inner character, but His conduct in the world. “Compassionate” and “gracious” are not descriptions of His emotional or psychological states, but forms of practical conduct. It is reasonable to infer from this that the commandment instructing us to cleave to these attributes likewise concerns behavior and not the character traits themselves. From here I suggested that Rabbi Chaim Vital’s question concerned the refinement of the traits within the soul and not behavior, and regarding that we have indeed not been commanded. I explained that underlying Rabbi Chaim Vital’s words is the assumption that refining character traits is not meant only to bring us to proper behavior, but is also a value in itself. A person who behaves properly but whose character traits are not refined is a person who has fulfilled the commandment to cleave to God’s attributes, but is not a refined person. Spiritual-psychological refinement is an end and not merely a means to worthy behavior, and concerning it the Torah gives us no commandment. I then went on there to explain (following Kant’s deontological conception; see also the fourth notebook in Part III) that the norms of morality are not all intended to achieve a better world, as the teleological (=goal-oriented) conception maintains, although in practice that is indeed what happens (see column 122). As far as we are concerned, they should be done because that is simply the right way to act.
Human Values and Social Values
The meaning of this is that the assumption that moral values are merely guidelines that benefit others and prevent harm to them is incorrect. True, that is usually the content of those guidelines (one should act in a way that benefits others), but their value does not consist in the fact that they do indeed benefit others. Their value lies in themselves. Refined character traits lead to refined behavior, but their value is not merely instrumental. There is value in being a refined person, even if this has no practical consequences. I now propose to go one step further and argue that there are human values whose very content is not even the benefiting of others. A person can be more refined and more whole by virtue of what he is, even if this does not bring benefit or prevent harm to others. This is not morality in the social sense but personal wholeness. Simply being a whole and excellent person. My claim is that the refined and restrained person I described in the previous column is not merely theoretically different from his tempestuous counterpart (in the typological museum), but also superior. Here there is already a comparative judgment between them.
The value of being a whole/excellent person is not a moral value in the social sense. It does not necessarily bring about a better and more ordered world, and it does not necessarily have practical consequences. Its value lies in its very existence. Let us call this a human value, as distinct from a moral-social value. This wholeness is measured on the personal plane (how close you are to the image of the complete human being, to the image of God, and not how much you benefit and help society).
True, at least in some of the cases (and perhaps in all of them), the content of these values does lead to behavioral improvement. For example, football hooliganism was indeed defined here as a mental state, but usually it also has problematic practical consequences. Therefore, even if I say that a hooligan is a less whole person because of the turbulence itself and not because of its results, one cannot ignore the fact that these turbulences usually lead to consequences. If so, the content of this value is indeed consequential, even though the reason to hold it (why to be refined rather than a hooligan) is not. One should be refined because refinement is wholeness, but refinement itself also leads to more moral behavior in the social sense. We saw exactly this above with respect to the refinement of character traits. One should refine one’s character because a person with refined character traits is more whole, but refined traits usually lead to more moral behavior in the social sense. So too regarding nationalist turbulence (homeland lust) as against refined love of the homeland. There too I emphasized that I am speaking about the mental state itself, but it still has practical consequences.
It seems to me that this is what confuses people and causes them to tie morality and values to consequences for others. The correlation between the content of these values and the results of holding them leads to interpretive claims about the motivation to act in accordance with them.[1] Even if a refined and restrained character structure has positive results, that is not the reason to try to attain it. Its value lies in its very existence. This is human wholeness and not a means to benefit others or prevent harm to them. And yet, whereas with respect to moral values there are those who dispute the conception I have suggested, and in their view such values are indeed meant to achieve practical ends (that is, they have instrumental value), here it seems clearer that we are dealing with human wholeness as such.
Disgusting and Repellent, or Immoral?
In column 86 I dealt with the question whether morality resides in the gut (emotion) or in the head (reason), and among other things I cited there a passage from a book review by Tomer Persico. Persico reviews a book by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt dealing with the moral development of human beings, and among other things he brings the following two examples:
Haidt speaks about a much more organic and emotional level of morality. In fact, one could say that he is speaking about moral intuitions, or even moral impulses. Part of this is what we would simply call “conscience,” and part includes feelings of revulsion and disgust that are not usually identified as moral motives, but according to Haidt they are part of our moral system.
Think, for example, about the following case that Haidt brings as an example:
The neighbors’ family dog was run over and killed in the middle of the night in front of their home. They had heard that dog meat is very tasty, and so they cut up the body, cooked it, and ate the dog’s meat. No one saw them do it. (p. 3).
Is there a moral problem with what the neighbors did? Most human beings will feel that there is a moral wrong here, although many in the West would not be able to say precisely what the problem is. Haidt immediately gives another example:
Every week A. goes to the supermarket and buys a slaughtered chicken. Before he cooks it, he has sex with the dead bird. Afterwards he cooks the chicken and eats it (p. 4).
Everything all right? Can we go on as usual? Or is there something immoral in A.’s actions?
Note that in both stories nobody is harmed, the matter is entirely private (familial or personal), and there is even an efficient use of available raw materials in order to increase the total amount of pleasure in the world. So what, then, is wrong with these acts? Mark well: the question here is one of conscience and feeling. Most human beings will feel revulsion, disgust, or an inner reservation toward these acts. This is not because the acts are physically or bacterially dirty, since the dog or the chicken could be cleaned. There is here a response of moral intuition that arouses discomfort in us, if not more than that, with respect to these acts.
In this context, I highly recommend watching the following video:
One video is worth a thousand words.
There I argued, as part of the distinction between morality and emotion, and between revulsion and emotional shock on the one hand and moral consideration on the other, that in both these acts there is in fact no moral problem. It is merely disgusting or shocking, because that is how we are built, and that is all. [2]I argued there that this harms no one, and as he writes it even increases pleasure in the world with astonishing efficiency, so why see in such acts any moral defect?!
I would now like to modify that thesis slightly. A person who does such things has unrefined character traits. He is not refined, and so there is here a human deficiency, even if not a moral one in the social sense. It really harms no one, and yet there is a sense that there is some sort of aesthetic defect here. The claim is that aesthetics too has a value dimension. This is a human value even if not a moral-social value. The fact that the thing looks worse (less aesthetic) means that there is here a less excellent person.
In this case it seems that there are not even practical consequences to the flawed character and this coarseness. There are indeed those who will explain that such coarseness will lead to problematic practical consequences in other areas, and will still insist on claiming that this is social morality. But it seems to me that this is merely an attempt at post hoc rationalization. A person who is unwilling to accept the concept of human deficiency as a negative value because it has no implications in the moral-social context, and at the same time refuses to accept feelings of disgust in themselves as a value defect (and rightly so), will naturally try to anchor his feelings in social-consequentialist morality, even though they do not really come from there.
“”Do not make yourselves abominable”” (“Do Not Make Yourselves Detestable”)
It seems to me that this may be the root of the halakhic prohibition of ““Do not make yourselves abominable”“. In the original verse, this speaks of the prohibition against eating forbidden foods that make the soul detestable. But the Sages expanded this, and Jewish law forbids us to perform loathsome and ugly acts simply by virtue of their being repellent. Here too one might think that this is a prohibition against injuring the feelings of others, but according to my suggestion here this is an intrinsic prohibition. These are ugly acts in themselves, a human deficiency.
A Look at Homosexuality
I remarked there that for many people homosexuality is described as immoral, when in fact it seems that what they mean is that it repels or disgusts them. People who cannot manage to define for themselves what is immoral about some behavior between two adults, carried out with the consent of both sides and harming no one, begin talking about diseases, and about how it is unnatural (?), or other slogans. To the best of my judgment, all of these are post hoc rationalizations, attempts to conceptualize the disgust and revulsion and place them (unsuccessfully) under the heading of moral censure. As stated, my assumption there was that moral censure is only a violation of values with social significance. But in the formulation here I am again revising that and saying that it may be possible to see in this a human defect, even without harm to others. I am not sure I agree with this regarding homosexuality, but I think I at least understand why people claim it. There is here a value category that easily slips through our fingers (I will return to this below).
Adultery and Incest
As another example, think about adultery with the consent of all involved (both spouses on both sides). In the religious outlook it seems that there is here a grave moral defect (and not only a religious-halakhic one), whereas in the secular world the consensus is growing that there is no problem here, at least so long as everyone agrees. Again, no one is harmed—so what is the problem?! Seemingly, this is just a feeling of disgust that is a remnant of religious-halakhic thinking and nothing more. But now I want to suggest once again the possibility that perhaps this is a human defect. One can argue that a society in which the family unit is breached is a humanly defective society. Therefore there is here a value judgment and not merely an expression of disgust and revulsion. In fact, the feeling of disgust is an expression of this human judgment (and not the reverse—that the judgment is an expression or rationalization of the feeling of disgust).
In column 13 I mentioned another example in this connection. Years ago, a series of articles by Gadi Taub dealing with incest was published in the Haaretz supplement. He explains the problematic nature of such acts in teleological terms (what psychological damage they cause). In a response that I sent to the newspaper’s editors, I asked what Taub would say if psychiatrists were to find a pill that prevents all those damages. In such a case, would there be no problem with incest? A father living with his adult daughter (or a brother with his adult sister), living a full conjugal life in love and fraternity, peace and friendship. Would there still be grounds to forbid it then? Beyond that, I argued there that Taub’s very reasoning suffers from the naturalistic fallacy, since he grounds a moral norm in facts. The fact that some act causes damage does not necessarily mean that it is morally forbidden.
I do not know what Gadi Taub would answer to this, but I assume that here too the obvious answer would be that if such a pill is indeed found, all that remains is disgust and revulsion, but in truth there is no moral problem here. Again, I suggest another option here: this is a human defect, an aesthetic value, even if not a defective act in the sense of social morality.
Is This Only Semantics?
I have distinguished here between social moral values (benefiting others and preventing harm to them) and human values (I do not know whether to call this morality). My claim is that there is room for a position which holds that this is not merely a matter of feelings of disgust and revulsion, but of something evaluatively improper. Again, each case (hooliganism, nationalism, lust, incest, adultery, homosexuality, and more) must be discussed on its own merits. I have not come here to make a concrete claim regarding which of these. What I am claiming is only the existence of this category: values that lie in between morality and natural emotion (such as disgust), which I have called human values (as distinct from social ones).
At first glance, this is merely a semantic change. What is the difference between the formulations? It would seem that what until now I called revulsion and disgust I now call human values. Neither formulation identifies this with social moral values. Is there nevertheless a difference between them?
Definitely yes. My claim is that if I see or hear about a person who does such things, I do not rebuke him merely as an instinct, or as a defense against the emergence in me of feelings of disgust and revulsion, or simply as my own reaction to their being aroused. I claim to him that there is something in his act that is not worthy. I demand of him (humanly speaking) not to behave this way. The feelings of disgust are not merely the result of some accidental and meaningless psychic structure of mine (or even of all human beings), but something valid and binding. I am not merely asking him to take me into account, but claiming that even with respect to himself he ought to behave differently. My claim is that he is acting improperly in the human sense, that is, that he is a diminished and flawed person (even if no one is harmed by it).
I can think of two differences in our attitude toward human values as against ordinary moral values, and therefore one can easily confuse them with mere feelings of disgust: legal enforcement and their dependence on changes in circumstances. Let us now look at them.
A. Legal Enforcement
I very much doubt whether there is any justification for legal enforcement against behavior that is defective from a human point of view. Even with respect to moral norms, it is not always right and justified to enforce them by means of legal and judicial mechanisms (that is, for the law to prohibit them). With respect to human deficiency, it almost always seems unreasonable to impose this by means of legal prohibition.
This is the first sense in which human values resemble something that merely arouses feelings of disgust in me. Here too I must cope with it, and it does not seem reasonable to forbid it to another person by law (except perhaps to require him to do it in private so that others are not offended).
It is interesting to note that the halakhic decisors dispute whether the prohibition of “”Do not make yourselves abominable”” is of Torah origin or rabbinic origin, but all agree that one does not incur lashes for it (see the link given above, note 1). Various explanations have been given for this (such as that it is a general prohibition). But perhaps one does not incur lashes for it for the same reason that human values are not punished and not enforced in ordinary legal systems. The desire is to leave this to the person’s own judgment, since the purpose of these commandments is to bring him to a minimal human excellence. Coercion and punishment may achieve the practical result, but not the human excellence.
B. Social Change of the Norms
The fact is that changes in circumstances and social norms change our feeling about human values. What was once perceived as reprehensible may today be considered normative. Unlike moral relativists, I do not think that this is so even with respect to ordinary (social) morality. There there is actually uniformity regarding most things, and the disputes are at the margins.[3] With respect to human values, it quite clearly seems that this is indeed the case. What was once perceived as ugly is today considered reasonable and normal. This is so regarding adultery, homosexuality, and more. Perhaps this is also the case regarding observance of Jewish law in general. Once it was clear to people that someone who did not observe Jewish law had a kind of human deficiency. This was not merely a matter of commitment to a divine command, but part of our image of the human being. But nowadays that is not the case. Today it has become a question of beliefs and opinions.[4]
This process has a clear direction. What does not harm another person should not be anyone else’s business. Therefore the direction of progress is the release of more and more past taboos.[5] In effect, values are being discarded and only self-protection and harm-prevention remain. On the human plane, what was once considered deficiency is now considered reasonable (because it harms no one). My impression is that part of this process stems from the fact that people are unwilling to accept the existence of the category I have defined here (human values). In their eyes there are either moral values (consequentialist) or feelings of disgust and psychological taboo. There is no category of human values. Most of them think today that this is outdated thinking whose day has passed.
I assume that if you ask people what they think about a pair of adult siblings who live together in a conjugal life of their own free will, many will immediately express total revulsion. But it seems to me that if you back them into a corner they will admit that these are feelings of disgust and not a moral problem. We are simply built in such a way that this repels us (again, our all-powerful master, evolution, long may it reign). For some reason, it is a fact that in most countries of the world the law still forbids this today. But it seems reasonable to me that this is an anachronism. If this process continues (and certainly if the above-mentioned pill is found), then such acts too will be permitted in the future.[6]
If human values really are the product of a given social condition and can change when it changes, it is natural to interpret them as nothing more than a response to feelings of disgust and nothing more. Valid and binding values are not supposed to depend on social conditions. If homosexuality is a forbidden act, why should it matter that today society does not see it that way? Therefore it seems to people that the expression “human values” simply represents conformity. This is another reason why the category of human values is interpreted as feelings of disgust and revulsion and not as binding values. To reject that claim, I now move to the next stage of the discussion.
Between Intelligibles and Conventions
Maimonides, at the beginning of Guide of the Perplexed (I:2), discusses the sin of the first man. There he addresses the difference between the intelligibles and the conventional. He opens the discussion with a difficulty posed to him by a certain sage regarding Adam’s sin:
This wise man asked me a great question many years ago. One must reflect on the question and on our answer in resolving it… The questioner said: The plain sense of the verse seems to indicate that man’s original intention was to be like the other living creatures, without intellect or thought, and unable to distinguish between good and evil. But when he rebelled, that rebellion brought him this great perfection unique to man—namely, this faculty of cognition found in us, which is the noblest of the qualities found in us and by which we are constituted. This is astonishing: that the punishment for his rebellion should be to grant him a perfection he did not previously possess, namely intellect. It is as though one were to say that a certain man rebelled and committed great wrongdoing, and therefore his nature was changed for the better and he was made into a star in the heavens.
The question is how it could be that following the sin Adam received from God the distinction between good and evil, which is a greater perfection. Does he deserve a reward for his sin?
And he answers as follows:
…For the intellect that the Creator bestowed upon man—which is his ultimate perfection—was attained by man before his rebellion, and because of it it is said of him that he was in the image of God and in His likeness. Because of it God spoke with him and commanded him, as it says, “And the Lord God commanded”; for commandments are not given to beasts or to one who has no intellect. Through the intellect, man distinguishes between truth and falsehood, and this existed in him in full perfection and completeness. By contrast, the ugly and the beautiful belong to commonly accepted conventions, not to intellectual truths; for one does not say, “It is beautiful that the heavens are spherical,” or, “It is ugly that the earth is flat,” but rather, “true” and “false.” So too in our language, one says of truth and nullity, “true” and “false,” while of the beautiful and the ugly one says, “good” and “evil.” Through the intellect, man knows truth from falsehood, and this applies to all intelligible matters. When man was in the complete perfection of his condition, together with his thought and intellectual grasp—regarding which it is said, “You made him little lower than God”—he had no capacity at all to employ or apprehend conventional notions, to the point that even the most obvious of such matters of disgrace, namely the exposure of nakedness, was not disgraceful in his eyes, and he did not perceive its disgrace. But when he rebelled and inclined toward his imaginary desires and the pleasures of his physical senses, as it says, “that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes,” he was punished by being deprived of that intellectual apprehension. And therefore he rebelled against the commandment that had been given to him by virtue of his intellect, and he then attained awareness of conventional notions and became absorbed in perceptions of shame and attractiveness. Then he knew the measure of what he had lost, what had been stripped from him, and into what state he had fallen. This is why it says, “and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil,” and it does not say, “knowing falsehood and truth,” or “grasping falsehood and truth,” for in matters that are necessary there is no good and evil at all, but only falsehood and truth. And consider the verse, “And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” It does not say, “and the eyes of both of them were opened, and they saw,” because what they saw before is what they saw afterward; there had been no blindness of the eyes that was removed. Rather, something else was newly generated in him: he came to regard as disgraceful what previously he had not regarded as disgraceful…
He distinguishes between the intelligibles, which are entrusted to the intellect and deal with the distinction between truth and falsehood, and the conventional, which deal with the reprehensible and the pleasing. These are entrusted to what is accepted in society, the most prominent example being the disgrace of walking around naked. The human being in his perfect state did not understand the conventional at all, since these are mere conventions. After the sin he deteriorated, and thus entered a world of social conventions regarding the reprehensible and the fitting.
Despite appearances, it is quite clear that Maimonides is not speaking here about moral reprehensibility and beauty, such as helping others, the prohibitions against murder, theft, and the like. In his view, such moral values are matters for the intellect and not for social agreement (see also Laws of Character Traits). Here he is dealing with things more akin to manners and etiquette (such as not walking around naked), that is, social conventions and accepted norms. The very same state that Adam and Eve perceived before the sin as proper and fitting now appeared to them, after the sin, as reprehensible. Here we have, then, a change in what is accepted according to the circumstances. On its face, this is presented here as mere convention, and not as value.
Conformity
As noted, Maimonides’ words seem, prima facie, to indicate that we are dealing with conventions and not values. Adam and Eve declined from a state of commitment only to truth to a state of commitment to conventions, and in effect were sentenced to social conformity (?). You may ask: according to Maimonides, after the sin could Adam and Eve still walk around naked? Seemingly they need only change the convention (I assume it would have been quite easy for them to obtain a majority vote in the highly diverse human society of that time). As for our own day, it does not seem likely to me that Maimonides would justify such behavior, at least so long as social norms have not changed. Is there an obligation to be conformist? Or is the concern only about offending the feelings of others?
My claim is that Maimonides (or perhaps only I) is making here a distinction within the world of values. There are moral values that belong to the intellect (truth and falsehood), and there are values that belong to the human category. Not walking around naked and maintaining modesty in the public domain is a human excellence, even if not a moral one (in the social sense). When the social norm is such, someone who does not act accordingly is acting improperly. This is not merely a question of character—whether one is conformist or not—or of consideration for feelings of disgust. It is a question of values, of good and evil. In our day, after the sin, it is reprehensible to walk around naked, but not only because one must consider others and obey accepted norms, but because under the conditions that now prevail it is genuinely reprehensible. Given this reality, a person who walks around naked is lesser in his human excellence, even if he does so in complete privacy (where no one is harmed).
According to this suggestion, human values do indeed depend on social norms, but this is not merely conservatism and adherence to society’s dictates and consideration for others; rather, it is good and evil (or fitting and reprehensible) that are context-dependent. Given this situation, the reprehensible is a kind of evaluative falsehood. In the terminology of the previous column, one might say that in such a situation walking around naked is less aesthetic (not visual or artistic aesthetics, but evaluative aesthetics), and therefore reprehensible from a human point of view.
But for this very reason it is true that if this situation changes, that is, if society sees things differently, there is room for these values to change. Although we are dealing with good and evil, because the matter is grounded in the norms prevailing in society it can change. Thus, for example, the norms of modesty in Jewish law change with social reality, and this means that we are dealing with human values and not morality in the social sense. But given these circumstances, a person has no right to deviate from those norms. This is not mere conformity.
One can perhaps now go even further (although in my assessment this is not Maimonides’ intention) and say that before the sin the human being did not perceive something that only the sin enabled him to perceive: the existence of context-dependent human values beyond the absolute moral values. This is the infrastructure that made it possible for him to move from a life of “a villa in the jungle” in the Garden of Eden before the sin to social life within a human public afterward. Perhaps from a cosmic perspective this was a decline, but in our present state it is progress. There is here an attainment that he did not possess before that. Now, after the sin, Adam and Eve, having acquired the ability to distinguish between the humanly reprehensible and the humanly fitting, can move to life within a social framework.
Comparison to Logic
It seems to me that I have brought this comparison here once before (but I could not find it now). Claims about the world are examined in terms of truth or falsehood. But a logical argument is examined in terms of validity and invalidity. An argument is valid (and not true) if its conclusion follows necessarily from its premises, and invalid (and not false) if it does not. Is the conclusion of the argument necessarily true? Certainly not. That depends on whether its premises are true. But the inference of the conclusion from the premises does not depend on their truth or its truth. The property of validity in arguments has absolute significance even though the truth of the propositions is relative. The truth of the conclusion depends on the truth of the premises, but the inference is absolute and does not depend on the truth of the propositions involved. Therefore it is not correct to say that the logic by which I judge an argument is a set of relative and context-dependent spectacles. The logical value of an argument is judged through objective lenses. Although different observers may disagree about the premises and the conclusion, they are not supposed to disagree about logical validity and invalidity.
From the description proposed above it emerges that human values too are a relation between states: given a social condition X, behavior Y is a human excellence and its absence is a human deficiency. A different social condition will of course bring about a change in the definition of excellence and deficiency. But given a certain state, there is a human excellence that is correct and one that is not. This is indeed relativity, but it is still judged in terms of correct and incorrect (parallel to the logical validity of an argument). In the state of the world before the sin it was fitting to walk around naked, but after the sin that is no longer correct. This is not convention in the sense that there is nothing binding about it (mere conformity). It is fully binding, but only in this particular state. In a different state there will be different human values. Human values are context-dependent, but that does not mean that they are mere feelings of disgust. They are values in every sense.
I have made the same distinction in the past in the context of Jewish law as well. For example, the Talmud in Bava Batra 5a discusses a case in which Reuven lent Shimon money for a year, and after a month came to claim the money from him. Shimon claims that he repaid, and the Talmud rules that Shimon is not believed, because there is a presumption that a person does not repay before the due date. Therefore the burden of proof that he repaid lies upon him. What will happen in a situation in which it becomes accepted in society that people do repay before the due date? (For example, in our day, when there is a heter iska and interest.) It is clear that in such a situation the presumption will change. So what have we learned from the passage in Bava Batra? In such a situation, should we shelve it? Certainly not. The passage is not coming to teach us the fact that a person does not repay before the due date. That is a fact, and facts tend to change. In any case, facts are learned from observation and not from Talmudic analysis. The passage also does not teach us the Jewish law that a person who claims to have repaid before the due date is not believed. That is already law and not fact, and yet it too is not always correct, for as we have seen it is context-dependent. Only given a factual state in which a person does not repay before the due date is there such a presumption, and then, and only then, is the presumption sufficient to extract money from the current holder. The lesson to be learned from the passage is not the norm itself and not the fact that underlies it, but the principle that ties the fact to the norm, that is, the principle that stands at its base: presumptions can extract money from the current holder. If a reality with the opposite presumption comes into being, then the law will determine that the opposite presumption can extract money. That law is eternal and binding and not subject to change. Not the factual assumption and not the normative conclusion, but only the principle that carries me from the one to the other. Again, this is not a convention or something with no real and true content. The content is context-dependent, but Jewish law is the relation between the premise and the conclusion, and that is not context-dependent. The Talmud teaches us only the relation between the claims, not the claims themselves.
If we return to the question of human values, it seems that the same holds there. The Torah does not teach us that one must dress modestly, nor that this is the social norm. It teaches us that if this is the social norm, then one must dress modestly. The Torah’s lesson is the relation between the claims and not the bottom line. So too regarding “”Do not make yourselves abominable”.” If a situation arises in which loathsome acts are perceived as not being such, the Jewish law will change. Not the law that forbids loathsome acts, but the bottom line that forbids a set of specific acts.
Some Concluding Remarks
I have argued here that a refined connection to the homeland is an aesthetic value and not merely an innate structure or a convention. That is, there is something humanly elevated in a person who has a deep and minor-key bond with his homeland and his people. To complete the picture, I wanted to conclude with three brief remarks, which, for lack of space, I will not elaborate on here:
- The aesthetic value described here excludes a person whose connection is lustful, that is, one that must be realized. But this does not necessarily exclude the human value in a person who has no such connection. An anarchist or nihilist cosmopolitan can be a person of no lesser qualities (there too, if this appears in a restrained and refined form). This is the relativity of the “conventionals” described above. Perhaps there are circumstances in which such nihilism would be ugly, but in its own context it can certainly express human greatness no less than nationalism.
The emphasis of the human value I have been speaking about is not necessarily in its specific content, but in its minor-key quality; this comes to exclude major-keyness, not minor-keyness in another direction. I now think that in a certain sense this is actually the value of Maimonides’ middle path in Laws of Character Traits. He too speaks about the importance of restraint and minor-keyness along all axes, without any necessary connection to the specific content of the axis itself.
- If one sees such an aesthetic-human value as a kind of value, it necessarily follows that there is room to work on it, that is, that the matter depends on us. This is not about how I was born and how I am constituted, but about the way I choose to live and relate to things. In other words, I still stand by my view that arbitrary facts are not the subject of evaluative judgment.
- Seemingly, a judgment of character and human level is a kind of aesthetic judgment. In the previous column I described this as contemplating a work of art in a museum. Is this really similar to aesthetic judgment? In light of what I have written here—yes and no. It is not exactly like ethical judgment, but it is indeed a human judgment in which there is evil and good, and not only beauty and ugliness. Maimonides’ terminology in the Guide of the Perplexed, reprehensible and fitting, expresses something that is a combination of these planes: the aesthetic (beautiful-attractive versus ugly-disgusting-repellent) gives rise to the human (fitting versus reprehensible).
Implication: What Is Modesty?
Think about the modesty of the “shawl women” (those who go wrapped and covered in black, with several layers from head to toe and beyond). To the best of my judgment, this is not modesty. The reason is that this “modesty” appears in a major-key and blatant form, and thereby contradicts, by its very nature, the minor-key quality that characterizes modesty.[7]
And in general, modesty is a good example of what I am speaking about here. Sometimes people go about fully covered and yet there is immodesty here. And in another context one can go exposed and there will be no immodesty in it.[8] Just as the one who flees honor will not have honor pursue him unless he simply ignores it, so too the one who chases after modesty will find it fleeing from him. Modesty chiefly characterizes one who does not make an issue of it.
Modesty is a subtle concept that is indeed context-dependent, but in a given context there is certainly a distinction between a modest appearance and one that is not. No wonder this greatly confuses literal-minded people who are always looking for criteria. Accordingly, some of them claim that there is no such thing as modesty (it is merely convention), while others claim that norms of modesty are not context-dependent (cf. the women of the religious kibbutz in the previous note), because what depends on context cannot be a value but at most a convention.
[1] Others, of course, will say that the mistake is the opposite: evolution is concerned only with outcomes, of course, and it implanted in us human values and the duty to act according to them regardless of outcomes, but it did so in order to make sure that the outcomes are achieved. This is, of course, a conception that completely empties morality of its content, since it turns it into an instrument for social improvement. Therefore a person is measured only on the basis of behavior and not his motivations. In the fourth notebook I explained why such a technocratic conception is not morality (there is absolutely no duty to act according to what was implanted in me through an evolutionary process. The fact that something exists within me does not make it good or binding).
[2] I wrote there that this recalls Rabbi Amital’s famous example regarding the eating of human flesh (see, for example, here, here and also here). He used this example to say that there are values such that even if there is no formal prohibition in Jewish law against them (according to most opinions; according to Maimonides this involves neglect of a positive commandment), it is still out of the question to do them, even in extreme situations. I wrote there that, for my part, I do not understand what is wrong with eating human flesh. It is disgusting and repellent, but not immoral. In light of what I have written here, I am willing to accept the formulation that this is a human defect.
[3] Moreover, as I once wrote here, even when a change does occur it generally happens in a fairly definite direction (toward the liberal-democratic direction). This indicates that the changes stem from a gradual and systematic development and not from mere accidental relativity.
[4] See in this connection Rabbi Kalner’s remarks brought in the video here starting from minute 1:57 (sorry, I did not find the original on YouTube). It is quite clear that the man is completely stuck in the past, but in light of my suggestion here one can at least understand the meaning of his words (which on their face seem so detached and absurd).
[5] There are, however, exceptions to this direction. Once it was permissible to harass women and to separate women from men, and today this has become forbidden. It turns out, surprisingly enough, that there are also directions of stricter judgment in contemporary culture. They too are conducted with a religious savagery and indiscriminate fanaticism that would not have embarrassed Torquemada.
[6] This is true even according to my own view that this is a human deficiency, since, as I argued in section A, there is no justification for enforcing human values by means of legal prohibition.
[7] And in general, the connection between modesty and covering, despite having a linguistic basis, seems to me somewhat distorted. There may perhaps be a correlation here, but certainly not an identity.
[8] Women members of the religious kibbutz in its early days used to go about in shorts. The claim was that someone who understood the context did not see this as immodest. Here too I am sure that at least some readers will raise an eyebrow and sneer at that claim. In my opinion they fail to understand the value category defined here.
Discussion
The basic common mistake regarding aesthetics is that it is seen as entirely separate from morality, and also from character traits. But that is the way of the church watchman (Kierkegaard), not of Torah. You did well here in proposing a middle path between these dimensions. Judaism is indeed very cautious about sliding from aesthetics into idolatry, but basic derekh eretz, without which there is no fear of Heaven either, cannot exist without refinement.
Regarding your uncertainty on the matter of homosexuality, the comments of “Avram HaIvri” are interesting: http://ivri.org.il/2015/09/homo-religiosus/. He argues that the homosexuality the Torah speaks of is not that of today, and is aimed precisely at the barbaric, unrefined aspect, which in our day is not really the issue specifically in the LGBT context.
Shlomi, but that is not how one learns halakhah.
We have the Oral Torah, which clearly distinguishes between the prohibition of male homosexual intercourse and cultic practices. So Avram’s comment may fit, but only according to the Karaites (and probably not even that).
One could mention the view of the Rishonim, such as Rav Nissim Gaon in his introduction to the Talmud, who explained that all seven Noahide commandments are commands dependent on reason and on the understanding of the heart, which every person ought to arrive at on his own. That can only be understood if we say that these prohibitions (not all of which are interpersonal) are derived from independent values.
Indeed, interesting. Of course, in halakhah it is not like that.
As for the meaning of “abomination,” I wrote about this myself in the columns on homosexuality.
R. Nissim Gaon does not write this (he writes that commandments that reason obligates apply even without a verse). It was Maimonides who wrote this in Laws of Kings.
Rabbi Michael, greetings,
A very important article. You are trying to define a new philosophical division (new as an independent unit in modern philosophy).
And its name in philosophy would be “aesthetic ethics.”
The main points of your argument (as I understand it):
A. A person’s wholeness and quality of soul are determined also by his “ethical-aesthetic” disposition (his character traits), even when these do not find practical expression in his behavior.
B. There exists an objective evaluative category by which behavior can be judged as proper or improper (not factual truth and falsehood, not merely aesthetically beautiful and ugly, and not socially moral justice and injustice), which Maimonides in the Guide calls “becoming and unbecoming.”
C. The evaluative system of “becoming/unbecoming” obligates every person just like social morality, only it cannot be enforced as social morality can.
D. “The becoming and the unbecoming” are context-dependent socially.
A few comments.
1. I did not understand the need (you may answer A) to define perfection of the soul in order to ground the obligation to values of becoming and unbecoming. Even in the realm of social morality, a person whose disposition is morally bad, a person who wants to do evil to others, a sadist, is a lesser and lowly person spiritually. There is no need at all to ground social moral obligation in an assessment of spiritual perfection.
2. As for becoming and unbecoming as socially context-dependent, I did not understand your position. Is a society of people after Adam’s sin that sees nothing unbecoming in walking around fully naked not a disgraceful society?
From your article one can understand that the becoming–unbecoming system is built this way: there is a super-principle (or a bridge principle, in your terminology), “what society has agreed is unbecoming is unbecoming.”
Therefore, if society agrees that nakedness is unbecoming, then nakedness is unbecoming. It does not seem to me that this is your intention.
In my opinion, the bridge principles in this system are built on objective states. For example: a person after the sin, who is more connected to bodily desire, is bound to have a perception of nakedness as shameful. But a person who has returned to the level prior to the sin would not see nakedness as shameful.
You too mention the women of the shawls as immodest not because objectively they are insufficiently covered, but because their excessive covering expresses deep immersion in bodily desires, requiring extreme distancing from the body.
“The more immersed one is in the body, the more one needs to cover it” — that is an objective principle, not society-dependent.
P.S. You cite Maimonides in Ibn Tibbon’s translation, and rightly so, but in Kapach’s translation he renders hamfursamot as “good and evil” throughout the chapter. Moreover, Kapach, in his misunderstanding, even notes that Ibn Tibbon translates “becoming and unbecoming,” and comments about him that “he was not precise.”
Yaakov M. commented and illuminated the subject very well, and therefore I do not find room for further comments, except that unlike the previous post, which dealt with emotions that are subjective, and therefore in my view discussion about them is rather pointless, this post deals with norms accepted both in the world and in Judaism, which constitute an objective domain, insofar as morality is objective. (Perhaps it is correct to define aesthetic values as a sub-discipline of morality.)
It is possible that this post retroactively and after the fact validates the previous one.
..
You summarized it nicely.
1. I didn’t understand the question/comment. Do you mean to say that spiritual perfection is built from social-moral values and human-aesthetic values? I agree. That is what I wrote.
2. After Adam’s sin, a state was created in which nakedness is unbecoming. Someone who walks around there naked is unbecoming. What would happen if an entire society were formed that saw this differently? It may be that this would change. One would have to live in such a situation and experience it in order to see. I am not claiming sweepingly that every social agreement is binding. Absolutely not. I am claiming that society can be involved in making this determination. It may be that there are human values that are valid in every situation (it is hard for me, living in certain circumstances, to judge that). Nor is this necessarily determined by the majority. There may be a society whose majority is disgraceful, and yet its more elevated members would understand that these norms are humanly flawed.
Or, in other words: even discussions on “esoteric and foolish” topics (to use your phrase) are actually important. Which was to be shown.
Indeed they are important… but their importance is not in themselves, but only on condition that they lead to discussion of important topics..
Do you really think there is intrinsic value (not the value of the form of the discussion) in discussing emotions? Everyone feels what he feels, and that’s that.
(The only place I see room for discussion on emotions is causal connections from actions/deeds to different emotional states, and conversely from emotional states to a person’s actions/deeds. And even there great caution is needed; induction of causal connections of this kind is very, very problematic, not only from one person to another, but even within the same person — enough said, and much more could be said.)
As best I remember, indeed R. Nissim Gaon writes as you say, but he refers explicitly to the seven Noahide commandments, which means that a person can arrive at them through reason and understanding of the heart (which is not true in subjective aesthetics, where there is no reason to respond to it except in terms of values).
1. I am only pointing out that one might understand from your article, and from the whole context of the introductory article, as though the basis of human-aesthetic values is the spiritual perfection built from them. If that is not your intention, then we agree.
In an article on social-moral values, you would not have emphasized the point of spiritual perfection built from them, even though it certainly exists.
2. I disagree with you completely. Human-aesthetic values are not society-dependent but depend on the objective spiritual state of the individual and society, such as man before the sin or after the sin, and not on social conventions.
I cannot justify this, just as you cannot justify your own position. It belongs to our evaluative intuition.
Therefore I see homosexuality as an abomination in the sense of the disgraceful, and it also seems to me that this is the Torah’s intention in the term to’evah, and I have no need for your interpretation that you bring from Nedarim:
“straying in it” (to’eh bah) — which seems to me a homiletical flourish (or mere scriptural support for another matter there), and not the primary meaning intended by the term.
Let the respondents judge between us; let them search the depths of their souls and judge what is becoming or unbecoming.
There is importance in discussing the importance of emotions, not a given emotion or another. As for a specific emotion, that is what these two posts are for.
It is worth checking, because as best I remember it is exactly the opposite. He explains this way what is not included in their seven commandments.
1. No, we do not agree. In my view, as I wrote explicitly, even social morality has an aspect of personal perfection.
2. Regarding to’evah, you should also look at the link brought here from Avraham HaIvri. You are falling into an anachronistic interpretation of Scripture (based on our contemporary language).
1. A spiritual aspect certainly exists, but even if it did not exist, the social and aesthetic values would still stand as they are.
2. There is no deficiency in anachronism if it happens to be correct in this case.
But that is not the main issue. The main question is whether these values are really dependent on social conventions or not.
Great thread. We need to be wholehearted with God; whatever He said — we need to do. And that is true morality: “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not loathe His reproof.”
Regarding the sins of Sodom — we saw clearly that God does not love this, and He destroyed all of Sodom. Did we not learn the explicit moral lesson from that? So how can we find a way to permit it? Or not prevent it? What is forbidden is forbidden everywhere, not only in a society that forbids it. A person needs to be himself everywhere, whether in private or in public. He needs to understand that there is no such thing as hiding, because God sees everything.
An abomination is something very loathsome in God’s eyes — something God does not accept, and something it is not fitting for Jews to do, or not to criticize those who do it. In short, an abomination is something very dangerous for the person who does it, and when there is no one to prevent it.
Shlomi — what is homosexuality according to Avraham HaIvri, if it is not like that of today? What does “refined” mean?
In the West, ethics deals with custom and morality, and aesthetics with taste and the judgment of feelings. Refinement is considered a moral virtue. During the Renaissance, the complete man of virtue was called a gentleman. The accepted way to produce a gentleman was through the study and education of courtiers according to Aristotle’s 12 moral virtues. Shakespeare noticed that most courtiers do not become men of virtue, and that there are men of virtue who were not educated in courts. If according to Aristotle refinement is a mean virtue between anger and weakness of character, then in Shakespeare refinement is a quality of the good inclination, whether natural or acquired through learning, the opposite of wildness — both the wildness of human society and the wildness of primitive people. “Your gentleness shall force more than your force move us to gentleness.”
Character traits are instruments for intelligibles. Moses received the Torah from Sinai. Intelligibles correct the traits. “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”
Two comments on the limits of context-dependence:
1) In your view, is the dependence of aesthetic values on the social context absolute?
Quite a few people (myself included) would say there is a core that is not context-dependent.
And so too it seems on the face of it in halakhah, if you include the laws of forbidden sexual relations among aesthetic values.
2) From the premise of the previous comment (but also even without it), a distinction follows automatically:
Quite often there is a great deal of disingenuousness in the attempt to claim exemption because of context,
similar to people who claim they read certain magazines only for the articles…
Even if I accept claims of dependence on social context,
I would still be skeptical of people who make such claims when it is not completely clear to me.
And example 8 seems exemplary to me in this context. Because even if I accept the definition, I definitely doubt its absoluteness.
And stories that surface years later from that innocent past will prove it.
I already wrote here that I do not know how to answer this. When I live in a different reality, I will be able to discuss what changes there and what does not. I do not see any way to answer such a general claim, since I do not know all the circumstances that might arise. Even the laws of forbidden sexual relations could change when reality includes different creatures and different family proximities. None of us can imagine all types of circumstances, and Hazal could not either. Those who will decide are the sages who live under those circumstances. See my article on halakhic decision-making in the Holocaust.
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%A4%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%9B%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%90%D7%94-%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%93%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA/
And a parallel point here as well:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%90%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%91-%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%A7%D7%91%D7%94-%D7%90-%D7%9C-%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%90%D7%96%D7%A2%D7%9D-%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%96%D7%A2%D7%9D-%D7%94/
As for declarations of skepticism, I have nothing to say (except that I do not understand what example 8 is).
Why do you think the Torah chose to include “do not make yourselves detestable” within halakhah, unlike “ordinary” moral obligations that remained external to it?
I have no idea
Hello Rabbi.
I greatly enjoyed this major and important innovation.
I was thinking that perhaps a similar category could be applied to halakhah. I mean all the places in halakhah where a spiritually sensitive person should be stringent with himself, and more generally the whole concept of stringency and leniency. I always asked myself: if there is an obligation to be stringent, then everyone is obligated and it is not a stringency; and if there is no need, then everyone is obviously exempt and there is no leniency here at all.
And another example I thought of is the tension between kollel students and householders. Clearly a person is obligated to support his family, and on the other hand it appears in several places that one who dedicates his life to Torah is “worth more”… and surely there are many more examples.
So perhaps one could say that besides the halakhic category of permitted and forbidden, there is a category of “halakhic-aesthetic” or “religious-aesthetic” of becoming and unbecoming, which judges a person’s level: from a person who is halakhically-aesthetically more beautiful to one who is halakhically-aesthetically uglier.
Beyond that, I thought to go one step further and say that just as in morality, besides the obligation regarding moral actions, there is also the obligation of refining one’s character traits — to create a more complete soul that of itself has no tendency toward moral wrongdoing — so too in halakhah and the commandments, besides the practical implications, a person is required to refine his soul so that it becomes more religious, meaning that his soul of itself will desire doing good and long and yearn for it, and likewise that his soul will feel repulsion toward any religious evil.
(I hope I didn’t go too far in the second part…)
What does the Rabbi think?
Thanks.
I’m not sure I agree. Between social-moral values and human values there is an essential difference: those are intended to repair society, while these are intended to improve the person himself. But between binding halakhot and what goes beyond them, as I understand it there is only a quantitative difference. The beyond-the-letter halakhot are not binding enough and therefore do not enter the category of binding halakhah.
Although I do not see everything beyond halakhah in that way, I do tend to agree that perhaps there is a religious category parallel to aesthetic values, such as the conduct of a Torah scholar and the like. These are things that do not have purely religious-halakhic value, yet are still required for the “aesthetics.” Perhaps religious feeling also enters into the matter, as you suggested at the end…
Comment 8.
A typo.
There is an objective moral value in behaving according to what is accepted in society. That is how I understood it; correct me if I am mistaken.
But it is not at all clear what this value means. The rabbi wrote something about perfection. A person who acts according to what is accepted in society is a more complete person. I really do not understand why this argument seems self-evident to people. Is the statement about all people, or only about those for whom the norm does not align with their desires? Is the moral value the ability to overcome your desire? Or am I simply trying to reduce this to another value of self-perfection, whereas there is intrinsic value in behaving according to what is accepted — something that does not seem intuitive to me at all. I would be glad for clarification if possible…
I did not write anything like that, that there is value in conformity. I wrote that there are values that are dependent on society and circumstances.
With God’s help, 28 Av 5778
To conduct oneself with derekh eretz is an important value in the Torah, and especially for the people of Israel who, as priests of God seeking to make His name beloved in the world, ought to conduct themselves in ways that people regard as good and proper. In this way a person finds “favor and good sense in the eyes of God and man,” for “whoever is pleasing to his fellow creatures is pleasing to the Omnipresent.”
But besides the value of considering people’s dignity and wishes, what is agreed upon by them is also a strong indication that such conduct is good in itself, and that is why it has won acceptance by many. This also follows from the fact that man was created in the image of God, and therefore natural feelings were implanted in him that impel him toward the good and distance him from evil.
Of course, caution is needed here, because just as a person himself may err in his moral feelings — whether through the deception of desire, social influence, or the over-amplification of one side over its balancing opposite — so too society may err and become unbalanced in its evaluative sensibilities.
Therefore Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi taught us: “What is the straight path that a person should choose for himself? Whatever is an honor to the one who does it, and earns him honor from others” (Avot 2:1). The constant comparison between one’s personal evaluative feeling and the accepted norms in society brings a person to a balanced definition that gives proper place to the various evaluative demands, and he then returns and looks into the Torah, which is “the order of the world,” and builds for himself an ordered and balanced world of values.
Regards, S.Z. Levinger.
S.Z.L., every word is spot on. I couldn’t have phrased it better.
My comments are based on Maharal’s remarks in Derekh HaChayim on the mishnah, “What is the straight path that a person should choose for himself” (Avot 2:1).
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
I agree that intuition suggests that social norms can cause values embedded in a person — even when they are born from social norms, since they are not moral in their result — to be interpreted not merely as a feeling of disgust but as something inhuman. But my question is: how exactly? That is, how do values that are socially generated become upgraded from a feeling of disgust to morality? Or perhaps you mean to say that the very fact that the feeling is embedded in a person’s intuition itself defines it as a moral feeling? But this cannot be explained without religious sources that give value to intuition. [I am aware that moral values are born of intuition, but without assigning value to intuition, giving it significance by virtue of the fact that God created it, I do not understand its value. For clearly in a world without God there is no morality, and I have no reason to listen to the intuition that tells me to listen to morality, since it has no value. And only if we assume that all moral values [even those whose result is not moral] are grounded in intuition, then by the same token the same obligating factor that applies to consequential morality applies also to non-consequential morality — namely intuition.] Regards, Dvir.
Why did you take God out of the picture? He implanted in us the obligation to morality and also the obligation to these values. Indeed, without Him there are no values of any kind whatsoever (see Notebook Four, vol. 3).
So indeed the obligation to moral values that have no result is because intuition interprets them not merely as a feeling of disgust but as a moral feeling?
Also those that do have a result. The result is a fact, and facts cannot determine a moral prohibition.
Indeed.
It’s just that I wouldn’t call it aesthetics. The aversion to bad character traits is not an aesthetic aversion but a recognition that this is baseness, a bad and deficient state. The aesthetic aversion, if it exists, is only a byproduct — a gold ring in a pig’s snout.