Faith – Lesson 43

Table of Contents

• Where this fits in the sequence of proofs for God’s existence and the move to religious obligation
• The two phenomena: “Obviously this is binding” versus “So what?”
• The is-ought gap and the naturalistic fallacy as the basis of the helplessness
• Mechanisms of coercion, interests, and reward and punishment are not a basis for normativity
• The social contract and legal solutions as value assumptions that do not solve the question
• Ethical facts and ethical realism as a solution to moral obligation
• A religious parallel: “divine command” as a loaded fact that obligates
• God as judge: authority and obligation as built into the concept
• The goal going forward: to strengthen those who already perceive obligation, not to persuade the “blind”
• A student’s critique of “moral facts” and of the definition of God, and the response
• Morality, Jewish law, and conflicts between values
• Conscience as an objective sense and moral/religious blindness

Summary

General Overview

The speaker places this lecture at the end of a line of thought that began with philosophical proofs for God’s existence and moved on to the question of how one gets from deism to theism, and now focuses on the final question: even if God exists, revealed Himself at Sinai, and gave the Torah, why is that binding? He points to two complementary phenomena: for most people it is intuitively obvious that religious obligation follows from this, but when someone accepts the facts and still asks, “So what?”, confusion and helplessness arise. He traces this to David Hume’s is-ought problem and the naturalistic fallacy, and argues that the solution lies in recognizing ethical facts and in drawing an analogy to religious facts, where the “binding” element is built into the concept itself. He defines someone who does not grasp this as “blind” to the moral or religious sphere, and formulates a limited goal: not to “open the eyes of the blind,” but to strengthen those who already feel the obligation so that they will not dismiss it as irrational.

Where this fits in the sequence of proofs for God’s existence and the move to religious obligation

The speaker says that up to this point they have discussed proofs for God’s existence: a conceptual-ontological proof, a cosmological proof, and a physico-theological proof from the existence of the world and its complexity, as well as “teleological” proofs in the sense of reasoning backward, such as “without God there is no morality” and “without God there is no trust in sense perception and thought.” He presents the previous final transition as the question of how one moves from philosophical belief in God’s existence to religious faith and obligation, and how each argument “proves” a different kind of object, such as the creator of the world, the perfect being, or the source of morality’s validity. The current stage, he says, is a different question: even if God revealed Himself at Sinai and gave the Torah to the Jews, why does that obligate observance of the commandments?

The two phenomena: “Obviously this is binding” versus “So what?”

The speaker describes how outreach seminars tend to stop after proving God’s existence and the giving of the Torah, out of a sense that religious obligation follows immediately from there. He argues that most people, even if they do not immediately observe all 613 commandments, will understand that this is binding. On the other hand, he describes the figure of the “overly clever guy” or a secular friend who is willing to accept that there is a God and that He gave the Torah, but asks, “So what?” and even declares that he has severed diplomatic relations with God, and therefore does not see any obligation in it. The speaker says the question is surprising because it undermines what seems self-evident, and embarrassing because it is hard to see how one could answer it at all.

The is-ought gap and the naturalistic fallacy as the basis of the helplessness

The speaker explains David Hume’s is-ought problem: you cannot derive norms—what ought to be done—from facts—what is—because these are two categories with no natural bridge between them. He illustrates that in order to infer “murder is forbidden” from the fact that “murder causes suffering,” you have to add a bridging principle such as “causing suffering is forbidden,” and he emphasizes that adding such a principle is necessary for the argument to be valid. He expands that the same problem applies to aesthetics as well—“it has many colors, therefore it is beautiful”—and also to attempts to ground morality in conscience, psychological tendencies, or evolution, because all of these are facts that by themselves do not create obligation. The speaker sharpens the point by saying that the question “why obey the law?” is not solved by a legal clause commanding obedience, because one can still ask of that clause too, “why obey it?” So the search for a foundation of normative obligation gets stuck.

Mechanisms of coercion, interests, and reward and punishment are not a basis for normativity

The speaker distinguishes between explanations of why people actually obey and the question of why they should obey. He describes a move to a force-based position of coercion, punishment, fines, and education as ways to produce behavior, but not as a basis that justifies “duty.” He states that the World to Come, heaven, and hell are also not a basis for religious obligation, because at most they are incentives that explain why it is worthwhile to act, not why it is proper to act. He presents the claim that “people sin, therefore there is no obligation” as an is-ought type of mistake, because the fact that people sin does not cancel a norm; it only points to its violation.

The social contract and legal solutions as value assumptions that do not solve the question

David Shoshana asks whether obligation can be based on a social source, and the speaker identifies this as Rousseau’s and Hobbes’s social contract thesis and rejects it. He argues that even if there is a contract, one can still ask what obligates us to obey it, and that “agreements should be kept” is itself a moral principle that requires justification. The speaker says that in law people propose bases such as the social contract, gratitude, cooperation, and just institutions, but all of them rest on a basic value; someone who accepts that value will manage, but with someone who does not accept it, there is no decisive claim. He formulates the tangle this way: the law can be justified by morality, but morality cannot be justified by means of yet another moral principle.

Ethical facts and ethical realism as a solution to moral obligation

The speaker recalls a previous conclusion of his from the discussion of morality, namely that the only way to ground moral obligation is on the basis of “ethical facts” within ethical realism. He distinguishes between neutral, “colorless” facts and ethical, “loaded” facts that contain within them the “ought” for one who understands them. He brings David Enoch’s “spinach test” to distinguish between areas of subjective taste and areas of objective truth such as physics, and applies this to morality through examples like slavery and attitudes toward women, in order to argue that moral judgment is perceived as truth that does not depend on taste. He concludes that someone who says, “I understand that murder is immoral, but why not murder?” is displaying a conceptual misunderstanding, because the meaning of “immoral” already includes “not proper.”

A religious parallel: “divine command” as a loaded fact that obligates

The speaker argues that the religious difficulty parallels the moral one: if a person accepts that there is a God and that there is a command, and still asks “why obey?”, he is revealing blindness to the religious sphere. He says that a divine command is not merely a neutral historical fact about an event at Sinai, but a loaded religious fact in which the duty to obey is built into the concept of God. He compares this to the case of a psychopath who knows moral descriptions but lacks the obligating connotation, and illustrates the gap in understanding with “Mary’s room,” about someone who knows all the optics but does not know what red looks like, and with the story of John Nash, who intellectually understands that the figures do not exist but still experiences them. He formulates the helplessness in the face of the one who asks “So what?” as similar to the inability to explain to a blind person what the color red is.

God as judge: authority and obligation as built into the concept

The speaker argues that in the Bible, “God” also functions as a term for judges, and that the Talmud at the beginning of tractate Sanhedrin derives three judges from occurrences of the word “God” in the passage, and therefore “God” is one whose words are to be obeyed. He explains that a judge is binding even if he errs, because the obligation stems from his authority, and therefore someone who accepts that “there is a God and He commanded” but asks “why obey?” is using the concept of God in an external and alienated way.

The goal going forward: to strengthen those who already perceive obligation, not to persuade the “blind”

The speaker says that the goal of this whole move is not to open the eyes of the blind, but to keep the eyes of those who are not blind open, so that they do not throw away their sense of religious obligation as irrational. He presents the continuation of the discussion as intended for people who identify within themselves the understanding that a divine command is binding, but who weaken in the face of the critique based on the naturalistic fallacy. He promises to address later the question of how the connection between the creation of the world or God’s attributes relates to obligation, and concludes the lecture by saying that the framework has now been laid out.

A student’s critique of “moral facts” and of the definition of God, and the response

A questioner argues that the presentation of “moral facts” is a semantic fiction and that the entire move is existentialist, and he raises a scenario of a sadistic and evil God in order to ask why one should observe His commandments. The speaker replies that he discussed this at length in the fourth talk on the proof from morality, and distinguishes between a pragmatist argument that invents God in order to obtain morality and a theological argument that starts from the understanding that morality has validity and infers God from that. He compares this to trusting one’s eyesight: the knowledge that there is a door does not come from a desire to feel safe but from direct understanding, and a blind person will call that an “invention,” but there is no way to convey it to him. The speaker argues that even if one were to reach the conclusion that God is evil, still, “if He is God there is an obligation to obey”; it is only that other considerations may override that and lead to resistance. He says that the question of the connection between God, creation, and obligation will be discussed later.

Morality, Jewish law, and conflicts between values

The questioner links “Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me” to the claim that there is no morality without faith, and raises examples such as slaves, “then you shall cut off her hand,” sacrifices, and actions that appear anti-moral. The speaker agrees that moral behavior exists among atheists as well, but argues that their moral theory is not coherent without God on the level of philosophical validity. He argues that Jewish law is not a “super-morality” and does not operate on the moral plane, but rather expresses religious values that may clash with moral values, and that there are conflicts in which one must decide between values and Jewish law does not always prevail. He rejects the questioner’s attempt to translate every religious value into some all-inclusive moral improvement, and emphasizes that there are values that are not moral values, and that religious “repair” is not necessarily measured by what benefits humanity.

Conscience as an objective sense and moral/religious blindness

At the end he is asked whether the tool for grasping ethical facts is intuition, and the speaker replies that it is conscience, which is a “sensory faculty” that identifies moral right and wrong much as pain identifies a wound. He argues that conscience is not just a mental structure but the perception of an objective fact, similar to the objectivity of vision, and someone who does not feel this is “blind.” He confirms that the parallel to the religious sphere arises almost by itself, and ends the session with “Shabbat shalom.”

Okay, let’s begin. What I want to do is locate where we are within the overall course of the discussion. Up to this point we’ve been dealing with arguments or proofs for the existence of God. We talked about a conceptual proof, the ontological argument; we talked about a cosmological proof, a physico-theological one—that is, arguments from the existence of the world or the complexity of the world. We also talked about proofs in the so-called teleological sense, meaning arguments that go backward: without God there is no morality, so if I believe in the validity of morality then there is God; or without God there is no way to trust my sensory and cognitive system, and therefore if I do trust it the conclusion is that there is God. So these are the kinds of arguments that seem at first glance to be pragmatic arguments, but really they are not.

Then I moved to the Jewish God, or the religious God, or the Jewish one. How do we move from philosophical belief in the existence of God, in its various forms, to faith and religious commitment? We said that every argument proves the existence of a different kind of object: the creator of the world, the perfect being, the source of the validity of morality, and so on. How do you get from that to faith and religious obligation, from deism to theism? That’s basically the question I’ve been dealing with in the last few meetings.

And now I want to move to the final part, which is really this question: even if He exists, and even if He revealed Himself at Mount Sinai and gave the Jewish Torah to us Jews, why is that binding? Now here I want to give some kind of introduction in order to sharpen the sting of the issue, because many people don’t notice it. There are two phenomena here that seem contradictory, but when you think about them again they really are not contradictory at all—they are two sides of the same coin.

On the one hand, think about seminars, you know, run by people who bring others to repentance, or people who try to convert others to religious commitment. Usually they try to prove that there is God and that He gave the Torah, and they stop there. Meaning, they prove that there is God and that He gave the Torah, and that’s it. And the feeling, both on their part and on the part of the audience, is that if they succeed in proving this, then tomorrow morning we’ll all be wearing kippot and tzitzit, and after Amnon Yitzhak we go straight to the study hall. And if they don’t succeed in proving it, then of course we continue partying. So the feeling is that it is enough to prove that God exists, and created the world—or exists, no matter in what sense—and gave the Torah, in order to derive religious obligation from that. Nothing further is needed.

Now for many people that really is the case. I think most people—an overwhelming majority of people—once you prove to them that there is God and that He gave the Torah, understand that there is religious obligation. That doesn’t mean that tomorrow morning they will start observing all 613 Torah commandments and rabbinic commandments and so on, but it does mean they will understand that it is binding. A human being is complex: even if something is binding for him, that still doesn’t mean he immediately does it. But they will reach the conclusion that this thing is binding. In that sense, I think very many people, most people, really do agree with that assumption.

On the other hand, there’s always some extra-clever fellow who gets up and says: okay, there is God and He gave the Torah, wonderful—so what? Why does that obligate me? Why should I care? So He gave the Torah—so what? And I don’t want to do it. Why? Why do I have to observe it?

Now this question, when people hear it, is often very surprising. It’s surprising because even to me as the speaker it is obvious that if I proved there is God and that He gave the Torah, then I’ve finished the job. Meaning, then obviously everyone should come after me to the study hall—“draw him after you to the study hall.” And then suddenly someone says: no, no, I accept it, there is God, He gave the Torah, all good—so what? I’m still going to the beach on Sabbath morning, everything is excellent, God gave the Torah, fine, good for Him. Why, why does that obligate me?

So that question is very surprising. I have a good friend who always used to tell me—he’s secular—he used to say: look, maybe there is a God, maybe there isn’t, I have no position on that. But even if there is, I have severed diplomatic relations with Him. Meaning, I have no interest in serving Him, probably in light of the way His world is run. So there is a statement here that belief in the existence of God, and even revelation at Sinai, still isn’t enough to establish obligation toward Him.

Now why is this question so surprising? Two reasons, and again they are connected. On the one hand, it’s surprising because somehow the standing assumption is always that it’s enough to prove there is God and that He gave the Torah at Sinai, and then we’re done. Suddenly someone says: wait, wait, wait—I accept everything you said, but not the conclusion. The conclusion does not follow from those premises. So it’s surprising because I didn’t think of that at first glance. And I say again: most people—the speakers, the persuaders, and the persuaded—are not aware of this issue.

On the other hand, once we do become aware of it, it creates enormous helplessness. Because proving that there is God and that He gave the Torah—I can at least think of paths one might take. There will be arguments, maybe I’ll succeed, maybe I won’t, doesn’t matter—but I understand how the work is supposed to be done. But if the question is: there is God and He gave the Torah, and the question still remains why I should do it—here, how exactly am I supposed to deal with such a question? It’s the kind of thing where I can’t even think of a way to answer.

So it’s embarrassing in two senses. It’s embarrassing because it’s unexpected, but even though it’s unexpected, it’s a very hard question that seemingly cannot be answered. And therefore very often when people hear a remark of this sort, it throws them into a kind of momentary shock—so what exactly have we done here? Whoever raised that remark has basically turned the whole picture upside down.

The root of this—and it’s very important to me that we keep this in mind, because this is not only the framework of the discussion, it will also be the end point of the discussion. I’m going to want to rely precisely on these two features: on the one hand, it seems self-evident to people that if there is God and He gave the Torah, then of course one must obey. That feeling that you don’t need another argument, or to be persuaded any further—if I have reached the conclusion that there is God and He gave the Torah, then of course it’s binding. That is the feeling on one side, for most people. And on the other hand, whoever doesn’t accept that, whoever challenges it—there is no way to answer him. It throws you into helplessness. And I think, again, that these are two sides of the same coin, and they are very important for the discussion, so I want us to remember those two features.

Now I want to get into the details of the discussion. What exactly produces this helplessness? This inability to answer such a question? That brings us back to what I already mentioned: David Hume’s is-ought problem, or what some call the naturalistic fallacy, although it’s not exactly the same thing—Moore called a similar problem the naturalistic fallacy.

What does that mean? A naturalistic fallacy means trying to base an “ought” on an “is.” Meaning, you make a claim about what should be done—morally, religiously, whatever—and the basis you offer for it is facts. In other words: there are facts, and therefore one should do such-and-such. David Hume argues that an argument of this kind fails by virtue of its naturalistic structure itself. Without even getting into the details—there is no need to examine the premises, the conclusion, and the connection between them—if the premises are facts and the conclusion is a norm, what ought to be done, then the argument fails. The argument is void. It simply cannot be correct. There is no need to inspect its particulars.

Why? Because facts—the “is”—and “ought” are two categories between which there is and can be no connection. The distance between them is infinite. You cannot move from is to ought.

For example, suppose I say: I have many books here on the shelf, and therefore one should be a moral person. Okay? Here it is obvious to us that there is no connection between the premises and the conclusion. What does having many books here have to do with being moral?

David Hume says that in essence this argument too is flawed: “God revealed Himself at Sinai” is a historical fact. You can accept it or not accept it, but if we assume for the moment that the conclusion is true, then it is a historical fact. A fact cannot bring me to a norm. An is cannot lead me to an ought.

We talked about this in the moral context. I said there that you cannot base the prohibition on murder on the fact that murder causes suffering. Murder causes suffering—the suffering of the family; the person himself can be killed without suffering—but let’s say it’s because it causes suffering. So I say: even if we assume that is true, it is still a fact. Murder causes suffering—that is a fact. The question is how one can derive from that the prohibition against murder. It doesn’t follow from it. You have to add another premise: that causing suffering is forbidden.

What is the character of that premise? That premise can be called a bridge principle. It bridges the facts, the is, and the ought. So I say: if something causes suffering, then it is forbidden. Now the argument is okay. Murder causes suffering—that’s the first premise, a factual premise. Second premise: if something causes suffering, then it is forbidden. Conclusion: murder is forbidden. That is a valid argument. But for the argument to be valid, you must insert something into the premises besides facts—something that transfers me from facts to norms.

The same thing is true with aesthetics or aesthetic value. Suppose I say: this picture has many colors in it, it is very colorful, and therefore it is beautiful. That argument is void. It’s naturalistic. The fact that the picture is very colorful is a fact. The claim that it is beautiful is a judgment—an aesthetic judgment in this case, not an ethical or religious one, but still a judgment. And a judgment cannot be derived from facts. I need to add another bridge premise saying that what is colorful, what has many colors, is beautiful. If I add that, then I can derive the conclusion that this picture is beautiful.

So even in contexts where the connection between facts and norms seems obvious to us, one always has to know: you cannot derive norms from facts. Not only in places where it is glaringly obvious that there is no connection between the fact and the norm—like with the books and the duty to be moral—but even where it intuitively seems to us that there is a connection, that still is not enough to build an argument.

Likewise, one cannot say that one should behave morally because we have a moral feeling or conscience within us. The fact that we have a moral feeling or conscience is a fact. The statement that one ought to behave morally is a norm. You cannot derive a norm from a fact—even from a psychological fact. A psychological fact cannot establish a norm. This is a very common mistake.

Therefore the same applies to evolution. We talked about all of this when I discussed the argument from morality. People say that evolution shows us that cooperation or altruism has survival value, and therefore the tendency to behave altruistically was implanted in us because it is useful for survival. Let’s say that’s true for the sake of discussion—it sounds fairly plausible. Is that enough to establish a moral duty? Obviously not. Because evolution at most offers an explanation for how the altruistic tendency arose within us. But an altruistic tendency is a psychological fact. And if you explain it in one way or another, then you have explained the psychological fact. But how do you move from the psychological fact to the norm? I also have a tendency to speak slanderously. Does that mean there is an obligation to speak slander? Just because I have a tendency to do something, is that automatically binding? Obviously not. So why should the altruistic tendency be binding? There is no choice but to say: it is binding because it is good. Ah—so it’s not because it is implanted in me, but because it is good. Meaning, the fact that it is implanted in me is a fact, a psychological fact. A fact cannot establish a norm.

Therefore there is a problem when we come to ground a norm or a normative system—morality, Jewish law, secular law, it doesn’t matter, the ethics code of some professional guild—how exactly can we ground such a thing? You cannot ground it on facts: not psychological facts, not historical facts, not any other kind of fact. Beyond facts, I need another bridge principle in order to prove or reach the ought-conclusion, the conclusion of obligation or norm.

The problem is that the bridge principle itself now needs grounding. Who says it is true? Who says that everything colorful is beautiful? Or who says that if God revealed Himself at Sinai then that obligates me and I have to obey? That is really the question from which I began. So what lies behind the two phenomena I described at the beginning is the naturalistic fallacy. The fact that at first it seems self-evident to us that if God exists and revealed Himself at Sinai then one must keep His commandments—that is the naturalistic fallacy. It seems obvious, but it isn’t; it is a failure. And the helplessness before the question that says: wait, wait, wait, who says so? Fine, He revealed Himself at Sinai—so what? Why do I have to obey? Suddenly I am helpless. Why? Because how can I answer such a question? I know how to bring evidence for facts. I know how to offer philosophical arguments of one kind or another that prove that there is God, that perhaps He also revealed Himself at Sinai, and all things of that kind. At least I understand what is required of me. But assuming I have finished all that, how do I move from facts to norms, to obligation? There is no way to answer that.

Why is there no way? Let’s think about how one might ground norms. He says: facts alone are not enough, right? You need the bridge principle. Then I ask: okay, how do we ground the bridge principle? I can always add it ad hoc, but that’s uninteresting. The question is how I persuade a person of this bridge principle itself. And here I am in a tangle, because bringing facts won’t help—that’s the naturalistic fallacy. Not through facts—so what shall I bring? Some philosophical argument showing that there is such an obligation? Obviously the premises of that philosophical argument contain that obligation implicitly within them, because otherwise no proof could emerge. We talked about the emptiness of the analytic: if I logically prove a conclusion from premises, then clearly the conclusion is present in some way within the premises. And therefore someone who does not accept that conclusion—there is simply no way to persuade him. Facts won’t help, and arguments always use some premises that implicitly assume that very conclusion; and if he doesn’t accept it, he won’t accept the premises. So there is no way forward. There is no way to handle this kind of difficulty.

Think, for example, about someone who asks himself why obey the law. There is extensive literature on this in jurisprudence: what can be the basis for demanding that a person obey the law? I am not talking about the question why a person does obey the law—that is a psychological question and it isn’t interesting. I’m talking about why a person should obey the law. It may be that he obeys the law without reaching the conclusion that he should do so; maybe somehow it’s ingrained in him one way or another. That isn’t interesting. Fine, that’s human psychology, the way he’s built. I’m not asking why he obeys the law but why he ought to obey the law. Exactly as with morality. Evolution explains why I behave morally; it does not explain why I should behave morally, because evolution is facts.

If someone comes and says: listen friends, I too am a product of evolution, but I don’t feel like behaving morally, I just don’t feel like it—what do I answer him? “But you are a product of evolution.” He says: right, so what? Meaning, evolution can explain why I behave morally, because it was imprinted in me by evolutionary processes, but it does not explain why I should behave that way. I simply do it because that’s how I’m built. But morality is based on the idea that one should act this way—not on the fact that I happen to act this way like a sheep. We talked about Amnon Yitzhak’s sheep, right? In other words, the indication of this, the trigger that sharpens it, is: what happens if someone doesn’t do it? Do I have a claim against him? Do I have an accusation? What is the accusation? Fine, evolutionarily he is built in such a way that he does not find within himself the tendency to behave morally; or even if he does, those tendencies don’t interest him—they are, from his point of view, like the tendency to speak slanderously—and therefore he does not behave morally. What is the claim against him? What exactly can I argue against him or prove to him that he is not okay? What route is open to me?

The same thing with obeying the law. When I ask myself why obey the law, one has to understand that the answer cannot be a clause in the law book, right? Suppose there is a clause in the law book saying that every citizen must obey the law. That obviously cannot be the answer, because I will ask myself why obey that clause itself. It too is a law, it too is a clause in the law book. It has to be something outside the law book. And if it is something outside the law book, then who exactly can obligate me to do it? That is not at all clear to me.

The issue is simply practical. We know that in order to maintain a decent society that runs as we want and continues its existence, there is a system of morality and laws. Now, either I came with that mentally and emotionally, or I receive education, or they force me. But I didn’t say you have to change. Someone says it doesn’t suit him, he says “I don’t want to.” Fine, so what? But there’s a surrounding factor that wants to push him into line, and if not, you’ll get hit. That’s all.

You are presenting the atheist claim. You are basically saying there is no obligation. That’s it. Correct. Rather, there are ways to force someone to act despite the fact that in principle, from his perspective, he is not obligated. Fine, that’s a nice argument. I don’t agree with it. And whoever doesn’t agree with it asks himself: okay, what can be the basis for obligation? You say there cannot be one, and therefore there is no obligation. Fine. But we know in reality that there are perfectly righteous people, as we see them externally, who do all kinds of ugly things, and there are others who do not. Meaning, it’s not because they took upon themselves the yoke of Torah and commandments that suddenly they behave nicely. That proves nothing. Each person according to his psychic structure plus education plus coercion.

Your point falls into the naturalistic fallacy. The fact that what you are showing me is simply that there are people who sin, therefore obviously there is no obligation—that is a mistake. There are people who sin—that is a fact. And the claim that there is no obligation is a normative claim. A normative claim is not derived from facts. The fact that people sin does not mean there is no obligation. It means they are not acting in accordance with the obligation. Those are two entirely different things. You can say, independently of the fact that people sin, that in your view there are no obligations in the world, you don’t believe in such a concept. Fine, that is a legitimate position. But I am saying: whoever does think there is normative obligation—we talked about all this when we talked about morality—even someone who says there is no morality but I can force people to behave morally because I have an interest in it, that is not morality. It is only behavior that looks moral, appears to be moral. It is not morality.

Fine, you can say: I do not accept the existence of morality. There are such positions. I am talking about someone who does accept normative obligation, and I ask myself what can be the basis of that obligation.

That is why, for example, I think that the basis for religious obligation cannot be that there is an afterlife, heaven, and hell. The fact that I will get punished if I don’t do something, or receive reward if I do it—that may cause me to do it, just as evolution may cause me to behave morally. But that is not a sufficient basis for saying that I must do it. “Must do it” means that this is the proper way to behave. And the conventional view is that the fact that I am punished if I don’t do it, or rewarded if I do it, is a derivative of the fact that this is how one ought to behave, and not the other way around—not that one ought to behave this way because otherwise one gets punished. What is the connection? The fact that one gets punished is just that one gets punished, so I have cost-benefit considerations making it not worthwhile to do otherwise. But where does the claim that this is how one ought to behave come from?

So those justifications—what you said here is actually the best illustration of the picture I described. You are basically saying that since I have no basis to validate moral, religious, or legal obligation, I move to coercive mechanisms. Meaning, I move to mechanisms of compulsion: I will simply punish you if you don’t do it. We begin with education, or rather it starts with character; if that’s not enough, then education; and if not, then coercion. Education isn’t interesting. Education is only the means by which to get a person to behave in a certain way. I am asking: what is the basis for why I ought to behave in such a way? Not what will cause me to behave that way. Evolution causes me to behave, education causes me to behave, but all those are facts about how I behave. I am asking why one should behave that way. For that there cannot be an explanation in terms of education, evolution, or anything of that sort.

So one can say that because there is no explanation, indeed one need not. Fine, and then we moved to the plane of force. No, we ask why one should, because we think the world will run best that way; it will be more pleasant for everyone, better for everyone.

You think so. I don’t think so. The fact that the world will be more pleasant is a fact. From the fact that the world will be more pleasant, no obligation follows. Again, that is the is-ought fallacy; that is exactly what I’m talking about. Suppose I even grant that it will be more pleasant if everyone is moral. So what? I don’t want the world to be pleasant. Do you have some problem with my behavior? What is the problem? Can you explain to me what is wrong with what I think? I don’t want such a world.

Because if you—because that behavior harms me, so I try to prevent it.

No problem. Then you are explaining to me why you are defending yourself; you are not explaining to me why I should behave that way. Again, we keep returning to the same fallacy. I am not talking about the question why I behave this way, what psychologically or genetically or evolutionarily causes me to behave this way. That is a psychological question, a factual question. I am not talking about the question why you have an interest in seeing that I behave this way. That too is an interest-based question about you. I am talking about the question why I should behave this way. That is a normative question.

At the same time, I feel that I want, like everyone else, for things to be good. If you feel that you want things to be good, that is a fact, and from a fact one cannot derive a norm. You feel it; I also feel that I want to speak slanderously. So now am I allowed to speak slander? Is there value in speaking slander? No. The fact that I feel something grounds nothing. So I feel it—so what? That’s how I’m built. Someone else is built differently. Do you have a problem with what he does? He is built differently from you—what do you want from him? Each person according to how he is built. Is it his fault how he is built?

No. So if how I am built is the basis of moral behavior, then this is not moral behavior; it is merely a kind of psychology.

But Maimonides said that if someone is built with a bad character, he should go to the opposite extreme and work on himself—what?

But why should he work on himself? He doesn’t understand at all that he is bad. In his eyes, this is what is good. It’s because he sees that this causes friction with the rest of the world. So what? If he sees that, then he has an interest in doing it, so he’ll make an interest-based calculation. I’m talking about the question why he is obligated. And this really exists. So indeed, such people—the underworld, so to speak—they really do what they do.

The underworld again has nothing to do with the issue. If you ask such a person, I assume that most human beings, unless they are psychopaths, would tell you: I know it is not okay to behave this way, but I have an interest, and therefore I do it anyway. He does not say it is fine to be a criminal; usually most people do not claim that, unless they are psychopaths. That is exactly the point. One must not confuse the facts—what exists in the world, what kinds of people there are, what people do—with the norms, what should be done. Okay?

David Shoshana is here, yes, David.

Yes, thank you. Hello, Rabbi. I wanted to ask whether one could simply claim that the source of obligation is social. Meaning, most human beings decided that things will go better for everyone if we behave morally, and therefore the obligation is not divine but purely social?

That is basically the social contract argument, of Rousseau and others, Hobbes. But I don’t accept it. I don’t accept it because even if there were—suppose there were such a social contract; of course there wasn’t, it’s a fiction—but suppose there were such a social contract: if I am not bound by it, what binds me? What is the claim against me? I don’t want to keep agreements. Keeping agreements is also a moral principle. Fine, but then you are asked to leave society and go up to a deserted island.

No, I want to remain in society, not on a deserted island, to enjoy all the kindnesses of society and thumb my nose at it. That’s what I want.

But society does not allow that; it simply does not agree. Society does not allow it, so I’ll do it secretly. What is wrong with that? I am asking what is wrong with it, not what will happen. This is exactly the point of laws and fines and prison.

Again you are going back to the question of what will force me to do it. I’m not asking that. I’m asking why it is wrong. Not what will force me to do it. If they impose a punishment or fines on me, then perhaps they will succeed in making me behave that way. But I’m asking why I should behave that way. Why morally should I, not why prudentially should I? What do you mean by “should”? “Should” means there is an obligation to do it. What authority determines that I should? That’s another question: what authority determines it? The Holy One, blessed be He, say, I don’t know exactly what. But the question is why should I? Why does that authority bind me?

So all these explanations are basically explanations that assume some sort of value, such as the duty to honor agreements, the social contract. But the duty to honor agreements is itself a value, and when I ask why it should be observed, again I find myself in the same problem. This reflects the point exactly. Facts cannot be the explanation; other values also cannot be the explanation, because I can also ask of them why I should be bound by them. So not facts, and only values can ground it—but with values it won’t work. Facts cannot ground it. So what can? How can one ground normative obligation? That is the fundamental question here.

That is why in the legal context, for example, the answers proposed are indeed things like social contract, gratitude, cooperation, just institutions—various theses of that sort—and they are all of course empty words. All they really do is point to some fundamental value that underlies the duty to obey the law. If I accept that fundamental value, no problem, then everything is fine. If I don’t accept it, then what is the claim against me?

Or, to formulate it differently: when one asks why obey the law, it can be explained on a moral basis, by a moral principle. Why? Because morality is usually conceived by us as something prior to the law. Morality is more fundamental. The law binds me only if I am a citizen in a certain community, in a certain state—then the law of that state binds me. Morality binds me simply by virtue of being human. So when one asks why obey the law, explanations can be given in terms of moral principles. But when I ask why one should obey morality, I am stuck. Because I cannot bring a moral principle to explain it, and what is there besides morality that would give me an ought, an obligation? How can one explain such a thing?

So there is here a kind of tangle that on the face of it seems to have no solution. As a result, indeed there are those who say: forget it, this whole business of obligation is a fiction; it doesn’t exist. It is really a subjective feeling, and all we have here are power struggles, as was suggested here earlier. Power struggles in the sense that the world wants to protect itself from wicked people, so it forces them not to behave the way they behave. Therefore, on the basis of self-interest—they don’t want to go to prison, don’t want to be punished, pay fines, whatever—so they behave this way; or they want to have good relations with their surroundings, so they behave the way their surroundings expect of them. But there really is no such thing as obligation—that is the claim.

The same would apply, say, with observing commandments or fulfilling the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. The parallel there is that since I am a citizen in the religious Jewish community, I need to observe what everyone around me expects me to observe. Why do I need to? Because otherwise they’ll give me forty lashes. Fine, but then that’s not “need to”; that’s a self-interested consideration. I ask: why are they giving me lashes? They give me lashes because I ought to comply—not I ought to comply because they give me lashes. And the question is: why ought I to?

So they tell me because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. But we saw earlier: “the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded” is a fact. The question is why that binds me. So there is a tangle here that seemingly has no way out. There is no way to answer it. So no wonder most people ignore this question. Right—He commanded, so what? Why does that bind me? And it is no wonder that when it comes up, everyone gets stuck; there is seemingly no answer. It’s some kind of ace that once pulled from the sleeve, the discussion is over.

Now I want to remind you of a conclusion we reached in the discussion about morality. Because I asked the same question there with regard to moral obligation: what is it based on? And my conclusion there was that the only way to ground moral obligation is on the basis of ethical facts.

What do I mean? When I talk about the naturalistic fallacy, what I am basically saying is that no fact whatsoever can be a sufficient basis for a norm. The fact that certain actions cause suffering to others, undermine the social fabric, or something of that kind—those are facts. From that one cannot derive that such actions are forbidden—that is a norm. Or that other actions must be done—that too is a norm. You cannot derive norms from facts. Why? Because facts are ethically neutral things. A fact is simply a fact; it is what it is. How to relate to the fact—whether it is good, bad, binding, not binding—that is the ethical question, not what the fact is. The fact in itself is neutral, colorless, it has no ethical significance. Ethical significance is given to that fact by us, and the question is how exactly we give it that significance.

My claim there in the moral context was that there is another kind of fact. These are called ethical facts. Ethical facts say that when I ask myself whether it is proper to murder, steal, harm another person, dishonor one’s parents, or something like that, the answer is: it is not proper. Why? Because there is a fact that it is not proper. That is a type of fact that exists in the world—I spoke about ethical realism—a fact that exists in the world, but this fact is not a neutral fact. It is a colored fact. It is a fact such that anyone who understands it understands that it is also saying something. It obligates me to do or not do something. It is a different type of fact.

I think I illustrated this with David Enoch’s spinach test. He says: imagine a child who says, “How good it is that I don’t like spinach, because if I liked spinach I would eat spinach, and spinach is yuck. So how good it is that I don’t like spinach.” Why is that ridiculous? Because if you liked spinach and ate it, there would be nothing wrong with that, because after all you would like it. What’s the problem? You are judging the situation in which you would like spinach through the lenses of your present self, who does not like spinach—but those are not the relevant lenses. If you liked spinach, you would eat it and there would be no problem. Spinach is yuck only because you don’t like it, but if you do like it then it isn’t yuck. No problem at all, right?

Now contrast that with another statement. Suppose someone says: how good it is that I live in the twenty-first century. I already know that Newtonian mechanics is not correct, and that we need relativity and quantum theory. If I had lived a hundred and fifty years ago, I would have lived in a Newtonian picture of the world, which is mistaken—incorrect physics. Is that funny in the same way as the spinach test? Obviously not. You can say that it matters to you to know the correct physics, or that it doesn’t matter to you, everyone according to his taste—but there is nothing funny at all about the statement.

Why? Because if I had lived a hundred and fifty years ago, relativity and quantum theory would still have been true; humanity just didn’t know them yet. So yes, we were living in error. Maybe it didn’t bother us, but clearly we were living in error. And if we know it now, then we are wiser people, we know things our predecessors did not know. Therefore in the context of physics there is nothing at all funny about that statement.

And now David Enoch asks: what would we say about a statement of the following kind? “How good it is that I didn’t live two hundred years ago, because two hundred years ago I would have owned black slaves and I would have thought slavery was okay, whereas today I understand that slavery is not okay. So how good it is that I live in a more corrected world in which I can act more morally.” Is that funny like the spinach case, or does it sound more like Newtonian physics?

It seems to me that most people would answer that it is not funny at all. It is not like spinach; it is more like Newtonian physics. Why? This is a test, a litmus test. The litmus test says this: if I say “how good it is that I didn’t live two hundred years ago when X existed, and now I live and it is better that I live now because now there is no X,” then if that is funny, it means X is subjective, and if it is not funny, it means X is objective. Right? That is the test. Physics is objective, so it is not funny. Spinach is subjective, so it is funny.

Now with morality, if I reach the conclusion that it is not funny—say, with the enslavement of black people, or the status of women, something more connected to our world: “How good it is that I didn’t live two hundred years ago, when women were not treated properly. Even today they are not always treated properly, but at least it’s better than it was”—is that funny like spinach? No, it is not funny like spinach. What does that mean? That giving proper treatment to women, or black people, or anyone else, is an objective claim. It is not a claim that depends on taste. But that means that just as physics is a fact, so too this is a fact. If it’s not my personal taste, then what is it? There is something external, objective here, that says this is right and the alternative is wrong, exactly as in physics.

So this test helps us discover our relation to moral principles. We suddenly discover that for us moral principles are facts; they are not a matter of subjective taste.

And therefore what I want to claim is that if someone comes and says: look, I understand that it is immoral to murder, but still explain to me why not murder—suppose someone came to you and asked that question. I understand that it is immoral to murder, but okay, it’s immoral, and I decide to do the immoral act. Do you have any explanation why I should not do it? Again—not psychologically. Don’t tell me it’s implanted in you and so on. I’m asking why it is not proper for me to do it. Do you have an explanation?

Someone who asks that question is simply displaying a lack of understanding. Why? Because if he understands that it is immoral to murder, the meaning of “it is immoral to murder” is that it is improper to do it. That is what “immoral” means. If you understand that it is immoral to murder, then the understanding of the concept “immoral” means it is improper to do so. That is what “it is immoral to murder” means. So what are you asking me—despite the fact that it is immoral to murder, explain to me why it is improper to do so? That is like saying: I understand that this thing is a triangle, but why do you think it has three sides? A triangle has three sides. You can say: I don’t see that it is a triangle—fine, then we have a disagreement. But you cannot say: I see that it is a triangle but I don’t understand why you think it has three sides.

The same thing here. You can say: I do not recognize the validity of morality; I see nothing in it; in my eyes it is all nonsense. Fine, you can say that. What you cannot say is: I understand that it is immoral to murder, but I still don’t understand why it is improper to do so. There is no such thing. Because the meaning of “it is immoral to murder” is that it is improper to do so. That is what the concept morality means.

The connotation that accompanies the statement that something is moral or immoral tells me, as self-evident, the ought. The fact that it is immoral to murder is an ethical fact. And with an ethical fact, there is no naturalistic gap. Whoever understands an ethical fact also understands the ought that follows from it. It is a consequence. It is a loaded fact, not a neutral fact. It is a fact such that when I understand that it is true—that this is the fact—I also understand what it means for me in terms of what is proper or improper to do. It is not like a psychological fact or a physical fact or something else. It is another kind of fact. And whoever recognizes moral obligation necessarily recognizes the existence of such facts, because otherwise there is no such thing as moral obligation. That is what we discussed there.

What I want to claim now—what? Sorry.

In the example of “how good it is that I didn’t live two hundred years ago” with the slavery issue, there’s a certain problem, because then you are presenting slave-holding as an objective fact of that period, as though that was the morality then. But in fact there were people who fought against it. I should say: how good it is that I didn’t live then, because then I would have had to fight against that objectively bad condition.

No, those are two different things. You can say: how good it is that I didn’t live then because then I would have had to fight, but that is not a moral claim. That is a claim that I don’t find it convenient to fight; I’d rather arrive once the correct result has already been achieved. I am talking about the moral claim.

But objectively, even at that time I would also have thought that slavery was not okay.

I’m saying: if even then I would have thought slavery was not okay, and all that was spared me was the struggle to actualize that in practice, then the claim “how good” is a claim about my convenience, not a moral claim. I’m talking about morally good, not convenient good.

What do I mean? I suspect there were, all in all, many good people in that period, and for some reason they did not see the flaw in slavery. That is the fact. It is hard for us today to understand it, but that is apparently what happened. And therefore the claim I am making here is that if I had lived then, there is a very real chance that I too would have belonged to that majority that saw no flaw in it and would have done it, even though from my present perspective it is clear to me that it is a corrupt thing.

But at that time you would think that objectively it was fine to own slaves?

I am saying: I fear that if I had lived in that period, I might have belonged to the majority that did not see any flaw in it. There were very many people who—I am sure they were good people—and they owned slaves because it simply never occurred to them that there was anything wrong with it. Humanity had to go through a certain process before it became obvious to all of us that something like that is not okay. In that period, entirely normative people fought for the right to own slaves. They didn’t fight for nothing. In our picture today it looks like a collection of villains fighting for the right to defend their property by force. No, I do not think so. They fought for their values. They understood that this is how the world ought to be structured. Just as in ancient Greece there was democracy in Athens, right? There was democracy for ten or twenty percent of the population. All the rest who belonged to lower castes didn’t count. They received democratic equality. And everyone had values.

So values, values, values—they are not objective absolutes but a product of the period.

No, no—exactly the opposite. Notice: exactly the opposite. My claim is that values are objective. But whether I am aware of them can be a function of the period. That is the whole spinach test. Today, having reached the conclusion that slavery is evil and corrupt, it is clear to me that it was evil and corrupt then too. It is not like spinach—if I had lived then and liked spinach, so what happened? Nothing happened. No, I am horrified: if I had lived then, I might have enslaved people. Meaning, that is an evil thing.

But true, we are human beings, and human beings are often influenced by the atmosphere and cultural climate around them, and they do not always notice that there is a moral flaw in what they are doing. Humanity has to undergo some kind of development and awakening, a kind of opening of the eyes, in order to understand that there is something problematic here. And after that happens, we can no longer understand what came before.

Why did Judaism help free Canaanite slaves?

Right. Meaning, definitely, this development was needed among us too. And my claim is exactly the opposite: that objectively it was not okay even then. My fear was precisely this—that even though it was not okay then either, if I had lived there I might not have noticed, and I might have done such horrible things without being aware that I was doing something wrong. And that is exactly the source of my horror. Because if it were like spinach, why would I be horrified? Then I would have enslaved people and then it would have been okay, so what is there to be horrified about? My taste today is different, and my taste then would have been different. There is nothing to be horrified about in that. So this very horror expresses the fact that it is not like spinach: once I reach the conclusion that something like that is wrong, then it was also wrong then—it is just that then I might not have noticed it, might not have been aware of it.

So my claim is the following. When someone comes and says: I understand that it is immoral to murder, but the question is why not murder—he simply lacks understanding. He does not understand what it means that murder is forbidden. If he says it is immoral to murder—if he understands what it means that it is immoral to murder—then it is self-evident to him that murder is forbidden. That is what the concept means.

So too here: the fact that murder is forbidden is an ethical fact. It is not a psychological or physical fact. And an ethical fact is a loaded fact; it is a fact in which the ought is inside the is. Meaning, this is not a case of the gap I spoke about earlier between ought and is.

What I want to claim is that the same is true with regard to religious obligation. When someone says: look, I believe there was God—there is God, sorry—and He revealed Himself at Mount Sinai, gave the Torah, and commanded us various commandments. But why do I have to do it? Do you see the parallel? It is exactly the same question as: I understand that such-and-such is moral, but why should I do it? That simply reflects a lack of understanding.

If you understand that God commanded, a command of God is not a neutral historical fact. Obviously there is also a historical fact here—He revealed Himself at Sinai and commanded, all true; this is a historical event that can be documented in books, and as a historical event it is a neutral event. But a command of God is not a neutral fact. If God commanded, built into that is that one ought to obey. That is what the concept God means.

Exactly as if morality says that murder is forbidden, built into that is that murder is forbidden, that it is improper to murder. You don’t need anything further to explain that it is improper to act that way. That is the meaning of the thing: one who understands what morality is understands that once there is a moral fact, that is also how one ought to behave. One who understands what God is also understands that if God commands, that is what one ought to do. If he doesn’t understand that, then he doesn’t understand what God is. It is a kind of blindness.

It is like someone saying: I understand that this is what morality says, but why do it? My answer to him would be: you don’t understand what morality is. You are blind with respect to the moral category, the moral sphere. You don’t really understand what it is saying. Because whoever understands what it is saying understands that if the moral sphere says yes to X and no to Y, one does X and does not do Y. No further reason is needed. If you need another reason, then you simply are not in the right sphere. You are blind. You do not see that sphere; you do not understand it.

The same applies to God. If someone tells me: look, God commanded such-and-such, and I have reached the conclusion that He really did command it and all is true—facts, we have crossed the factual hurdle. There is God, and He revealed Himself, and He commanded putting on tefillin, okay? Now I say: okay, so He commanded. Commanded—why put on tefillin? That question expresses blindness. Because God by definition is someone such that when He commands, built into that is an obligation to obey. If you do not understand that, then you do not understand the concept God.

It may be that you understand that God created the world, or you understand various characteristics of God, but the concept God as such—you do not understand it. It is like understanding what morality is in the sense of saying: I know what morality is, yes, those people who use the word “morality” also don’t murder. But you are not aware of the connotation that accompanies the concept morality and that causes people not to murder. That you do not find within yourself. And therefore you ask: wait, but actually I don’t understand why not murder—so what if it is immoral to murder? That means that something in the understanding that accompanies the concept morality, in the use of the concept morality, is not clear to you. You do not know, you do not understand it.

There is something here—yes, like color, like Mary’s room. I think I brought this example once. Mary’s room is the brilliant physicist who is an expert in optics. She knows all of optics, all the laws of optics, forwards and backwards. But all her life she lives and works and conducts her research in a black-and-white room. All she ever sees is black and white. Fine? She has a black-and-white filter over her eyes. She sees only black and white.

Now she goes outside the room, or removes the filter, and suddenly she sees colors. The question is whether she has learned something new. In terms of the laws of optics, she knew beforehand that red mixed with yellow gives so-and-so, and green, and diffraction, and so on—she knew all the optics. But she had never seen red. She used the term “red” to describe an electromagnetic wave of a certain wavelength, a kind of abstract concept that had no visual significance for her. She did not understand what it means. She could not, for example, understand that when I say I see a picture in red, that is beautiful. Not because she disagreed—she simply would not understand what that means. For her, red was a detached physical entity; she did not see anything before her eyes when saying it, even though she knew all its properties, what a wave of red wavelength does, diffraction and interference and all of optics—she knew everything except how red looks, what red is. That she didn’t know.

So apparently nothing in the physics was new to her, but she did not understand the concept red until she left the room. There is something in the immediate understanding of it that she did not have. Therefore, when people spoke with her about red, it was like speaking to a blind person. Not like—she was blind, color-blind. Meaning, she did not understand what “red” means, even though she could talk about it exactly as we do and say what it does, and maybe even how it affects the psyche, because she was also an expert in perception and the brain—what happens in the brain when a red wave hits us. So she knows that the pleasure neurons fire, but she has never experienced the feeling of aesthetic pleasure. She only tells us: the pleasure neurons are activated. And that is a mechanical, cold grasp of concepts that have color, that have some immediate impact on us, not through understanding. That she lacks; she does not know what it is.

Now think about the psychopath. The psychopath can understand that among people there are acts considered moral; that is the definition of a psychopath. He understands that certain people think murder is bad, theft is bad, helping others is good. He knows all that, he masters the book of morality backwards and forwards. What is he missing? What he is missing, apparently, is some kind of insight or connotation that accompanies the concept when I say “this is moral” and “this is immoral.” That he does not understand. He understands theoretically what it does to people; he knows how to describe scientifically how the whole thing works. But he does not understand the concept morality in immediate experience.

As always, in this context I think of the example of Nash, John Nash—the Nobel Prize winner in economics, with Nash equilibrium, coalitions of various kinds, and game theory. There is the book A Beautiful Mind and the film based on it. The film presents it very nicely. Nash was ill—he was a paranoid schizophrenic. Meaning, he lived with a sense that all sorts of figures around him—Soviet agents and so on—were pursuing him and trying to coerce him, all of it psychological hallucination. But he lived inside that feeling.

Now the film, up to the intermission—I remember that at the intermission I wanted to leave, because it seemed like some kind of third-rate thriller and I didn’t understand what they wanted from me. But after the intermission—we stayed after all, I don’t even remember why—suddenly it became clear that all those Russian spies never existed. They existed within Nash’s consciousness. And the whole second half of the film, and also in the book, describes how Nash tries to cope with the intellectual knowledge that these are imaginary people who do not really exist, when experientially, from his perspective, we are the blind ones if we do not see them. Those are tangible people, as real as me and you. He lives in a world where he is surrounded by Soviet agents trying to do various things to him.

But intellectually he understands that this is not true, and the question is how he can cope with or assimilate that intellectual understanding into his immediate feeling—not merely understand intellectually that they do not exist, but inwardly not fear those agents. That is very hard work, and the question is how far such a thing is possible at all. That is a very interesting philosophical-psychological question. But it expresses this exact point.

The psychopath can relate to morality—he understands the whole of morality: what should be done, what is forbidden, what is permitted, all correct. He also understands that things cause suffering to people, although he does not experience the suffering of other people because he lacks empathy. But intellectually he understands that this is what happens. He simply does not understand: so what? What is the problem? Why shouldn’t I abuse someone? Pull out his fingernails or eyelashes or whatever. Fine, it causes him—exactly the naturalistic fallacy, right? It causes him suffering, all true—so what? Therefore it is forbidden? Why? How do you derive ought from is?

But in his case the naturalistic fallacy exists on the psychological level too, not just in philosophy. From his perspective he genuinely does not understand why not do it. What is he missing? He knows everything: this is moral, this is immoral, he knows it all. What is he missing? What he is missing is that connotation that accompanies the statement “this is immoral” and “this is moral,” which tells us self-evidently: okay, if it is immoral, then you don’t do such things. No done. Okay? There is this “no done” element, and it does not exist for him. He does not understand it. This is exactly like Mary’s room.

And what I want to say here—I want to close the circle from the beginning of the lecture—I described two phenomena and said that they were two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, people say that if you proved to me there is God and God revealed Himself at Sinai, that’s the end of the saga. Obviously from then on the game is over. You can argue whether there is or isn’t God, whether He revealed Himself at Sinai or not, biblical criticism, I don’t know what. But if we got past that and reached the conclusion that God exists and revealed Himself, then the story is over. That’s it—you have to do it, right? That is most people.

That is also why seminars work that way. There is a minority of people who say: wait, okay, everything is true, but so what? Here we get stuck, there is no way to move forward with them. Right? Those are the two phenomena I described. I want to claim that these two phenomena actually reflect the same thing. The first type, who says that it is self-evident that if God commanded then of course one must obey—that is exactly like morality. There is a certain connotation that accompanies the religious fact—it is not an ethical fact but a religious fact—that if God commands then one must obey. Therefore they do not ask themselves the question: okay, if God commanded then so what? Why do I have to observe it? It is obvious. It is like asking: if it is immoral to murder, why not murder? It is self-evident. If God commanded, then of course one must obey. That is what the concept God means.

Whoever does not understand that is blind. A kind of psychopathy—not in the moral sense, but in the religious sense. I would call it a kind of blindness, not psychopathy but blindness to the religious sphere. Someone studies this from outside, like Mary in the black-and-white room. So he understands that there are all kinds of crazy religious people who think that if God revealed Himself at Sinai then one also has to do all sorts of things. He says: fine, maybe God revealed Himself at Sinai as a historical fact—why does that bind me? That is a kind of blindness. It means that you are talking about God but do not really understand what that is. Because if you did understand it, you would understand that what He says is what one ought to do.

You know that in the Bible the term “elohim” also refers to judges. Right? The Talmud at the beginning of tractate Sanhedrin derives the need for three judges in a monetary religious court from the fact that the word “elohim” appears three times in the passage. In other words, “elohim” means judges—“and the master of the house shall come near to the judges.” “Elohim” means the elders, the judges. Why are judges called “elohim”? Because a judge is someone such that what he says is what one has to do. Not because he is right—he may not be right—but because he has authority. When you come before a judge and the judge says you have to pay, or you have to sit in prison, then that is what has to be done because the judge said so, not because that is necessarily the truth. Maybe the judge was mistaken; a judge is also human and can err. But if he is the judge, what he says is binding. That is why he is called “elohim.” God, by definition, is someone whose word has to be obeyed. That is the concept God.

Now someone who says: I understand that there is God, and I understand that He commanded—why should that be done? Then he does not understand what God is. He is using the concept God externally, as something alien and estranged. There is a certain kind of blindness here. So the feeling of helplessness too—how can you explain red to a blind person? You can’t.

So basically, here I’ll finish this introduction. I just want to say: what is really the purpose of the discussion I am going to conduct? The purpose—which, as you’ll see later, I’ve really already done, but I’ll spell it out—is not to open the eyes of the blind. That’s impossible. If they are blind, they are blind. I cannot explain anything. What I can say to a person is this: if you have the feeling that when God commands, that is binding and must be obeyed, don’t dismiss it as something irrational. Don’t think that it is foolish and illogical and irrational, and therefore ignore it. No. If you have that feeling, then know that it is a binding feeling, and it is correct, and it is all rational, and it is fine. You do not need to throw it away. Someone who does not have that feeling—that is a kind of blindness, and I don’t know what to do with that.

So my purpose from here on is to tell people: look, if you have this feeling, this understanding, do not think that it is merely subjective and unfounded or irrational, and therefore not binding because of the naturalistic fallacy. No. Ethical facts are not subject to the naturalistic fallacy, and the fact that you understand that if God commands then it is binding means that you are not blind. It means that you really do understand what God is. That is perfectly fine. There is nothing irrational about you. The whole role of this move is simply to reassure people who have this obligation, or who understand this obligation, and to tell them: it is not true that you are irrational people. Someone comes and says: wait, if God commanded, then why do you obey? And suddenly you say: wait, I have no answer, what I am doing isn’t rational—and then I throw it away too. And I say: no, no, no. If you understand it within yourself, then the fact that he does not understand only means that he is blind, that’s all. So my goal is not to open the eyes of the blind, but to keep open the eyes of those who are not blind. Okay? So that they won’t feel forced to shut them. That is basically the claim.

Okay, I’ll elaborate further next time. Can I ask something?

Yes.

Rabbi, beyond religious philosophy, this complicated religious thought—as if in order to preserve sacred rationality, you invent a new fiction called, in David Enoch’s terminology, moral realism, or moral facts, things we don’t really understand, not even rationally or logically. We just define them, give them a name, say a few words, and then we’ve solved the problem, jumped over the gap between ought and is, and that’s it—we’ve solved the matter. In the moral realm that’s already absurd, but when you come to the religious realm it’s even more startling in its emptiness. Because if the Rabbi simply defines God as one such that whoever understands Him or recognizes Him understands that one must obey Him, then I’ll ask the Rabbi in the most practical way possible: if we thought that same God—after all, what the Rabbi proved to us in these forty-three amazing lectures, truly incredible—was that God created the world and the whole universe and all the billions of galaxies. But if I were to say, Rabbi, Rabbi, He also created infinite suffering and He is cruel and sadistic, Heaven forbid, and all He looks for is how to harm people and cause suffering to animals, and He really is sadistic—and now I tell the Rabbi, everything is true, what you proved to us in forty-three lectures is true, only this God is the ultimate evil and wickedness—will the Rabbi now tell me why one must obey His commandments? Wouldn’t the Rabbi feel exactly what Nimrod said, that he wants to rebel against Him? Clearly this does not begin in the realm of facts. There’s nothing here—it’s obvious that it comes from the human heart and from the human decision, and is unrelated to anything else. Beyond the obvious existentialism the Rabbi spoke about—when the Rabbi spoke about Mary’s room, that’s clear existentialism, and when the Rabbi speaks about morality that’s clear existentialism, and also when one speaks about faith in God that’s clear existentialism—and one cannot make this jump, this absurd invention, of inventing moral facts and on that basis say we’ve solved the naturalistic problem. Honestly I’m amazed at David Enoch, how he came to such nonsense.

Okay, so first of all, calm down, you’re getting too excited. I dealt with that very question itself extensively in the fourth talk when I discussed the argument from morality. And there I spoke about two possible ways to interpret this kind of argument. One can interpret it pragmatically—that’s what you are doing. You are basically saying: I want morality to be valid, so I invent some fiction that will validate morality, and now I’m calm. But I explained there that an argument of this sort is not necessarily pragmatic. In my case, for example, it is not. I claim that this argument is a philosophical or theological argument—what I called there theological—and not a pragmatic argument.

What does that mean? I understand that morality has validity—not that I want morality to have validity. I understand that morality has validity, and now I ask myself: what could be the basis that gives morality validity? My answer: only God. So there is God. Now the difference between that and a pragmatic argument is very subtle, but it is the difference between heaven and earth. Because there is a difference between saying: look, I want there to be morality, because otherwise people will swallow each other alive. And since without God there is no morality, let’s invent God so He can give validity to morality, and now everything is fine. That is nonsense, of course; pragmatism is nonsense. But I am making a different claim. I am saying: I have a clear intuition that morality is valid, that morality has validity—that is a clear intuition, just like any other premise on which I build an argument. Every premise on which I build an argument is based on intuition. And therefore this premise too, that morality has validity—I have an intuition that it is true. Now I ask myself, in retrospect: how can there be valid morality in the world? Only if there is a God who legislates it, who establishes it. Therefore my conclusion is that if I understand that there is valid morality—not if I want there to be valid morality, but if I understand that there is valid morality—that means there is God. That is not a pragmatist claim.

Now I’ll say the same thing if I asked you a skeptical question about eyesight. This brings us very close to Mary’s room. You see a door here. Now the question is: who says there is a door here? I assume my eyes are a reliable mechanism. If I were in your place, I would ask the same question: you’re inventing this idea that your eyes are a reliable mechanism just in order to be calm that what you see really exists. So you are just inventing the thing to be proved—that’s absurd. How do smart people like Enoch or Kant think such nonsense? That is exactly what you too apparently think, unless you are a total skeptic. Then you’ll see that you too are in that distinguished company.

And what does that mean? That you are conflating a pragmatist argument with the second kind of argument, what I called a theological argument. When I know there is a door here, it is not that I want to know there is a door here. I understand that there is a door here. The inevitable conclusion—and a correct one—is that I have a reliable visual system, because otherwise it would not be true that there is a door here. That is not a pragmatist conclusion; it is a philosophical conclusion. Every philosophical argument begins with premises based on intuition. If my intuition says there really is a door here, then that means my eyes are apparently reliable. That is a clear conclusion.

So too here. When I encounter a blind person, the blind person asks me: tell me, who says your eyes are not one big invention? It’s all hallucinations. I have no way to explain it to him. Will I therefore give up trust in my eyes? Certainly not. Why? Because I understand that what my eyes show is true. I have a clear intuition on that point. I cannot convey it to the blind person, but that is my intuition and I will not abandon it because of all the blind person’s arguments. The blind person will of course say that I am a despicable pragmatist trying to find my way in the world, inventing things for myself just in order to believe what I see. But of course I will attribute that to his blindness.

The same is what I claim regarding morality and faith in God. My claim is that I, as a religious person, understand that if God commands, that is binding. Period. It is obvious to me that this is true. I ask myself why this binds? So I answer exactly as I answered in the moral context: apparently there are ethical facts, religious facts, such that when I see them it is obvious to me that they bind me. Not because I want them to bind me—I am not inventing these facts. I simply have indirect indication of their existence. I just don’t see them with my eyes, and therefore from this comes the understanding that these things bind. This is not pragmatism. Pragmatism is when I want there to be morality or I want there to be religion, and I invent God as opium for the masses, so that He can give those social or religious norms validity. But if I really think they are valid, and I conclude that apparently because God commanded they are valid, because God is the sort of being such that when I stand before Him it is clear to me that if He commanded then it is binding—now someone who is blind from my perspective will say: nonsense. Why is that binding? You are just inventing things; this is pathetic, ridiculous pragmatism. So I’ll say: okay, he is blind. There is nothing I can do with him. So he is blind. But that won’t affect me in the slightest.

Rabbi, and I think the Rabbi perhaps knows me a little better now over the course of this series—I am not accusing the Rabbi of pragmatism, nor Enoch. Heaven forbid. Not pragmatism—I know the distinction. I really don’t think I disagree with the Rabbi in any fundamental, essential way. I don’t think there is any disagreement between us. Our disagreement is in the verbal, semantic description of the matter. This description in terms of moral facts, in my opinion, has no basis, and no one understands what it means. But what really stands behind it—again, that’s why I say, just as in morality I am not, Heaven forbid, talking about the ridiculous pragmatist element. I mean—

No, no. You are mistaken. On the substantive plane, we do not believe in the same morality. I do think we believe in—at least that’s what I believe.

Fine, you can say, I think I believe in exactly the same—

Your belief is completely incoherent.

Fine, fine, I think it is coherent. The Rabbi’s divine essential transcendence is the proof. But on the actual point—again, it comes out in an extreme way now that we moved from morality to religion. Because again, what if the Rabbi—if the Rabbi were convinced that this God is sadistic, Heaven forbid, would the Rabbi keep His commandments? And what did the Rabbi prove to us? That He created the world, that’s it. This whole amazing and sophisticated universe—that’s God. If I were to say, Rabbi, Rabbi, He also created all this suffering, and He is cruel and sadistic, Heaven forbid, and He is pure evil—now why should one obey Him?

I’ll explain. You asked that before too. The claim is that even if I were to reach the conclusion that He is utterly evil, and even if I were to reach the conclusion that I am not going to do what He says, still the claim would remain that if He is God, there is an obligation to do what He says. And because of His evil, the obligation to fight evil would override the obligation to do what God commands. That does not mean that what God commands is not binding. By virtue of being God, what He commands is binding. It may be that there are other considerations because of which I would not do it. I would not do it because of another value, or whatever it may be, that conflicts with that value. But that does not mean the value does not exist.

So I’ll ask the Rabbi in the most fundamental way possible: if He were, Heaven forbid, the ultimate evil, really pure evil, but He created the world, He has the greatest powers imaginable, and there is alongside Him, supposedly, a separate morality, and now I have to choose between the two sides—would the Rabbi even hesitate between the two sides, or would he say: I put a big X on the other side?

I would definitely hesitate, definitely. After all, there are religious commands that conflict with morality head-on, and those commands create hesitation in many people, not only in me. So all the more so if I reached the conclusion that He is entirely the ultimate evil, certainly I would hesitate.

And what would the hesitation be? The hesitation would be that on the one hand I would conclude that He is God, and as God what He says is binding—and that remains true regardless of His character. And on the other hand, I would say: fine, but I am not willing to cooperate with an evil being and act according to His instructions, and therefore there is a counter-value here. The final bottom line would be a result of weighing considerations.

But what does the Rabbi know about God? That He created all the worlds—we got it, fine, as the comedians say, so what? He created all these billions of parallel worlds, worthless electrons and protons and Newtonian and quantum physics. But why on earth should that bind me? There isn’t a drop of goodness here, not even a trace—why should I be obligated to the Creator?

Give me one second—you’re asking the question I’m going to begin addressing next time. What I discussed today was the framework of the discussion. I tried to clarify its purpose, whom it is addressed to, and to explain that it is not addressed to the blind, not to those who do not find within themselves the understanding that if God commands, that is binding. It is addressed to those who do find that understanding within themselves, but sometimes throw it away because it seems to them unfounded or irrational. Now how exactly this works, what the argument is, why if He created the world—or if He is what He is—why that binds us, how that is connected: that is what I will deal with next time.

One hundred percent. I’ll just add one more word if it’s not too late. It reminds me of Rabbi Shimbursky sixty years ago, who also used to tell us that if there is no God in the place, then there is no morality. Don’t believe that one can be moral without being a believer, and so on and so forth. What does that seemingly mean? There is a super-morality. The Torah is a super-morality. A super-morality that tells us it is okay to own slaves, a super-morality that tells us “then you shall cut off her hand,” a super-morality that tells us to offer sacrifices, maybe even human sacrifices, and all kinds of things like that. So which morality is right? What morality?

There are so many statements there that I disagree with. I’ll try to count some of them. First, “if there is no God in this place, they will kill me”—which is of course a paraphrase used by moralists—I agree with it entirely, but not in the practical sense. I do not think that if there is no faith in God, then there will be no moral behavior. Factually that is simply untrue. There are many people who do not believe in God and behave morally, no less than believers, and maybe more. I do think that their moral theory is not coherent. The philosophical validity of the morality by which they conduct themselves does not exist in the absence of God. But that is a philosophical question; it does not mean that in practice those people will not behave morally. I explained that extensively when I discussed the argument for the existence of God.

Second, which follows from that: the divine command to bind Isaac, or whatever, or to cut off her hand, or such things—regarding cutting off her hand one can also argue, but never mind—all these commands do not come to be a super-morality. Absolutely not. They do not deal with the moral plane at all. On the moral plane, it is forbidden to kill Amalekites, one should violate the Sabbath to save the life of a non-Jew, and it is forbidden to separate a priest’s wife who was raped from her husband. All of that is true even in Torah morality. But Jewish law is not Torah morality. Jewish law says that there is a religious consideration that tells us to do these things despite the fact that they are not moral. That is not the claim that the correct morality says this. No—the morality is the ordinary morality we all understand. There is another value that overrides that morality, and because of it one must do various things, like many conflicts between values.

Therefore the claim that the instructions of the Torah indicate some other moral system is entirely mistaken. And consequently this also does not indicate that the Torah is moral or immoral. The Torah—or more precisely Jewish law, not the Torah as such—Jewish law does not deal with morality at all. Morality is foreign to Jewish law. They are two categories with no connection. Jewish law says what the religious values say one should and should not do. Morality speaks about moral values. Sometimes there can be conflicts, and in a conflict there may be a situation where the religious value says to do something and the moral value says not to do it, and vice versa. Then I am in conflict and have to decide which prevails—and by the way, Jewish law does not always prevail. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I don’t remember whether I already discussed this; if not here, then I certainly dealt with it in earlier series. So this whole picture—I simply do not agree with it at all.

Rabbi, even about that I have to make a comment because I can’t help myself. Suppose we knew exactly the same mystical repair of eternity-within-splendor in the seventh firmament behind the curtain and so on, and you fix it by means of that religious act which appears anti-moral in our existing universe. And it were before our eyes and we knew: listen, when you do this thing there are costs—you separate a priest’s wife from her husband though she doesn’t deserve it, mamzerim and all that—but you are repairing, understand, the eternity-within-splendor, and in the larger view you are fixing more. In the end it’s still also a moral improvement. You can’t escape this, because ultimately everything gets folded into the right thing to do. And again, this fiction of separating them—

I think we already had this argument, and I do not agree. There are values that are not moral values. The fact that I need to repair the eternity-within-splendor is because of religious considerations, not moral ones. Not because someone will be better off as a result. It does not benefit humanity or the world in some sense. It is a repair beneficial to the Holy One, blessed be He, if you like; I don’t know exactly to whom.

Rabbi, so now we’ve arrived at the point. I do not think morality means fixing humanity. I really do not think so. I am not here to fix humanity, because I see no point in that. I have no obligation to humanity—and on that I completely agree with the Rabbi. Therefore I say that in essence—

No, here I do disagree. I think morality does mean fixing humanity. So we disagree.

Fine, but that’s semantic.

Fine, semantic—how to call it, what morality is. After all there are all kinds of moralities; there is Nazi morality too, that’s also morality.

No, no, Nazi morality is—

Fine, that’s semantic. But in substance, when the Rabbi understands what I mean by the word morality, I mean the person’s general obligation, the normative duty. If you want to call that by another name—

If you want to define all human obligations as morality, then of course you have emptied the whole discussion of content. I claim that within the totality of human obligations there are several subcategories. One of them I call morality. Call it Moshele if you like. But there are at least two subcategories: one of moral obligations and one of religious obligations. If you want to call all of that morality, enjoy yourself; invent other terms. But I claim that it is still two categories, that’s all.

So the tool or faculty by which we receive ethical facts—is it intuition? Moral intuition, or what we call conscience. When my conscience hurts from doing something, or tells me to do something else, that means I have some sensory faculty that grasps a moral fact. And this expresses itself in that just as I feel a wound in my leg by pain, I feel moral right and wrong by the “stomach aches” of conscience.

Yes—not physical stomach aches, but yes. My conscience is the litmus paper that helps me distinguish between what is moral and what is not. My claim is that conscience is not some built-in thing in me, just the way I happen to be made. Rather, it is a sensory capacity. It is a sense. I can perceive something by means of conscience. Conscience reflects some fact of right and wrong. Conscience is not just a psychic structure because of which this hurts me and that hurts me. That is my claim.

And that is objective?

Yes. Just as my eyes are objective.

What? Ezra, your sensation, your feeling, is objective?

Yes, just as my eyes are objective.

And whoever does not feel that feeling is blind?

Yes. Yes. So I’m saying, then similarly one would seemingly have to show that there is a religious conscience too, or a religious-believing sensory organ, which for some reason doesn’t think—in terms of facts, as facts, everyone sees it. There is no need to show it.

There is no need to show it; it’s obvious. But we’ll talk about that.

Okay, friends, let’s stop here. Sabbath peace.

Sabbath peace.

Bless you, friends. Thank you very much.