Faith – Lesson 33

Table of Contents

• Moral realism and the spinach test
• The sovereign individual in Ari Elon and the example of the hired murderer
• The limits of the argument and the attitude toward moral relativism
• Moral validity versus psychological origin and the need for a legislator
• Three options, not four, and the argument as a hypothetical proof
• Enoch’s objections to the argument
• Counterexamples: the number eight and the law of non-contradiction
• Kant, the categorical imperative, and the gap between a principle and a binding reason
• A “thin” God, pragmatism, and the limits of the debate
• Questions from the audience: morality, Jewish law, conscience, and the image of God
• Conclusion and continuation of the discussion

Summary

General Overview

The speaker presents an argument from morality to the existence of God based on the assumption of moral realism, according to which there are objective and binding moral facts that do not depend on personal taste or social agreement. He argues that if one accepts that morality is genuinely binding, then a legislator or authoritative source is needed to give that obligation its validity, and therefore anyone who believes in valid morality is necessarily assuming God in a “thin” sense, not necessarily a religious or specifically Jewish one. He rejects naturalistic, evolutionary, and utilitarian explanations as describing at most how a sense of morality arises, but not how normative obligation arises, and concludes that the argument is a hypothetical proof: one can give up valid morality in order to avoid the conclusion, but one cannot hold both together—“there is valid morality and there is no God.”

Moral Realism and the Spinach Test

The speaker describes an agreement between himself and David Enoch regarding moral realism, or ethical realism, according to which morality is a set of objective facts imposed on us and not something subjective or the result of social agreement. He cites Enoch’s “spinach test” as a tool for distinguishing between subjective and objective statements by testing counterfactuality: a statement that becomes obviously ridiculous when one changes counterfactual conditions points to personal taste, whereas a statement that remains serious points to an objective truth. He compares a claim about personal taste (“How good it is that I don’t like spinach”) with a factual claim (“How good it is that I’m not living in the 12th century, when I would have mistakenly thought the earth was a box”), and applies this to slavery in order to argue that moral judgment is perceived as objective and not as mere taste.

The Sovereign Individual in Ari Elon and the Example of the Hired Murderer

The speaker quotes Ari Elon on the distinction between the rabbinic person and the sovereign person, and presents the view that the sovereign person legislates his own values for himself and is therefore worthy of admiration, whereas the rabbinic person is dictated to from above. He challenges this through the example of a sovereign person who legislates for himself a way of life as a hired murderer, and emphasizes that the problem is not the lack of autonomy but that the path legislated is “an evil path.” He concludes that good and evil are not determined by a person’s self-legislation but are given objectively, and the human choice is whether to accept a good path or choose an evil one.

The Limits of the Argument and the Attitude Toward Moral Relativism

The speaker clarifies that the argument does not depend on moral relativism, and that even if there were differing opinions, every person experiences his own morality as imposed on him and as binding on others as well. He narrows the discussion to an agreed-upon “core” of morality, such as the prohibition against murdering an ordinary person for no reason, and argues that there is a broad area of principled agreement even if there are marginal disputes. He stresses that anyone who does not accept the assumption of objective, binding morality is not the target of the argument, since the proof is directed at those who accept ethical realism.

Moral Validity Versus Psychological Origin and the Need for a Legislator

The speaker distinguishes between the question of how moral feelings are formed and the question of their binding validity, and argues that explanations such as evolution, utilitarianism, or survival explain at most why people feel altruism, not why they are morally obligated. He rejects the claim that obligation stems from the need for society to exist or from a natural convention, because a convention is just a convention and does not create an objective obligation. He asks, “By what authority,” can one make claims against a person who does not share the feeling or the interest, and presents the need for an authoritative source that gives validity to a binding moral law.

Three Options, Not Four, and the Argument as a Hypothetical Proof

The speaker summarizes that the argument does not assert “God exists” unconditionally, but rather establishes a conditional relation: if there is valid morality, then there is God in the sense of a validating source. He presents three coherent possibilities: “there is valid morality and there is God,” “there is no valid morality and there is no God,” and “there is no valid morality and there is God,” and argues that the possibility “there is valid morality and there is no God” is impossible. He emphasizes that one can always reject the assumptions and avoid the conclusion, but anyone who accepts the assumption must admit that he is assuming God.

Enoch’s Objections to the Argument

The speaker presents three counterclaims that came up in his discussion with Enoch: that the question of justification and validity for moral obligation does not arise at all; that even if justification is needed, the “thin” God does not provide it; and that the thin God adds nothing beyond the existence of ethical facts and merely gives them a name. He states that he will address these claims in order, and bases his response on his view that a system of laws is binding only if there is some source that grants it validity.

Counterexamples: the Number Eight and the Law of Non-Contradiction

The speaker describes an attempt to present systems of “laws” that do not require a legislator, such as mathematical facts (“the number eight,” “2 plus 6 equals 8,” “5 plus 7 equals 12”) and the law of non-contradiction. He argues that the examples are irrelevant because they do not deal with normative obligation but with determinations that do not require action, and even if they were correct they would not answer the question, “Who obligates us to obey?” He adds that they are also not correct in an ontological sense according to his view, because the number eight is not an object but a property of sets, and the law of non-contradiction is not a prohibition one can violate but nonsense that one cannot think against in any binding sense. He sharpens the distinction between the “laws of logic” and the laws of the state or the laws of nature, and argues that the laws of nature and of the state could have been otherwise and therefore fit the concept of “legislation,” whereas logic is not “legislated” and does not generate moral obligation.

Kant, the Categorical Imperative, and the Gap Between a Principle and a Binding Reason

The speaker uses Kant’s categorical imperative to show that the test of universality is not a consequentialist argument but a hypothetical test for moral principledness. He gives examples of tax evasion and not voting in elections in order to show that a local consequentialist consideration leads to the rationality of violating the rule when the individual action changes nothing in practice. He argues that even if a person is convinced that the categorical imperative is correct as a principled description of morality, the question still remains, “Why obey,” when violation is possible, is not perceived as a logical necessity, and sometimes causes no noticeable harm. He notes that the situation is similar to the prisoner’s dilemma and that one can describe harsh social outcomes if everyone acts according to local rationality, but he emphasizes that the central issue is binding validity, not the behavioral or educational explanation.

A “Thin” God, Pragmatism, and the Limits of the Debate

The speaker rejects the interpretation that he is “inventing” God for pragmatic reasons in order to preserve social morality, and presents the move as a logical inference from premise to conclusion: if there is valid morality, then there is a validating source. He defines the thin God as an authoritative entity that grants validity to moral commands, and argues that by this definition it “does the job” regardless of whether this is the Jewish God or religious revelation. He states that anyone who refuses to recognize a validating source is in effect giving up valid morality, and that all explanations in terms of education, survival, or social pressure answer the question “Why do people obey” rather than “Why is it right and binding.”

Questions from the Audience: Morality, Jewish Law, Conscience, and the Image of God

The speaker is asked about the possibility that someone might conclude that Hitler was not evil in order to avoid belief in God, and he replies that there are indeed people who claim that morality is subjective or merely a convention. He is asked about the relationship between divine command and morality, and about “you shall do what is upright and good,” and he argues that there is a command to be moral even if it is not always formulated as a specific halakhic / of Jewish law rule, and that morality is objective even if there are arguments about it, just as there are in science and Jewish law. He rejects approaches that treat “obligation to the other person” as a source of validity without authority, and interprets Kant as distinguishing between the content of morality, which does not depend on God, and its binding validity, which does depend on God. He responds to the suggestion that the human being, or “the God within him,” could be the legislator, and argues that a self-declaration as a binding source resembles an irrational claim, and notes that even the use of the expression “the image of God” by atheists reflects a subconscious understanding that the human being alone is not a sufficient binding foundation.

Conclusion and Continuation of the Discussion

The speaker concludes the proof from morality and announces that after the break during Elul he will move to the final stage, which is “the religious stage,” meaning the transition from the philosophical God to religious commitment. He notes that he will return with a more orderly summary of what has been learned so far before beginning the next stage.

Good morning. Last time we started talking about the argument from morality. I’m trying to do this relatively quickly because we’re now heading into a short break, so I want us to close this circle for the moment. In brief, what I said last time was this: yes, this is based on the debate I had with David Enoch in Tel Aviv, from the Hebrew University, and the basis was that both of us agreed that there is such a thing as moral realism, ethical realism. And that means that morality is basically a collection of objective, real facts, right? Meaning, it’s not something that comes from me, it’s not something subjective, it’s not even a social agreement, but some kind of datum in… I don’t know whether to call it nature, but in reality, in the world, that is imposed on us. In other words, we have to behave in one way and not another. We do not decide what is moral and what is immoral. I brought two indications for this—one his and one mine. His indication was the spinach test. Right? That’s the test that says: let’s define a test that tells us which statement is subjective and which statement is objective. So a person, a child, who says: “How great that I don’t like spinach, because if I liked spinach I would eat it, and eating spinach is yuck.” So that is, of course, funny. Why is it funny? Because obviously, if he liked spinach then there would be no problem with his eating it; it’s a matter of personal taste. So right now he doesn’t like spinach, but if he did like it—yes, this is counterfactual, a contrary-to-fact situation, as they say in philosophy—then there would be no problem with him eating spinach. So it’s simply a categorical mistake to mourn that situation or rejoice in this one. What happens if I say: “How good it is that I didn’t live three hundred years ago, because then I would have kept slaves and abused them, and today I understand that that is immoral and I don’t do it. I’m very happy that I live today.” Or before that, sorry—that’s already the third example. The second is: how good it is that I don’t live in the 12th century, because then I would have thought that the earth was a box, and today I know that it is round, and so I am spared that mistake. Here there is no problem, because the statement that the earth is round is indeed a true statement, and if I had lived in the 12th century and thought otherwise, I would have been mistaken. This is not like spinach, which is a matter of personal taste and whatever I think is the truth; here, truth is given. Maybe I know it, maybe I don’t, but it is the truth independently of me. So that is the objective situation. So now we have a test that tells us, with regard to any statement, how we can check whether it is subjective or objective. If we apply the spinach test—if it comes out funny, then it is subjective. If it is perceived as a serious statement, not a funny one, then it is objective. So in the case of slaves, going back to slaves: how good it is that I didn’t live three hundred years ago, because if I had lived three hundred years ago I would have abused slaves, and today I understand that it’s not okay and I don’t do it. It seems to me pretty obvious that this statement is not funny at all. No one will laugh at that or say, “Well, if you had lived then, so what would have been the problem? Abuse slaves, because it was okay then.” No—even then it wasn’t okay; maybe I just wouldn’t have been aware of it and I would have failed. Therefore, the spinach test seems to me to lead to the conclusion that moral statements are statements of the kind we find in physics, and not of the kind we find in personal taste, the palate—this is something objective. That is David Enoch’s example. The example I brought was the quote from Ari Elon, who distinguishes between rabbinic man and sovereign man. And his claim is that sovereign man—that is, a secular person—legislates his own values for himself, he is an autonomous person, and he is indeed worthy of admiration. And rabbinic man is someone for whom values are legislated and dictated from above; he does not really determine his own path himself. And so, of course, the ideal model in his eyes is sovereign man. And then I asked what he would say about a sovereign man who legislates for himself the lifestyle of a contract killer. Right? Maximum salary with minimum work, a bit of risk admittedly, but overall you make a good living. I very much recommend this profession. I don’t know whether the Ministry of Labor offers a vocational training course for this, but perhaps it ought to. In any case, I asked what he would say… And the reason for that is that, although the person chose his path, legislated his own path for himself, and follows it—perhaps even pays prices for it and also gains a bit from those prices—but what exactly is the problem? He meets all the criteria. What is missing here is that the path this person legislated for himself is a bad path. And what that actually means is that there is apparently something beyond the mere fact that I legislated the path, which determines whether it is good or bad. Because the fact that I legislated for myself to be a contract killer does not turn contract killing into a good, moral way of life. Which means that good and evil are not determined by my legislation; rather, they are given. What I can do is accept upon myself a good path, or not accept a good path, and instead accept a bad one. That is, of course, up to my choice and my decision. But determining what is good and what is bad—that is not in my hands. That is given. You see that the conclusion is exactly the same conclusion as in the spinach test. In other words, this is not a matter of personal taste that I determine for myself; there is some objective datum here, and morality is basically something objective and binding. It does not depend on me; it is not my product; it is not the result of agreement. Yes, even among the Nazis there was agreement, and no one would therefore say that this was indeed the good for them. Not psychologically for them, but truly. So the assumption from which I begin—and in that debate it was a shared assumption—is the assumption of moral realism. Meaning that morality is some set of objective facts imposed upon us. We do not determine what is good and what is bad. Okay? That is the datum from which I begin the discussion. And here I’ll already repeat what I also said last time: if someone doesn’t accept this, then I’ve said nothing. Really, the proof addresses someone who assumes that assumption. In other words, someone who says that morality is not objective, not valid, but rather a matter of something embedded in us, convention, convenience, what feels nice, what feels pleasant, all kinds of explanations of that sort—fine. Then from his standpoint there is no morality, and in any case the argument is not directed to him. I am speaking to someone who does accept the existence of objective, binding morality. Once you accept that, I claim that you are supposed to reach the conclusion that there is God. Okay? But there’s a difference between accepting that in science there may be one truth, and morality—even if we say it’s not entirely subjective—but who determines it? I don’t know who determines it, but look, I’ll put it this way. We also talked about this last time, so I’ll repeat it briefly. What I’m saying now is not connected in any way to moral relativism. That is, even if we say that everyone has his own morality—I don’t think so, but even if we say that—wait, I’ll mute here because people can’t hear—even if we say that everyone has his own morality, I’m asking myself about my own morality. I think it is imposed on me; I didn’t determine it. True, I have an argument with you about what is moral and what is immoral, but from my point of view, you are mistaken. That is, I believe that these things are objective facts that bind you too. And now I ask: so from my point of view, who determined this? Before the question of whether I’m right, or whether someone argues with me or not. So in my view, it is not connected at all to moral relativism. But as to the substance of the matter, I also don’t think it is correct to say that there is moral relativism. You yourself said that there are, of course, certain margins about which there are arguments regarding what is moral and what is immoral, but there is definitely a substantial core on which there is agreement. So let’s talk about that. I want to speak only about that. Everything else depends on your choice; do whatever you want. But I’m talking about the agreed-upon part. You may not murder a person for no reason. Okay? I think that is agreed upon by all human beings. Even cannibals in Africa don’t just kill a person for no reason—unless they need to kill him, excuse me, eat him, unless they’re hungry. In other words, they don’t just kill a person. Okay? So this is an agreed-upon principle. So let’s talk about that. Where does it come from? Who legislated this thing? And the claim is that if we start from the premise of ethical realism, then this law—this objective law that binds us all—must, my claim is, have a legislator. Because if it has no legislator, why should it bind me? Now notice, you can ask this in two ways. You can look at these ethical facts as some sort of entities—some kind of things that exist, that exist in reality—and then ask who created them. Okay, I’m not sure I want to go there, although there is room to discuss that too. Right now I’m speaking even without relation to that question. I’m not speaking now in the sense of who created these entities, assuming they really are existing entities. Rather, I ask who gives validity to the moral facts—not who created them, but who obligates me to obey them. Okay? Let’s say they were always there; nobody created them. Or that they are not facts in the sense of being entities. Right? Let’s say a flower has a red color. The red color is a property of the flower; it is not an object. It is not a thing. Okay? So when I talk about properties, I don’t know to what extent one can speak in terms of who created them. So leave that aside—I’m not talking about the question of who created the ethical facts. I’m talking about the question of who gives them validity. By what force am I required to obey them? Yes, David?

I wanted to ask why one can’t argue that the validity of that moral command embedded in the core you’re talking about is that… Just a second, there’s noise here. Whoever isn’t speaking, can you mute? Couldn’t one argue that the validity is derived from the fact that without those moral commands, society cannot exist? And on that basis everyone understands, as a natural convention, that a person alone won’t survive.

Wait—if it’s a convention, then it’s a convention. I’m talking about ethical realism, not conventions.

Not convention in the social sense; everyone understands that it’s hard to live alone. A person understands that he…

What if I don’t understand? Do you have a claim against me?

No, then get out of society and…

What do you mean get out of society? I’ll throw society out and… take your property. What’s the problem? Again, if it’s something rooted in you, then it’s rooted in you. It isn’t rooted in me. You can’t come to me with claims on the basis of something rooted in you. And notice, I’m not talking about moral relativism. It’s not… I’m speaking even within a realist conception. But you yourself think that this is the correct way to behave and that someone who does not behave this way is not okay. I may think otherwise. I’m asking why you come to me with claims. I’m not asking why I think otherwise. This is not a question of moral relativism. I’m willing to accept realism for the sake of the discussion. But I ask: by what right do you come to me with claims? Because inside you there is some embedded conception? That conception is not embedded in me, so what’s the problem? Why should I behave that way? You have to assume here that there is some law by virtue of which you can come to me with claims—that is, that it binds me too, regardless of what I feel inside. Maybe if I don’t feel it then I’m coerced; maybe there are claims of exemption due to coercion or mitigation of punishment. But clearly, in principle, it binds me too. In other words, from your point of view I am not okay if I do not behave this way. And I ask why. By what authority? Who is the legislator that established these laws by virtue of which you can come to me with claims? And I claim that without a legislator, there cannot be such laws. There are all kinds of explanations, like naturalistic explanations—yes, evolutionary explanations—that say, okay, evolution implanted altruism within us because altruism has survival value. That is, a group whose members help each other will survive better than a group in which man is a wolf to man. But that explanation is only an explanation—what is called a naturalistic explanation—of how the feeling of altruism arose within me. But that is not what I am asking. I am asking why that feeling is binding. Because the fact that a feeling arose in me—I also have a desire to speak slander. Does that mean I am obligated to speak slander? The fact that there is some feeling inside me—so what? We are born in all kinds of forms and structures that exist within us. If the only thing that binds me is that it exists within me, then it is completely subjective. Why should the fact that it exists in me bind me, and if it does not exist in him, why should he be bound by it? So once again, I’m muting the microphone. I ask that if someone is not speaking, mute yourselves, because there is constant noise here and I can barely hear myself. So the claim is that all kinds of naturalistic, evolutionary, utilitarian explanations of this sort—meaning, without this we won’t survive—okay, so without this we won’t survive. I don’t want to survive. Is there an obligation to survive? In the end you always have to assume some principle that says survival is something of value. Of value—not just something you want. If you want it, that’s perfectly fine; that’s an interest. I’m not talking about interest; I’m talking about the value in the thing, about the fact that if I do not behave this way, then you come to me with the claim that I am not okay. Not that you have an interest and you want to achieve it, and therefore you will kill me if I threaten it—that’s fine, that’s a utilitarian consideration. I’m talking about the moral consideration. Meaning: do you come to me with a claim that I’m not okay? Then you need to explain to me by what force. Who is the legislator who established these laws by virtue of which you can come to me with claims? And I claim that without a legislator there cannot be such laws. What law or what legislator gives you the authority to come to me with claims? Why should that bind me? And so here, therefore, no naturalistic explanation, I think, will help in this context. So in short, the claim is that if we start from the premise of ethical realism, then this objective law that binds all of us needs a legislator. That is, without a legislator, why should I obey this law? What kind of law is there without some authoritative factor standing behind it and obligating me to obey it? It’s not just “that’s the law.” In Alice in Wonderland, I think there is something like that. Because it’s the law. What do you mean, it’s the law? Who legislated this law? Why should I be bound by this law? There has to be some legislator. And therefore—yes, like Sherlock Holmes says in The Sign of Four—after we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. In other words, I don’t know who this legislator is, and maybe I have no indication at all of his existence—I think I do—but let’s even say I don’t. Still, there is no other alternative. Once there is no alternative, if there is a law, there is a legislator behind it. Now here I’ll again return to the comment that keeps coming up, and I assume it’s also coming up for some of you, and that’s why it’s important for me to repeat it all the time. This argument is an argument of the type I’m talking about now—the fourth move in our framework is the revealing theological argument, not the creating one. What do I mean? A person can come and say: okay, you convinced me. I really don’t think there is valid morality, so I withdraw from ethical realism. I have nothing to say to such a person. That is, if that is really what he says, then I will not be able to bring him to belief in God. That is true. Now that same person will also tell me one step further: you, who derive from this an argument for God and who think there is moral realism—you are just doing this on the pragmatic level. Because you know that without inventing God you won’t manage to produce valid morality, so you invent God in order to have a basis that will give you valid morality; otherwise you won’t be able to live here. So basically this is some kind of pragmatism. You need this, and therefore, “In the beginning man created God,” as people always said, in order for God to produce valid morality for him; otherwise it will be impossible to live here if there is no God in this place and they’ll kill me, as the moralists say. So you are basically inventing God. That is the pragmatist claim. But that claim is mistaken. Mistaken in this sense: it may be a correct interpretation of what I’m doing, but it is mistaken in the sense that it is not a necessary interpretation. Because I claim that if I really wanted morality in order to survive, and I understood that the only basis I could offer for morality was to invent God, and therefore I invent God—that would be pragmatism. But my move is a completely different move. It is a move of premise and conclusion, a logical move. My premise is that there is valid morality. That is a premise—not that I want it; I actually think there is valid morality. I’m an ethical realist, not someone who wants there to be valid morality. I actually think there is. You can tell me, as an interpretation, that I’m just fooling myself—fine, that’s paternalism. I’m talking about what I say; afterward you can interpret me however you want. What I say is that there is valid morality. Once I say that there is valid morality, the conclusion is necessarily that in the background there is a God who legislated it, because without that there is no valid morality. In other words, it’s not that I want morality, therefore I invent God; rather, I think there is morality, and therefore clearly there is God. This is a very fine distinction, and a distinction of interpretation. Someone can interpret me and say you’re just a pragmatist—that’s a possible interpretation, but it is by no means necessary. I present this as an argument, and I address everyone by saying: if you think there is valid morality, if you are an ethical realist, then you necessarily believe in God. Period. So of course you can say that all of this is pragmatism and say that the truth is that there is no God and no valid morality and I’m making things up—fine, you can say that. But you cannot say there is valid morality without God. That option—no. I’ve removed that option. You can say there is no valid morality and no God, and all this talk about God is pragmatism. You can say there is valid morality and there is God. You cannot say there is valid morality and there is no God. By the way, you use the word “think”—do you mean “believe”?

For me, believe and think are the same thing.

No, one says “I think” meaning there is some logic to what I’m saying, or it’s more of an assumption. There is belief; there is assumption.

What does “logic” mean? There is logic that leads to that conclusion. So you ask me what the logic is behind the premises in this logical argument. A logical argument always begins with premises. And when you ask me how I know the premises, my answer is that I have some immediate intuition and I think those premises are true. You can call that belief. I once really did identify this with belief. But there is no essential difference between belief and thinking; to me they’re the same thing. That is basically, in essence, the argument from morality. Now again I say: this is not the God of religion. It has nothing to do with the Jewish God. But it does have to do with some factor that gives validity to moral principles. And therefore, if I sum up, the claim is the following—and this is true of all arguments of this type. If you think there is valid morality, then you believe in God. That is the claim. It is a hypothetical claim: if, then. I am not saying that there is God. I am saying that someone who thinks there is valid morality necessarily assumes that there is God. Maybe he is mistaken. Maybe there is no God. Maybe there is no valid morality. But he himself thinks there is God. That I can tell him with certainty, because otherwise there is no valid morality. And therefore there are three options, not four. You can say there is valid morality and there is God. You can say there is no valid morality and there is no God. You can say there is no valid morality and there is God—say God is evil, so He did not legislate morality—that’s possible. You cannot say there is valid morality and there is no God. That is simply not legitimate. That comes off the map of possibilities. Everything else remains. And therefore this is not an unconditional proof that there is God; it is a hypothetical proof, a conditional proof. If you are a moral realist, then there is God. That’s it. Now decide whether you are a moral realist or not. Everyone can decide for himself. But of course this is true of every logical argument, every philosophical argument. The conclusion always depends on the premises. If you do not accept the premises, you will not accept the conclusion. So every logical and philosophical argument is like this. It is not a flaw in this argument that you need to assume premises. Every argument assumes premises. Now each person simply has to examine himself and ask whether he really does assume these premises or not. Therefore, as I said with the previous proofs of this type, it’s very easy to walk away from this debate without losing. You can say: no, you’re right, there is no morality, it’s all just implanted in me, just convention, survival, evolution, whatever you want, and there is no valid morality. Then fine—you haven’t lost. I didn’t manage to prove to you that there is God. That option always remains, the option of denying the premises, of not accepting the premises. But what I say to such a person is: leave me aside. Don’t walk away from the argument with me thinking you’ve come out on top. Go home and think by yourself whether you really think there is valid morality or not. Reach your own conclusion; leave me out of it. What difference does it make who won and who lost? We always have some desire to win an argument or not lose an argument. In the end, every person has to examine himself. If you accept this premise, then know that you believe in God. Be honest. You cannot deny before yourself what you think. To me, you can sell me whatever bill of goods you want, but you yourself—make your own soul-searching. That, in short, is the claim. Now I want to—there are three…

Rabbi, after all, you’ve been dealing with this subject for a long time. Have you ever met someone who said, yes, I think Hitler was not a bad person in light of this conclusion? Because you can’t say Hitler was a bad person and not believe in God. Is there anyone who says, yes, you know what, after thinking about the proof…

What? It’s constructed subjectively, or as a social convention. I’ve met many people. Not many, but there are such people. That’s it—that’s what they say. Fine, onward. So in my discussion with Enoch, three claims of his came up against this argument. Yes, this is basically the argument I presented there. His first claim was that the question of who gives justification or validity to the rules of morality does not exist at all. Commitment to ethical facts needs no justification. That was his first claim. Therefore, of course, you don’t need God either, because no justification is needed. His second claim was that even if justification is needed, God does not do the job—certainly not this thin God that I presented there, not religious, not Jewish, nothing, but simply as the legislator of morality. The second claim is that God does not do the job even if justification is needed. Or in other words: if so, then there is no God, sorry, no morality, because if justification is needed and God doesn’t do the job, that means there is no morality. And his third claim was that the thin God I presented is basically just another way of saying that ethical facts exist; I didn’t add anything beyond that. Therefore we don’t really have a genuine disagreement. I simply call the ethical facts “God.” Okay? There’s nothing beyond that. So I’ll address his claims step by step. The first claim, as I said before, is that I have some underlying assumption—yes, a presupposition—that the validity of ethical facts requires justification. He argued that my claim was basically this: any legal system I know of does not bind me unless there is an authoritative factor behind it. Yes, the Knesset legislates the laws of the state, therefore I am bound by them. The mere fact that there are laws doesn’t bind me. That is, the fact that there are laws—so what if there are laws? I can tell you, listen, the law is that every morning you have to stand on one foot for half an hour. That’s the law, I legislated it. You can say, okay, good for you, goodbye. You don’t care what I legislate. I’m not an authoritative factor for you. It’s not a law that has validity from your point of view. So the fact that a law exists somewhere, or that someone wrote a law somewhere, says nothing. In other words, you need someone, or some factor, that gives validity to that law. Otherwise the law is just a dead letter; it does not bind you. And therefore the claim was—my claim was—that without God, who is the validating factor for the moral principles, there is no validity to the laws of morality. That is the factor that gives validity to moral laws. So Enoch basically claimed: not true. There are all kinds of examples of systems of laws that do not need an external factor. Now this I already said: the moment he brings examples, he understands that the burden of proof is on him. Because basically it is obvious that a legal system as such does not bind me—only if there is an authoritative factor behind it. Now he tries to show that perhaps this is not necessary. There are counterexamples. So let’s examine the counterexamples and see that this is not true: there are no counterexamples. Of course, let me already say in advance, even if there are no counterexamples, that still doesn’t prove I’m right. It means there are no counterexamples, but maybe there really could be a legal system that doesn’t need a factor to give it validity. That remains open. So it was important for me to say that once you bring counterexamples, you are basically agreeing that the burden of proof is on you. That is, on a basic intuitive level, you too agree with what I’m saying—that a legal system has no validity unless someone gave it that validity. And now you say: yes, but although that is apparently my intuition too, let me show you some counterexamples and then you’ll see that it isn’t necessary. Once I knock down the counterexamples, we return to the original intuition. So this pre-discussion is important, this preliminary discussion, before I talk about the examples themselves. What is the situation without examples? Now I’ll knock down the examples and we’ll go back to the situation without examples. What are the examples? The first example he brought was, of course, moral laws. Here—moral laws are things that don’t require… Fine, that’s begging the question; we both chuckled. Then the second example he brought was the number eight. The number eight exists here in our reality—some logical or mathematical fact exists in our world—and there is no need to assume that someone created it. Or the law that 2 plus 6 equals 8, if you like, or 5 plus 7 equals 12, which is Kant’s favorite example. Yes, this is some kind of law that exists here, a property of numbers, and no one is supposed to create it. Therefore, here is an example of a law that does not need a factor to give it validity. Why is this example mistaken? For two reasons. First, because it is irrelevant. And second, because it is incorrect. My first claim is that even if it were correct, it would still be irrelevant. Why? Because the number eight—even if it were a fact—I am not talking about the question of who created the moral facts. I said that earlier. I am not speaking of moral facts as Platonic entities and asking who created them. I am asking who gives validity to the moral law, not who created it as an object, but who obligates me to act according to it. That is a completely different question. The number eight does not obligate me in any way. It is just here because it is here. It does not obligate me. Therefore I am not asking who created it. As for the question who created it—let’s say it was always here. Fine? No one created it; it was always here. We once discussed whether one can say such a thing in the cosmological argument. I won’t return to that here. Let’s say one can. Fine? It was always here. But I ask: once it imposes normative obligations on me—I ask: why should I obey it?

Social pressure. That’s an important question.

And with the number eight, that is irrelevant.

Public pressure. Okay, so public pressure. I’ll come into a store, I’ll take six items plus two, and I’ll want to pay only for seven. Then they’ll say to me, sir, but you took eight. And I’ll say no, according to me there is nothing that obligates me. For me, six plus two is seven. So what will obligate me? Public pressure. The whole world thinks differently from me, so they’ll force me. Either by beatings or by social boycotts. Same thing in morality.

No, no, that’s a mistake. What obligates you is not public pressure. What obligates you to pay is public pressure. What obligates you to say that two plus six equals eight is mathematics, not public pressure. Even if there were no public pressure, two plus six would still be eight. And if you deny that, then you deny it. So either you’re stupid or you’re lying. But it is what it is—that’s the fact. The fact that you don’t want to pay—there the public forces you, not regarding the result of the arithmetic exercise. Those are two completely different things. So in the end the claim is that the number eight obligates me to nothing. Therefore there is no question of who gives it validity. As for the validity of two plus six equals eight, I’ll make another remark in a moment. Therefore this is not a relevant example even if it were true. Second, I want to argue that this example is also incorrect. Because I am not assuming right now that the number eight is something that exists. One can assume that if one is a Platonist. I am not assuming that. Just like the ethical facts, I am willing to assume that they are not entities that exist. I ask who gives this the validity that obligates me to behave this way, not who created it or why it is there. Therefore this is not a correct example either. No one created the number eight because it does not exist. There is no such thing as the number eight. It is a property of sets of objects, that’s all. It is not an object. Therefore there is no question who created it. So then you’ll tell me that ethical facts are not objects either? And I say, true, they are not objects either. Therefore I am indeed not asking who created them. I am asking who gives them validity—who obligates me to behave according to them. Therefore the example of the number eight is not a good example. The third example, related to the number eight, is the law of non-contradiction: that a thing is both red and not red at the same time. You can’t say such a thing. That’s the law of non-contradiction. Right? Both x and not-x at the same time. On that I answered him again in the same two ways. It’s just a continuation of the number eight. First, the law of non-contradiction is not an object that exists. Therefore I do not need a legislator. It’s simply that saying both x and not-x is nonsense, that’s all. There is no object here for which I need to ask whether someone created it or who created it. Beyond that, the law of non-contradiction also does not obligate us to do anything. There is no prohibition against thinking contradictions. It is simply impossible to do. And it is not that if I say both x and not-x at the same time, someone will take me to court for having done wrong. At most they’ll institutionalize me for treatment—logical treatment, yes, not psychological. Because it is not forbidden to say that; it is simply nonsense. One cannot say such a thing. Therefore it’s not… But in the moral context, murder is possible. To say that murder is permitted is a possible statement. It is not correct, but it is possible. Now we need to understand, then, who says—who gives validity to the prohibition against murder. Who determines that this prohibition is a binding prohibition. Okay? That is a completely different question from who gives validity to the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction has no validity. It does not bind me because someone legislated it. Try to act against the law of non-contradiction—good luck. You won’t succeed. It is not a prohibition. Okay? In the past, I think even in this series, I talked about the borrowed use we make of the word “law” when we speak about the laws of logic. There are the laws of physics and the laws of biology and the laws of the state and the laws of logic. All of these we call “laws.” And we don’t really notice that there is a very great difference between them. The difference between the laws of biology and physics and the laws of the state is not essential. The laws of biology and physics were legislated by the Holy One, blessed be He; the laws of the state were legislated by the Knesset. There is a factor that legislated both, and in both cases the law could also have been otherwise. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had created the world with different natural laws, then the laws of nature would have been different. The gravitational constant would have been different, fine? It wouldn’t have been 9.8 g here on Earth, but something else. Fine, that could happen without any logical contradiction; it could have been legislated differently. A different law could have been legislated in the State of Israel—income tax could have been x percent and not y percent. Fine, that is a legislated law; it is binding, but a different law could also have been legislated. Okay? With laws of logic, there is no legislator behind them because they are not laws. It would have been impossible to legislate a different logical law. A different logical law is nonsense. You cannot legislate a logical law that both x and not-x are true at the same time. Someone who says that does not understand what x and not-x and “true” mean. In other words, he does not understand something about those concepts. And therefore there is no option here of legislating it differently. So there is no question who is the factor standing behind the validity of this law, because this law has no validity. It is not a law that is valid and binds me, such that if I don’t do it then I am not okay and someone will come to me with claims. If I do not obey this law—it is not that I am not obligated to obey it, or that I am forbidden to violate it. I cannot violate it. It simply follows from the nature of logic itself, not from the nature of reality. Therefore this example of the law of non-contradiction, or laws of logic in general, is a very bad example. It is not a legal system at all. So when you look at this set of examples, you see that precisely after seeing why these examples are neither correct nor relevant, I think it only strengthens the claim that every legal system needs a legislator. And all the examples you can bring me, all the counterexamples you can bring me, simply are not legal systems. That is exactly the point. And it sharpens even more that whenever you get to something that is not an analytic definition, not just some conceptual logical analysis, but some synthetic claim about the world or about our obligations in the world, then something must stand behind it. Therefore these examples, to my mind, strengthen the argument and do not weaken it. I want to have a short discussion of the categorical imperative in order to sharpen the point even further. According to Kant, the basic moral principle is what is called the categorical imperative. What does that mean? You need to be committed to a command that is imposed upon you, of which you are not the source—an objective command, a kind of moral realism. That is called a categorical command. But Kant went one step further. Kant also wanted to argue that the moral command, the categorical imperative, has a certain content, and that he can derive it a priori—that is, from a conceptual analysis of the concept of morality he derives the content of the categorical imperative. The very existence of a categorical imperative is a simple assumption—that’s what is called morality. But then he does some work in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and elsewhere, and he reaches the conclusion that the content of the categorical imperative is the following: perform all your actions in such a way that you would want them to be a universal law. Categorical imperative. The claim is that a person needs to test the actions he performs by the test of universality. What does that mean? If I want to steal, then I have to ask myself whether I would want it to be a universal law that everyone may steal, or that everyone will steal. Clearly I would not want that. Since that is the case, theft is an immoral action. That is the Kantian claim. Now I’m not entering at the moment into the question of how he reached that conclusion or what exactly it means; there are many criticisms of it. But let’s try to take that conclusion and understand a bit what it means. People make a huge mistake here because very often they present the Kantian argument as follows: say I’m consulting with a friend about whether to go steal, and he says to me, would you want people to steal from you? Would you want the whole world to be open to thieves and for there to be no private property? Of course you wouldn’t want that. If you do it, others will do it too. Therefore don’t do it. Basically an argument of this type is a pragmatic consequentialist argument, and it essentially says: it is not worthwhile for you to steal, because if you steal, everyone will allow themselves to steal, and then you too won’t want to live in such a world. That is not the Kantian claim. The Kantian claim is a principled, essential claim, not a consequentialist one. It is a claim that has nothing to do with results. The examples I always give for this are examples from arguments with my son: should one evade taxes? I am considering whether to conceal a thousand shekels from the tax authorities. Now I think to myself: if I conceal a thousand shekels from the state treasury, obviously if everyone concealed taxes from the state treasury, that would not be a state of affairs I want, because I want the state to function, provide services, protect us, do what it is supposed to do, finance the… all our politicians, everything necessary. So the question of whether you would want such a universal world definitely exists here, and I would not want it. But on the other hand I say: okay, I don’t want such a universal world, but there will not be such a universal world. Each person decides for himself whether to evade taxes or not, and reaches the conclusions he reaches. Now I, quietly, without telling anyone, will conceal a thousand shekels in taxes. What I do will not cause anyone else to evade taxes, because no one will know about it. It may be that others will also evade taxes because they too make their own calculations and reach their own conclusions, but that has nothing to do with what I do. In other words, from my point of view, what I do means either one more thousand shekels in the state treasury or one more thousand shekels with me. That’s it. Those are the two options I need to weigh. Now the others—it won’t happen. Meaning, when people threaten me that if you do it, everyone will do it—not true. I’ll do it quietly, and others either will or won’t do it, but that’s their calculation. It does not follow from what I do. Therefore, when I make the cold calculation, I say to myself: after all, concealing a thousand shekels from the state treasury will change nothing. If there are a thousand shekels less in the state treasury, no action of the state will change by a millimeter. A thousand shekels in terms of the state treasury is a joke. No one will even know it existed there. Therefore nothing—no one will suffer from it, no consequence will occur. I’ll simply conceal a thousand shekels, and for me a thousand shekels is significant. For the state it’s nonsense, completely negligible. No poor person will suffer from it, nothing will happen. Some computer at 0.01 somewhere will display a different digit, and we can drag that out until the end of time and nothing will happen. Nobody will suffer from it. Okay? So now—why not evade taxes? Now you can’t tell me, look, if you evade then everyone else will evade. Not true. I’ll do it and I won’t tell anyone. Now it may be that others also evade, and it may be that they don’t. That’s their business. But it won’t happen as a result of my having done it. The only effect of what I do is a thousand shekels more or less in the state treasury. That’s it. And since for me a thousand shekels is significant, while for the state treasury it is completely negligible, the conclusion is that it is right to conceal it. Plain and simple. Okay? Or not to go vote in elections, right? That’s the second example I always bring in this context. I don’t go vote. The chance that I will have any impact by going to vote is absolutely zero. Right? The number of votes that creates a seat is thirty thousand, I don’t know, forty thousand votes—that creates a seat. The chance that I will be exactly the vote that makes the number of mandates in the party I want divide precisely by forty thousand is absolutely negligible. Say one in forty thousand if you want, assuming uniform distribution. Okay? There is no chance. It has never happened and it never will happen. Okay? Therefore whether I go vote or don’t go vote will not affect the map of the state in any way—not even by one seat, in nothing. Notice, it’s not that the effect is small. It’s not a small effect; the effect is zero. Round zero. No effect. When you go vote in elections, your vote has zero effect. Not epsilon, not one in a million—zero. You affect nothing. Whether you went or did not go, the result is exactly the same—not approximately the same. Exactly the same. The only possibility of affecting it is with that same chance that, say, the party you want—say Balad—gets four seats minus one vote, and if you go, you bring in the fourth seat because your vote is the missing one. That will never happen. Therefore there is no reason to go vote. So people tell me: yes, but if you don’t go vote, no one will go vote; there will be anarchy here. No, no, no—I’m not going to tell anyone I didn’t go vote. What I do does not affect others. Maybe they’ll go vote and maybe they won’t. If they are rational people, then they won’t. But that’s not the point; their decision is their decision. It does not stem from what I do. What I do amounts to one more slip in the ballot box or one fewer slip in the ballot box—that is to say, no effect whatsoever. That’s it. So the claims that if you do it then everyone will do the same, or do it to you, don’t arise in these circumstances. In these situations those claims are not true. There is no consequentialist explanation, yes, based on consequences, that will persuade me to go vote or not to conceal taxes. Now here Kant tells us: this is the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is the opposite of a consequentialist consideration, although people often present it that way. It’s a consideration that says: if everyone were to do as you do—not that this will happen, but hypothetically, let’s think about a hypothetical state in which everyone does as you do—is that a world you like? If you like it, then fine. If you don’t like it, then it means the action you are considering is immoral, and don’t do it. Not because it will happen and everyone will do as you do—it won’t happen. This is a hypothetical test. If everyone were to do as you do, would that be a good world in your eyes? That is the consideration. Therefore the issue is not the result, what will happen as a result of what you do. This test is only a hypothetical test that determines whether the action you do is moral or immoral. It is not a question of its results. That is Kant’s categorical imperative. Now I say: if this really is the fundamental moral principle, then explain to me how I can persuade a person to behave in accordance with it. I don’t know—with my son I’m not succeeding. He tells me: forget the categorical imperative. Who invented the categorical imperative? They invented it for fools like you, so that all of you will go vote and won’t evade taxes, and then I can quietly not vote and evade taxes and harm no one. They invented the categorical imperative for the fools. But I know very well that, practically speaking, what I do harms no one, and I only profit from it—an election vacation day, yes, opium for the masses, exactly. I gain a thousand shekels, I gain an election vacation day, everything is excellent and nobody loses. Why shouldn’t I do it? Now leave aside for a moment the Kantian move, with which I personally strongly identify, but one can argue about that. Let’s say for the sake of discussion that we adopt this moral principle, which is not consequentialist. This is not about consequences. Now I ask: someone comes and I say to him, listen, but the categorical imperative says one must vote, or one may not conceal taxes. And then he says to me: “Gladness of Kanti in the public square.” Fine, so the categorical imperative says so. And I say: “It is a time to act for God; they have voided Your Torah,” and also “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and also “Every person has a name.” I too can say all sorts of things. So what? What is this “categorical imperative”? Why should I observe it? There is no argument in the world—in this case not even a naturalistic argument, not a consequentialist argument, not any other argument—that will persuade me to behave in such a way. Do you understand why there must be a factor standing at the basis of the moral command that gives it validity? I don’t see how I persuade a person, or how I explain to him that he is not okay, simply because there is a categorical imperative. There is a categorical imperative—so what? Let’s say he was convinced by the Kantian reasoning, by the Kantian analysis, and he reached the conclusion that the categorical imperative is the fundamental moral command. Fine. Now he asks: but why should I fulfill it? There must be something that gives this command validity. Not who created it. The one who created it is reason, like in logic. But now I ask: why obey it? That is the difference between this and the law of non-contradiction or the number eight. Regarding the law of non-contradiction I do not ask why obey it. I cannot fail to obey it. One cannot act against the law of non-contradiction. Here, however, one can. One can evade taxes, one can fail to go vote, and it harms no one either, notice that. So why not do it? The only answer that can be given is: because you are obligated to the factor that legislated this command. Because without that, so what if there is a command? True, there is a command—what one might call theoretical. Fine, there is a command here, so what? Why should I obey it? Okay, so this only sharpens the point that there must be a factor standing at the basis of this command. Now I cheated a bit in this example, just so I don’t leave the cheating on the table. I’ll add parenthetically: one can raise a kind of consequentialist or pseudo-consequentialist argument in favor of the categorical imperative. Because understand: if we do not accept the categorical imperative, then every rational person will decide to evade taxes. Each one individually—he does not affect the others. But each one individually will decide to evade taxes, and then we’ll all be in terrible shape. Now true, none of us affects the others, but if each of us individually does not make this calculation for himself, without it affecting the others, this non-consequentialist calculation, then there will be very severe consequences here. And that is the paradox of the categorical imperative. By the way, it’s exactly like the prisoner’s dilemma. It’s precisely the same logic. I have a column about this—number 122, I think—where I show the analogy between the categorical imperative and the prisoner’s dilemma. In the prisoner’s dilemma, cooperation actually contradicts the local calculation. Meaning, the calculation that says: if he does such and such, I check what is best for me to do; and if the other does such and such, what is best for me to do. And this leads me to the conclusion that I should do x. But if he too makes the same calculation, then in the end both of us will be in a worse position than if we form a coalition. An uncoordinated coalition, yes? An unconscious coalition. By the way, there is a wonderfully nice BBC program called Golden Balls. If you know it, you can look it up online—Golden Balls. And there you have a collection of short clips of people playing the prisoner’s dilemma in front of the camera. It’s simply amazing. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. There is not a single case that resembles another. I was sure I would get bored after three cases—after all, they’re all the same thing, they all do the prisoner’s dilemma, back and forth, you decide what you decide, and that’s it. No—look at the arguments and persuasion there, and this and that—it’s amazing. There isn’t a pair that resembles any other pair. There are, I think, hundreds of clips like that of Golden Balls, and each one is more fascinating than the next. I really recommend watching it. And the beautiful philosophical dilemma there really is that if someone deceives, then he succeeds. He deceives the other and says, let’s make a coalition. The other person, being straightforward, makes the coalition, and I screw him over. Then I profit more than if I had adhered to the coalition. Now the question is: was I in the wrong? After all, these are the rules of the game. He knows I can cheat and can choose not to cheat. It’s a TV game, it’s not some real-life thing. So we have a feeling that it’s not okay, but in truth, what is the problem? He maximized his result. That’s what we’re used to doing in every game. It’s like committing a foul in soccer or basketball. Very often a foul is part of the tactics. You commit a foul because that stops the basket and then he’ll have two free throws—maybe he’ll miss one. Okay? So the expected value is positive, but committing a foul is a tactic within the game; there is nothing wrong with it as long as you don’t do something especially severe. I just stop him, and afterward we can even hug after I stopped him. Everyone understands that this is a tactical move in the game. Same thing here. So this is an interesting philosophical question. But I’m saying, it’s worth looking at because it really reflects the dilemma that appears in our lives all the time. Every hesitation of this kind—tax evasion, voting in elections, and so on—is basically the prisoner’s dilemma. And the question is whether I enter into a coalition with the rest of the members of the group, the citizens of the state—a coalition in which no one affects the other. Each person has to behave honestly with himself, but if he doesn’t behave honestly he doesn’t affect anyone else in any way, and that still remains true. What I do will remove a thousand shekels from the state treasury; nothing will happen to it. Of course, if everyone removes a thousand shekels, then we have a problem. But what does it have to do with me if others do it? I did my part. You understand that the calculation ultimately leads to consequences, but it is not a consequentialist calculation. Therefore I don’t see how one can persuade a person to behave in such a way and not conceal a thousand shekels of taxes. Whatever others do, they’ll do. But I conceal a thousand shekels in taxes, it doesn’t harm anyone, and I profit from it. There has to be a factor. I said to David Enoch there in our discussion: explain to me how you manage to persuade me. It’s the law—I mean the moral law. Explain to me how you manage to persuade me to observe it. By what authority am I supposed to observe it? So what if it’s the law? What does that mean, it’s the law? So what if it’s the law? So the claim I really want to make is that beyond the fact that there is a law here, there also has to be something that gives it validity, by virtue of which one can also come to people with claims or judge them if they do not conduct themselves in accordance with the law. Now I’ll briefly do his last objections, because he says: does thin God do the job, and is there really any disagreement here? So I say: clearly thin God does the job, because thin God is ultimately defined as the factor that gives validity to the moral legal system. By definition he does the job. This is not necessarily the God who created the world. This is not the God who gave the Torah at Sinai. This is not the Jewish God. It doesn’t matter who it is. I said that every argument assumes a different definition of the God whose existence it proves. In this case, it is an authoritative body or authoritative entity whose commands have validity, such that they are binding on me. Now someone can come and say: I do not recognize the validity of the matter. No problem. Then from his standpoint there is no morality. But if you think there is valid morality, then you necessarily assume that there is an authoritative body that gives it validity. You cannot say there is valid morality but no such body. You can say there is no valid morality, that you do not recognize the existence and authority of such a body—that’s perfectly fine. Therefore I said: this is a hypothetical proof. But if you think there is valid morality, there is no such thing as valid morality without God. This is a very strong proof, even though it is so easy to evade, because one can always say, fine, morality is convention, my inner feeling, the emotion of compassion, or all kinds of evolutionary nonsense, all kinds of things people raise simply מתוך lack of philosophical understanding. It is so easy to evade, but in my eyes this is simply a decisive claim for anyone who thinks there is objective morality.

It’s all just a matter of education. I light a cigarette and nothing will happen to me. But if they convince me from the day I’m born that cigarette after cigarette accumulates into cancer, God forbid—my friend already got the proof—then in the end that’s morality. In things where one person at a time can play whatever he wants and there is…

You don’t understand the claim. Your claim is—look, one of two things. If you think that smoking cigarettes truly leads to cancer, then the fact that it leads to cancer is not the result of education; that is reality. It may be that without education we would not take that reality into account and would not behave accordingly, but education does not turn reality into truth. Do you understand? I ask why morality is valid, not why I carry out what moral commands say. That is psychology. Evolution may be an explanation. It does not interest me. I am not seeking the psychological question; I am seeking the philosophical question.

But all the examples we brought are like that. I don’t take and steal the thousand shekels because if I do it and he does it and he does it, there won’t be money in spending.

Exactly! That’s sociology; it has nothing to do with education. I educate the children…

No, you don’t educate—“don’t do this because if you do it and he does it, there won’t be a state.” I’m telling you that you yourself are not right, not only about me. Because if you didn’t think this was true, you wouldn’t persuade your child to do it either. You educate him because you think it is true, not because it is true because you educate him. It is true that all of us should not behave that way. We all behave… You educate someone in order to get him to behave correctly, but education does not make it correct. I ask why it is correct, not why people do it. I ask why it is correct to do it.

It’s correct because if everyone takes the thousand, there won’t be a state.

Agreed. But not everyone will take the thousand; only I won’t take the thousand.

That’s what you think.

Yes, that’s what I think. Why will everyone do it? Why not? Why should they do it? And if they do it, what will it help if I don’t do it? So they’ll do it—what does it help? So I’ll be the only idiot who doesn’t take the thousand shekels? What will that help? What I do won’t affect others. They’ll make their own calculation.

Social agreement—everyone as smart as I am, everyone this kind of smart guy.

One of two things: if you say this is social agreement, then from your point of view there is no valid morality.

That is morality! Social agreement is morality!

No, that’s not morality. Those are the naturalistic explanations I explained above. That is not valid morality. Social agreement, good health to you—I don’t agree. That’s all. What is your claim against me? I don’t want to agree. That’s it.

You’re destroying our world. We’ll behave toward you…

Destroying the world, we’ll behave… What do you mean, it’s forbidden to destroy the world? I want to destroy the world.

Fine, so society will behave toward you…

No problem, let it behave. But I ask whether you have a claim against me. Do you morally condemn me? I’m not talking about whether you’ll defend yourself against me—of course you will. I’m talking about moral judgment. That’s what I mean. You keep taking it in the behavioral direction. I’m speaking in the philosophical direction: is it correct? Do I have a negative judgment toward someone who behaves otherwise? Not the question of how I’ll defend myself against him, or how I’ll get him to behave that way. That’s education, evolution, all true, but those are all naturalistic explanations. I’m talking about the question of why it is correct, why it is binding. That is exactly the point. Now regarding the question whether Kant… what? How did Kant explain the source of the validity of morality in his categorical imperative? He said that the source is divine. He said it explicitly.

But you say that all the commandments are not based on morality, if I understood correctly, but on divine command, and morality is something else. So what is that morality you’re talking about that has divine validity?

No, it is by virtue of the divine command—the command to be moral.

But all the… there is no command to be moral. There are commands in the Torah to do this and that, to act this way or not act that way.

There is a command, of course there is. It just doesn’t belong to Jewish law. It is a different command. “And you shall do what is upright and good” appears in the Torah. It is not counted among the commandments. And what is “upright and good”? Each person decides according to what he thinks is moral.

Each person decides, each person understands. So basically there is no specific divine command about a certain morality.

There is! There is a command about the correct morality.

What is the correct morality?

What you and I understand. There may be an argument between us—fine. In science too there are sometimes arguments. In Jewish law there are arguments.

So in the end it’s individual, and each person is his own god.

No, it’s not individual. It is objectively binding on all of us in the same way. It’s just that some people may be mistaken, and therefore there are arguments.

Wait, so who determines what morality is? What—the Sanhedrin? The…

Does the Sanhedrin determine the laws of physics? No—reality. Everyone understands what is moral and what is immoral.

So in the end each person behaves according to his own opinion.

And in Jewish law it isn’t like that? Everyone behaves according to his own opinion of what Jewish law says? Fine, what can you do? But we are human beings. You can’t…

No. There are clear rules in Jewish law to put on tefillin, so there is a certain dispute concerning some detail of the law, but the law is clear.

The disputes in Jewish law are much broader and bigger than the disputes in morality—news flash for you—much broader. Despite all the attempts to determine Jewish law clearly, there are far more disputes that touch the most basic roots of Jewish law. In morality, the arguments are on the margins. And for some reason, in morality everyone is terribly bothered by its relativity and how there can be no commandments, while in Jewish law no one is bothered by this. That is not true. Morality is objective far more than Jewish law. Meaning, morality…

The divine morality is not eternal.

There is no such thing as divine morality. There is morality.

Okay, so the morality that is given by the Torah?

Not the Torah—the will of God. It does not have to be specifically the Torah. The will of God. Even someone who does not believe in the Torah—if he believes in God—can understand that God expects him to be moral. Fine, that is also legitimate.

So he is born with a natural tendency toward morality?

Morality is not a tendency. A tendency means that it is only some internal structure of mine. No, he is born with eyes; with those eyes he sees the moral command. Conscience is a kind of eyes. Just as with my eyes I see that there is a wall here, with conscience I see that the moral command says such-and-such. That’s what the Germans saw—the moral command that they decided was correct with their intellectual eyes.

What do you mean the Germans? The Nazis?

Yes. It may be that if that’s what they decided, then they were coerced—mistaken and coerced. And if they did it out of wickedness, then they were wicked. Yes, it depends.

Okay, fine. Rabbi, Rabbi, in Kant’s other formulations of the categorical imperative, no? Someone could tell you, look, the source of the validity of the obligation is the obligation itself—my obligation to the other human being. There is no God; my obligation to the other person as a rational being who has free will.

Again, he obligates me. Again, he obligates me. Because he has free will? Fine, he has free will, but why does that obligate? Why?

So that’s like his god. It’s like the God we talk about. He turns God into human beings.

Again I say: no, that doesn’t hold water. After all, he really does have such a formulation. I ask: who obligates me? I don’t want to behave that way. What’s wrong with me? Explain to me what is not good about me.

My obligation to the other person.

That’s your obligation to other people, but not mine. I am not obligated.

I agree with that, but apparently Kant formulates the categorical imperative that way in another formulation.

He formulates it that way—that’s a mistake, and I also explained this on Motzaei Rishon. Kant brings an argument for the existence of God from morality. It’s just not an argument that appears in the Critique of Pure Reason or in the Groundwork… Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. It appears somewhere else, and people claim there are contradictions—heteronomous morality and autonomous morality—and I think they are mistaken. Kant speaks about morality in the sense of what is good and what is bad; for that you don’t need God. But for good and evil to be binding—for that you need God. That is exactly the distinction I made here today. But you can see that in…

I agree with the rabbi. I’ve just heard many people say that Kant is really an atheist, and I also don’t understand that.

I’ve heard many people say that the earth is flat. Fine, okay. So they’re wrong. But it doesn’t matter either, and even if Kant said that, then he said it and he was wrong. Fine, I don’t… what do I care what Kant said? That’s not… I’m using him right now. Okay, friends. We’re heading into the break period here. I’ve basically finished the argument from morality, you could say. So in Elul, when we begin in Elul—you’ll get a notice—then we’ll move to the last stage of this framework, and that is the religious stage. Up to this point I’ve spoken about God only in the philosophical sense. Now the question is how one moves from that to religious obligation—that is the final stage. Okay, comments, questions if there are any.

When do we come back in Elul?

You’ll get a notice. I don’t know—some first or second Friday of Elul.

Okay. May I ask something, please?

Yes.

You keep returning to the question, okay, you think כך, but why does that obligate me? What it seems to me is that implicitly you’re assuming that the only thing that can obligate me is God.

Well then let me ask you: what besides God can obligate me? Nothing.

So by asking why it obligates me, you’re basically already determining that there is God, because otherwise there is no…

No. If you tell me there is some other factor that can obligate you, then I won’t agree with you, but I understand that according to your view you are being consistent. But there has to be some authoritative factor such that what it says obligates you. I call that factor God. Understand—it’s only a name. It’s not the God who descended at Sinai or created the world. For me, the obligating factor is what is called God. That is a definition. But there has to be such a factor.

Rabbi, what if I decide that I am God? I, Nietzsche, and I think that if there were a God, then it ought to be me. I decide that I am God and I give validity to myself, and I accuse everyone who does not accept the norms I determined. What could you say to him?

I can’t say anything except institutionalize you. There are people who think they’re Napoleon. What one does with them—you don’t convince them that they’re not… you institutionalize them. After all… according to the naturalistic fallacy, no value has a rational justification. Rather, it’s my decision. So I decided also about the moral norms, and who obligates them? So I say, now the person comes and says I am Napoleon. Fine, what do you do? How do you explain to him that he is not Napoleon? A person thinks that Jewish nationalism in the Land of Israel, waving the Israeli flag on the Temple Mount, is an obligation, and one must fight and devote human lives to it. So do you think he should be institutionalized because he decided that this is his supreme value?

No, because that is something that is overall reasonable, at least according to his own view. One can agree or disagree, but I understand that it is a coherent view. But someone who declares himself to be God—let me not put it that way. No, I’m not declaring myself to be the God who created the world. I’m only declaring myself to be one who determines norms.

That’s the same thing as Napoleon. Worse, actually. For a person to create the world is easier than for a person to establish a moral system that will be valid in my eyes.

But that’s what Nietzsche claimed. That all the power to which a person should aspire is that he can establish norms and determine values. So what can you answer Nietzsche?

We know where that led. True. I agree with the rabbi in principle about everything; I’m only asking this as a question to myself—what do I answer? Language can tolerate anything. You can say whatever nonsense you want. What can I do? There are all kinds of people who say all kinds of nonsense. By the way, I wouldn’t actually institutionalize such a person. There are many such people walking around among us, because they are not harmful. But on the theoretical level, they should be institutionalized. A person who thinks there is valid morality and does not believe in God is, in my eyes, someone who requires institutionalization. I won’t do it because, okay, it’s an erroneous conception, apparently erroneous. He harms no one, and that’s perfectly fine, he’s a normative person, everything’s fine. He is philosophically mistaken. But on the theoretical level, he is someone who should be institutionalized.

But why can’t you also answer that even if you think you determined it, in fact since you act—or we’re talking about things you act against—and you pay prices for them, they do not correspond to your naturalistic interests, let’s say according to evolution and nature, the laws of nature—so God is within you?

Okay. So God is within you, okay. The toad living here in the puddle next to me is the one that determines what morality is and what it isn’t. And that obligates me. Fine, I can say that too. Or the octopus from Munich that determines who will win the World Cup, yes, in soccer. Fine, you can say many things. In my eyes it’s the same thing. To say that what I say is binding—not that what I say I will do, that’s not a problem—but that what I say is binding like an authoritative factor of God, that’s the same thing as saying that the toad next to me obligates. It’s the same thing. That is not a sane person.

But why does it bother you to say that the image of God within me, the soul within me which is a portion of God above, determines it? So when you say it’s you?

The concept “image of God” is a loaded concept, and not for nothing do people use it, by the way. Why do all the atheists use the term “image of God” when they come to explain human dignity? Because they understand that man cannot be the basis. In their subconscious, they understand this. So they say “image of God.” Then they’ll explain to you: no, no, it’s a metaphor, metaphor. Metaphor, shm-etaphor—they know exactly. Deep in their hearts they know very well that it’s not a metaphor. They are not conscious of it. People are not always conscious of their philosophy.

If we want more or less to summarize what we’ve said up to now, it’s that there is some factor of which we have no idea what it is, that exists outside our understanding, and we…

I’ll make that summary at the beginning of the next class. Before I approach the religious stage, I’ll summarize what we’ve reached up to this point. Your summary is a bit too thin, but I’ll make a summary a bit more… a bit more faithful to the details we went through, and you’ll see that it’s not quite as thin as you present it. Fine, we’ve learned quite a bit about it. This is the last minute—what, am I going to open a whole new topic now? But we’ll see. Okay. Okay, so goodbye, all the best. Thank you very much, Sabbath peace. Have an easy fast.