Faith and Its Meaning – Lesson 8

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but here the claim whose correctness I’m talking about is the claim “X exists.” That’s the claim whose correctness I’m discussing. So if “X exists” is objectively true, then what does that mean? When you’re talking about an existence claim, the claim is an existence claim. The vector? No, obviously not, and that’s exactly the difference. The claim that the car is traveling at eighty kilometers per hour—what is the subject of the claim? The car. The car exists. The speed of the car is the attribute or the predicate, I don’t know what to call it, I’m not good at grammar. It’s the thing that describes the car. Now, it’s an objective truth that the car is traveling at eighty kilometers per hour, but that doesn’t mean that the speed is an existing entity, because the claim is not a claim about the being of something; it’s a claim about some occurrence. But the claim about God’s existence is a claim about the existence of an entity, of some object. There, if it’s objectively true, then it seems to me that it means it exists objectively. Therefore Anselm is right in principle that another chapter is needed to prove God’s objective existence even after I’ve proved—or he thinks he has proved—God’s existence; that still doesn’t mean that God’s existence is necessary existence in the ontic sense. Now how does the… his proof works very similarly to what we saw above. Basically, what does he say? Exactly the same structure he used before. Let me remind you: he basically says, look, let’s assume for the sake of contradiction, let’s prove it by contradiction. Suppose the Holy One, blessed be He, or God, does not exist in such a way that His existence is necessary. There could be a situation in which He does not exist. There could be a possible world in which He does not exist. And I’ll show you that this leads to a contradiction. Exactly the same move as in chapter 2. It’s copy-paste, except for one word. That is, instead of “exists,” you have to add “exists necessarily.” Other than that, the logic is exactly the same. What he says is the same argument. He says: if we assume that God exists but not necessarily—because that He exists we already proved in chapter 2. Now the question is whether He exists necessarily, right? That’s the subject of chapter 3. So let’s see. Suppose He does not exist necessarily; He exists. So I have conceived of this object, the existing God, right? But I could have conceived of a more perfect object: a God who exists necessarily. So that means that the existing God is not the most perfect being, which contradicts the premise—that’s what was to be proved. Exactly the same move as before, and of course the assumption here is now a little different from before. Before, he assumed that what exists is more perfect than what does not exist, than the idea-object that does not exist. Now he assumes that what exists necessarily is more perfect than what exists non-necessarily. But that’s all. In other words, aside from that, the structure is exactly the same structure. The logic is exactly the same logic. That’s why he repeats exactly the same move, but goes one step further. After proving that God exists, he now proves that He also exists necessarily, with exactly the same logic. So there’s no point going into all the details of this chapter. Everything I said in the previous chapter is true of this chapter too; just replace “exists” with “exists necessarily.” And what wasn’t true in the previous chapter also isn’t true in this chapter. In other words, there’s no point talking about both sides of the coin here.

Now maybe I… yes, I have an example here involving Steinitz, the former minister, yes? In his books Steinitz has quite a few mistakes, so I made a fair living off them; I got a lot of mileage out of them, because those mistakes teach various things. So here, for example, one of them appears. He wants to argue that ontological arguments are possible, contrary to what Kant claimed against Anselm—that there is no such thing as ontological arguments. You can’t play around with conceptual analysis and derive from it an existence statement, a factual claim about the world. I already said that that claim by itself is not a refutation. Here, Anselm shows you that apparently you can—unless you point to the place where he messed up. So we talked about that last time, that there is such a point. In other words, in the end Kant really is right. But Steinitz wants to argue against Kant that ontological proofs really are possible. And what does he say? He gives an ontological proof like Anselm’s. So he says this: let’s say we’re talking about some necessary being. Fine? A necessary being—if it exists in some possible world, then it exists in all possible worlds, right? Because that’s what it means to be necessary. Now if it is absent in one of the worlds, then it must be absent from all of them. Why? Because if it existed in one of them, then we already proved that it exists in all of them. So there can’t be a world in which it is absent, right? So a necessary being—I don’t know whether it exists or not—but if it exists, it exists necessarily, and if it is absent, then it is absent necessarily. Right? Now he says that if such a thing exists, then there necessarily exists an ontological proof of its existence, because its existence follows from its concept; it exists necessarily, so there must be an ontological proof of its existence. And if it does not exist, then there must be an ontological proof of its non-existence. Now necessarily either it exists or it doesn’t exist, right? Any entity. You can be an atheist and say it doesn’t exist, you can be a believer and say it does exist. One thing you have to agree on: either it exists or it doesn’t. But whether it exists or not, we have an ontological proof of it—either that it exists or that it does not exist. Therefore it’s obvious that there are ontological proofs in the world. That’s the claim. And if this being—well, you can say that there are no necessary beings, and then there won’t be an ontological proof of anything, but he says that won’t help you, because if there are no necessary beings then you have an ontological proof that there are no necessary beings, so that too is an ontological proof of a fact about the world. So that’s the idea. He is not trying to prove God’s existence. You can say there is no God; it doesn’t matter to him, it’s not important at all, he doesn’t need that. All he wants to prove is that ontological proofs can exist. Kant is wrong when he says ontological proofs cannot exist—look, I’ll show you that they necessarily can. Because either this being exists or it doesn’t. If it exists, there is an ontological proof that it exists—we proved that. If it doesn’t exist, there is an ontological proof that it doesn’t exist—again, we proved something ontological. So that means there is an ontological proof of something, of some factual claim about the world, right? Either an existence claim or a non-existence claim; both are claims about the world. Okay? What do you say? And where did we see this? It’s necessarily either the case that it exists or it doesn’t exist. If it exists, there is an ontological proof that it exists. If it doesn’t exist, there is an ontological proof that it doesn’t exist. I don’t know what that looks like—apparently in some form, it’s a claim; a claim is a general claim. You know, in mathematics there are theorems that are proved constructively, by actually building the result. And there are theorems where you prove an existence theorem—that is, I prove there is a solution without finding the solution. And what he is saying here is non-constructive. What do you say about that?

Why? Do you understand that there’s a claim here with very far-reaching implications? This would be a philosophical revolution if it were correct. It isn’t, so that’s fine, but if it were correct then this would be a significant philosophical revolution. This isn’t just hairsplitting; it’s not just hairsplitting but interesting hairsplitting. In other words, there is some non-trivial result here, right? Where is he wrong? In saying that if the existence of some being is necessary, then there is necessarily an ontological proof of its existence. Who told you that? The existence of an ontological proof of its existence is epistemic—it means that I will know with certainty that it exists. But its existing necessarily is an ontic claim; it’s a claim that its existence is necessary, which has nothing to do with whether I know it or don’t know it. Now when I have an ontological proof—suppose God exists necessarily. Did He also exist necessarily in the tenth century, before Anselm found the ontological proof? Obviously, right? But nobody knew that. Okay, so what? The fact that something exists necessarily does not mean that there is an ontological proof of its existence. Why on earth should it? Where does such a thing come from? To say that there is an ontological proof of its existence means that we can also know necessarily that it exists. We did not say that. Even if something exists necessarily, we did not say that it must also be the case that someone knows that it exists necessarily and knows it necessarily. Those are two different things. This is exactly the same distinction between the epistemic and the ontic, right? The leap he makes—and by the way a lot of philosophers make this leap, I’m picking on him just because he’s convenient—a lot of philosophers make this mistake when they talk about necessary existence and what the proof is that there is necessary existence, because “I have a necessary proof that it exists.” It’s simply not the same thing. Okay? Right, exactly. And I’m saying that the claim that it exists necessarily is an ontic claim, that its existence is necessary. But the claim that there is an ontological proof of its existence is an epistemic claim, meaning that human beings can know that it exists necessarily. Who said that? It’s like scientific laws. People are searching for a unified field theory, I don’t know, strings and things like that. Okay? So far we don’t have it. Does that mean it doesn’t exist? Or does it mean that if it exists, we will necessarily get there? Who said that? Maybe we’ll never manage to get there, even though it’s really true and such a theory really exists. What is the connection between the question of what happens in the world and the question of what I know about what happens in the world? Okay? What? He didn’t claim that. You can offer another ontological proof. His proof doesn’t use that assumption. No. The perfection is the very fact that it exists necessarily. But whether we can know that or not, or even know it with certainty—you need logical certainty, after all. Because someone might say, “I know of God’s existence because I have a tradition that came down to me from Sinai.” So there, I know of a being whose existence is necessary, I know it, even without having an ontological proof. My knowledge is not necessary. It comes from my trust in the tradition, but it is not necessary proof, because it is not the product of a logical argument. Okay, fine, that can also be.

All right, I… the second part of the… can’t hear? Fine, if you have a logical argument. If you think your eyesight is a tool that gives you certainty, then maybe sight can help too. I don’t think so. There are mirages, sight sometimes deceives us. It is not a certain tool. Okay.

The second half of Anselm’s chapter returns to the Holy One, blessed be He, moving to the theological plane, exactly like the prayer at the beginning of the previous chapter. Yes: “And You, Lord our God, are such a being; You are so truly that there is no conceiving You as non-being,” and rightly so. Okay. He gets a little carried away. “For if an intelligent mind could think of something better than You, the creature would rise above the Creator and judge Him, and that is utterly absurd.” You can see that here he is already soaring into regions pretty far from logic. In other words, he returned—remember I said that he put the prayer first in order to show that the definition of the concept of God whose existence he proves is taken from his religious faith. After he finished proving the Holy One, blessed be He, he comes back in order to tell us: this God whose existence I proved, the Holy One, blessed be He, the God whose existence I proved, is in fact the same God about whom our faith gives us its tradition. Okay, he went out from faith and now returns to faith. Okay, so I’ll spare you the discussions from this concluding prayer. And at the end—this is a fascinating discussion. All right, I’ll go back, to this page; let’s go back and read the chapter itself. Yes, so that is the theological return of chapter 3.

Now look at chapter 4. Chapter 4 is fascinating. “But how can the fool say in his heart what he cannot conceive?” Fine, I proved that God exists, despite the fool saying, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” After that I proved that He exists necessarily. Okay? Now he returns to the fool. We need to deal with him—what in the army they call making sure of the kill. So how can this fool even say in his heart what he cannot conceive? After all, I showed him not only that God exists, but that you cannot even conceive that He does not exist. Right? So then how can you tell me that it says in Psalms, “The fool has said”? What, is the fool a liar? Now this—okay, I’ll come back to that in a second. He says: “But how can the fool say in his heart what he cannot conceive, or how can he not conceive what he said in his heart, when to say in the heart and to conceive are one and the same? If he truly did conceive—and more than that, precisely because he truly did conceive, since he said it in his heart, and did not say in his heart that he could not conceive it—it is because a thing is not said in the heart or conceived in only one way. For it is one thing to conceive something when one conceives the word that signifies that thing, and another when one understands the thing itself that the word signifies.”

And there are two… yes, his basic question is this: “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” Not true—he didn’t say that. Look, I proved that he didn’t. So what, is Psalms lying? What does it mean, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God”? I have proved to you that he cannot say in his heart that there is no God, and even in his own heart it is clear to him that there is a God and indeed one who exists necessarily. So what does it mean that “the fool has said in his heart, there is no God”? So he says there are two ways of conceiving things. You can conceive things in the sense of actually holding that insight, thinking that way, and there is conceiving in the sense of merely thinking it—not thinking that way. When I think the sentence, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I understand. There is no problem thinking it, right? But I do not think that outside right now there is light. So those are two ways of conceiving things. You can conceive in the sense that this is what I think, and you can conceive in the sense of thinking—thinking the sentence that describes the thing, not thinking the thing. And he says that when “the fool has said in his heart, there is no God,” he is really saying it in the second sense, not the first. Deep down he knows there is a God. Maybe he isn’t aware of it, but he knows there is a God, just as this argument proved to him. But then what does it mean that he says in his heart that there is no God? He says the sentence in his heart, “There is no God.” He says the sentence but does not think it. He thinks he thinks it. What? Because he lives in the illusion that he thinks it, but he doesn’t. He only says it. Look, I proved to him that he doesn’t think it.

Now this is an interesting point from several aspects. Look. We talked about analytic arguments or analytic claims or logical arguments, which always beg the question. We discussed that. So this basically means that if I proved to someone—say, the existence of God in some non-ontological way, a regular proof: I have premises A, B, C, and from those I somehow managed to prove that there is a God. And someone accepted the proof. He said, “I was an atheist, I repented,” fine? He accepted the proof. So what does that mean? It means that this conclusion, that there is a God, was really already embedded in the premises on which I built the argument, right? If it were not embedded there, then this conclusion could not necessarily come out of the premises. We discussed this when we talked about the meaning of a valid logical argument. Now if that’s so, then I basically showed this atheist that he was never really an atheist. He was actually always a believer, just an unconscious believer. You cannot prove the existence of God to a true atheist, because he will not accept at least one of the premises on which I build the argument. Because those premises—remember Socrates? All human beings are mortal, Socrates is a human being, therefore Socrates is mortal. Suppose someone thinks that Socrates is not mortal. So I bring him an argument. I tell him, “Look, do you accept that all human beings are mortal? Yes. Do you accept that Socrates is a human being? Yes. Well then, obviously Socrates is mortal.” So you understand that either he did not really think that Socrates was not mortal—he was mistaken—or else he does not accept one of the two premises, either that Socrates is a human being or that all human beings are mortal. He does not accept at least one of the two premises. One of the two; there can’t be any other possibility. In other words, if someone was an atheist and I proved to him that God exists, then one of two things is true: either he discovered that he had always been a believer, or I failed to prove it to him. Because the premises on which I build the argument—he will not accept at least one of them. Because it already contains the conclusion within it. And every logical argument presupposes what it seeks to prove. So that is basically what Anselm is saying here. Anselm is saying here: look, if I proved to the atheist, to that fool, that there is a God, then one of two things must be true. Either he does not accept the proof—and that cannot be, because according to Anselm this is an ontological proof, it has no premises. If there are no premises, then there is nothing for you not to accept. We said in the previous class that this is not correct, but that is what Anselm thinks. He thinks the proof is an ontological proof; no one can deny this proof. Unlike any other argument where you can reject the premises, here there are no premises. You cannot object to the conclusion—if it really worked. Now if that’s so, then the second option in the analysis of the fool falls away. The option that he might reject one of the premises—there are no premises here. So what does that mean? That he was in fact always a believer, right? Only the second option remains. He was always a believer. If he was always a believer, then how can he say in his heart, “There is no God”? Is he lying to himself, to me? What is the meaning of this? That’s the question. And it’s a difficult question.

And I think not for nothing—I told you, in my view this text is exemplary—not for nothing does chapter 4 come after chapters 2 and 3. This really is a question that must be discussed. You have to discuss it. After you have proved something logically to someone who did not agree with you, you always have to ask yourself, “Wait a second, then why didn’t he agree with me at the beginning?” After all, he accepts the premises, and from the premises I can show logically that this conclusion follows; indeed he accepted it, right? So what was our disagreement at the beginning about? What did he think at the beginning? What? That’s psychology. So you’re saying he was just mistaken, confused, uncomfortable, whatever. The question is whether there is a philosophical way out. And Anselm claims there isn’t. There isn’t. He was simply confused. He was uncomfortable, doesn’t matter. Therefore, when he said in his heart, “There is no God,” he said in his heart the sentence “There is no God,” not that he thought there is no God. He thought there is, because the premises he accepts, the zero premises he accepts, include within them the existence of God. It’s necessary; you cannot think otherwise so long as you are consistent. Okay, you cannot think otherwise. And if it seems to you that you think otherwise, you are simply confused. You think the sentence. You can think the sentence “Two plus three equals seven.” One can think that sentence, but one cannot think that two plus three equals seven, right? Now, you cannot think that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees—it is 190 degrees, sorry—in Euclidean space. Okay, but you can think the sentence “The sum of the angles in a triangle in Euclidean space is 190 degrees.” There is nothing preventing you from thinking that. His claim is that every argument that ends in a logical argument, like a knockout, is really an argument in which your interlocutor discovered that he had agreed with you all along, only he wasn’t aware of it before. That has to be so, right? And if it is an ontological argument, then all the more so, because the option that he doesn’t agree with the premises doesn’t exist. Here he must accept the conclusion. So here it is clear that from the outset he really agreed with you. The argument was a pseudo-argument.

Okay, let me bring you an example of something we may get to later. I claim there is a proof of God’s existence from morality. Actually Kant already claims this. Not in the Critique of Pure Reason, where he has only three types, but in his other writings there is a proof from morality. That doesn’t matter for the moment; I won’t go into those details now. We’ll talk about that later on, I hope. But I just want to bring it as an illustration of the principle we’ve encountered here. What I basically want to say is that if there is no authoritative factor that legislates the laws of morality, then you cannot hold the position that there are valid, binding moral laws. In a materialist world, let’s say for the sake of discussion, okay, there cannot be valid morality. A person may behave well, that’s fine, because he feels like behaving well, or because he enjoys behaving well, whatever. That’s not the issue right now. But he cannot conceive of there being a binding legal system that obligates him, that he must behave well—not because he feels like it or because it’s pleasant for him, no, he must. And someone who doesn’t do that is not okay. And if someone else, say, doesn’t feel like behaving morally, then I criticize him, right? I say he is not okay, he is behaving immorally. Why? You like behaving morally; he doesn’t like behaving morally. What’s the problem? If you criticize someone, you are assuming that there are some laws here that have objective validity. There is some authoritative factor behind them such that what it says obligates all human beings. Okay, or there are people who don’t know about it so they’re mistaken—that’s not important—but in principle it obligates all human beings. That is my claim. And without that, there cannot be valid morality in your worldview. And again, if there is no God in this neighborhood and in this world—people often use this to say that a society that doesn’t believe in God is a society that behaves immorally. Now that is not true. Sometimes unfortunately the opposite is true. I don’t think that is factually true, but it is philosophically true. In a society that does not believe in God, there cannot be valid morality within its conceptual framework. It behaves morally because it is confused, or because it feels like behaving morally, doesn’t matter. But if it thinks morality is valid, is binding, then it is confused. If it does it even though it isn’t binding, because I feel like it, then fine—it just does it because it feels like it. Okay? Fine, then utility is something else. Utility is not morality. Fine, that is an interest-based consideration; it belongs to economics, not to philosophy and ethics. You want to derive maximum utility.

So what I want to say is this: suppose I came to an atheist and convinced him through this argument—suppose this hypothetical case happened—and I succeeded in convincing him through this argument that there is a God. Now what does that actually mean? I am basically telling him: look, even when you were an atheist, before you were convinced, if you think there is a binding system of norms, a binding moral system, then you are de facto a believer in God, because without that there is no such system. “Yes, but I’m an atheist, I’m a Kantian who thinks morality is humanistic morality grounded in man.” They also pin that on Kant; there are different writings and different formulations there, it’s all rather confused, but never mind. Many people attribute atheist morality to Kant. And the claim is that in fact there is no such thing. You simply made a philosophical mistake. There cannot be valid morality without some authoritative legislating factor that legislates it, that gives it validity. Okay? So if you believe that this system is valid, that it has validity, then you are in fact implicitly believing in God. You tell me you are an atheist. Confused. Right, either you are confused in thinking there is valid morality, or you truly think there is no God and you are confused—you are identifying “it feels nice to me to behave morally” with the claim that there are binding principles here. And that too is a kind of confusion. But one of those two is confusion. Either the statement “There is no God” or the statement “There is valid morality.” Because those two together don’t go. So what then? Is such a person a believer or not a believer? I don’t know how you would define it. In other words, internally he is actually holding premises within which belief in God sits. In his conscious awareness he says, “I’m an atheist, I don’t believe in anything. For me morality is an atheist category,” as Leibowitz said. Okay? So I don’t know how to relate to such a person. So does he believe or not believe? It’s like… what? What do you mean? Well then… well then…

If that’s so—I had a debate about this with David Enoch on moral realism, and I argued that without God there is no moral realism, and he argued that there is. And I say: so there are Platonic ideas that say what is right to do and what is not—so what? Chickens also exist. So what does that mean? Why do I need to behave that way? So they exist—so what? Only if there is some factor behind them that gives them binding force, meaning that the existence of these norms obligates someone, can I understand that it is incumbent upon me, that I am obligated to do it. But moral realism, in my view, solves nothing. That is exactly my point; my point is that David Enoch is a hidden believer. And he would stone me if he heard that. He has heard it, though. But he is a proud atheist. And I argue that he is a hidden believer. Because someone who believes in moral realism believes in the existence of objective, binding norms. But he says, “But I’m an atheist,” like the fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” Because if there are binding moral norms, then you are effectively believing in the existence of someone who legislated them. Again, without getting into Sinai and tefillin and all that—on a completely abstract philosophical level. Okay? In other words, some factor that gives these norms validity. Otherwise, if something exists—so what if it exists? Lots of things exist. This is Hume’s naturalistic fallacy, the ought-is fallacy. It says: why is it forbidden for me to hit someone? Because if I hit him, it hurts him. The fact that if I hit him it hurts him is a fact. But how do you infer from that that it is forbidden for me to hit him? You need to add another premise: that causing pain is forbidden. The fact that the blow causes pain is a fact, right? You cannot derive norms from facts. In order to derive the norm, you need to add another premise that has a normative dimension: that causing pain is morally forbidden. Okay? And then of course the question is where that comes from. You need a normative source that gives force to that normative premise, that makes it binding, that causing pain is forbidden. Therefore this illusion that one can build a moral normative world—that is called naturalism. In other words, that one can build a world of moral obligations on facts, even in a totally materialist world or a Platonic one if you like, is an illusion. In other words, this is the same fool who said in his heart, “There is no God.”

Now today, many times when you raise an argument of this kind, people immediately shout at you that you’re being paternalistic. You’re explaining to a person what he thinks better than he himself says he thinks. That really is annoying a lot of the time. But what can you do if sometimes it’s true? In other words, I’m not claiming—paternalism is when I make a claim like, “Deep down you really believe, I know, after all every Jew is a believer.” Right? That’s annoying paternalism. Okay? Because if he tells you he doesn’t believe, then he doesn’t believe. But I’m not doing that. I’m proving to him that he believes. I’m not claiming that I see in the depths of his heart that he believes. I prove to him from his own statements that he himself believes. That’s not paternalism. It’s simply pointing to inconsistency in your position. That’s all. What, am I not allowed to prove that someone is mistaken? Is it paternalistic to prove that someone is mistaken? No, that’s not the point right now; what I proved is not the issue at the moment. The point is that a claim of this type is received very badly in today’s arguments, because paternalism is a red card. In other words, if you are declared a paternalist, the discussion is over. And here, by the way, I tend to accept that. I really do think paternalism is not a fair form of discussion, or at least not a useful one. Okay? But here it is not paternalism. I prove to you that you believe; I do not claim that I can see inside you that you believe. I prove it to you. That is something else.

Now many times there is indeed this kind of… for example, my favorite example in this context is Rabbi Nachman’s story of the turkey prince. Yes, even among the Hasidim there are sometimes sparks. What happens there? The prince goes insane, strips off his clothes, gets under the table, declares himself to be a turkey, and starts eating grains off the floor. Okay? The king is completely despairing; no one can get this madman to change his mind. Some wise fellow comes and says, “Your Majesty, let me handle it.” Fine, please do. The fellow takes off his clothes, gets under the table, and starts eating grains next to him. And he says to him, “What are you doing here among us?” Yes, what is a person doing under the table? This is the turkey zone. He said to him, “I’m a turkey, what do you want? This is territorial consideration.” He said to him, “I’m also a turkey, there are grains for everyone.” Fine, they eat, everything is okay. At some point the wise man says to the prince—to the original turkey—“Look, a turkey can also wear pants.”

[Speaker E] That doesn’t disqualify it, right, it’s not a hindrance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He said to him, okay, put on pants. Then a shirt, and sit on a chair, eat with a knife and fork, and speak a human language. He brought him back to being a human being, yes, behaviorist therapy. Meaning, he basically brings him back to being a human being on the behavioral level. Okay? The question that comes up here is of course: but he didn’t really cure him. He still thinks of himself as a turkey, right? It’s just that now he thinks he’s a turkey with pants and clothes, who eats with a knife and fork and speaks like human beings. But inside, he still sees himself as a turkey. So in what sense was he cured? Right? That’s really the question that comes up there in that story. And people pay less attention to another question that comes up in that story. Why, when the wise man went down under the table, did this fellow ask him, “Tell me, what are you doing here?” What, he didn’t understand there are other turkeys? Did he think he was the only turkey in the world? That’s also a possibility, maybe, but it doesn’t sound like that. What’s clear to him is that he’s a human being, right? Meaning, he knows that someone who behaves like that and looks like that is a human being. Someone who has—yes—green on the outside, red on the inside, has watermelon seeds, then he’s a watermelon, right? Meaning, if you know that someone who looks like that and behaves like that is a human being, then why are you feeding me this nonsense that you see yourself as a turkey? The first question was: after all, he wasn’t cured. This question says: after all, he was never sick. He always knew; he’s feeding us a line. He knew. So what now? Now we have two difficulties, and two difficulties are good. Whenever there are mistakes, make them in pairs—that’s the rule—because then there’s a chance one will cancel out the other. Meaning, these two difficulties can answer one another. What does that mean? If there is someone who deep down inside, yes, all the way down, to the depth, to the depth, is damaged—yes, he has some basic disconnect—okay? There’s no way to cure him. You can reset him, build him anew, but there’s no way to cure him. What is healing? Psychological healing is basically taking a person, finding within him some healthy points, and trying to use them to heal everything else. Right? Somewhere inside there has to be some point that still hasn’t been damaged, that is a healthy point, and then you can try to use it, or them, to fix all the mess around it. Okay? So what does that mean, really? That if this prince was healed, then it means he probably wasn’t sick all the way. There was within him some point where he still understood the difference between a human being and a turkey. Okay? But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t sick. Because in his consciousness—you know, human beings build theories for themselves, in the end they fall in love with them and become convinced that they’re really true. And now he really thinks he’s a turkey. It starts with: you don’t have a monopoly on turkeys; I’m a turkey too, right? You know these kinds of claims, right? I’m a turkey too; no one has a monopoly on being a turkey. Slowly he starts to be convinced, and in the end he thinks he really is a turkey and everything is fine. But deep down inside there still remains, in some abstract, vague, I don’t know, inner sense, he knows the difference between a turkey and a person. Where does it pop out? Suddenly a person comes, sits there, starts eating grains—hey, wait a second, what are you doing here? Boom, suddenly what was always there inside him jumped out. So does this person know the difference between a human being and a turkey or not? He knows. Deep down inside, that distinction exists. But in his consciousness he lives in his whole world—it’s not really—he’s gone through layers, yes, he repressed it very, very deeply, and now he lives in the theory. A real consciousness that he’s a turkey, truly truly. He’s not lying. He’s not lying; he really thinks he’s a turkey. But suddenly this perception jumps out in him that actually I am a human being. Deep down inside sits the perception that he is a human being.

I think that’s also the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. You know the story, right? When that child says, “The emperor is naked,” suddenly everyone gets it in an instant, everyone’s whole worldview changes. How does that happen in a second? What, they don’t understand that the child doesn’t understand anything, and fine, the emperor is obviously dressed in magnificent clothes—that’s what we were convinced of just a moment ago. Suddenly this child comes and says, “The emperor is naked,” boom, everyone changes their worldview in a moment. How does that happen? Because they always knew the emperor was naked. Since they had an interest, and they built themselves a theory: no, no, there are transparent, magnificent, wonderful clothes here and things like that, and whoever doesn’t see them is an idiot, after all—and you don’t want to think of yourself as an idiot, and so on. In short, in the end you really and sincerely live in the illusion that the emperor is dressed in magnificent clothes, but deep inside the understanding that he is naked was never erased. It’s there inside. And when that child comes and says, wait, wait, the emperor is naked, suddenly in an instant this whole house of cards collapses. When something happens like that, it means it was probably always there inside. Okay, if I manage to prove to this scoundrel in an instant that there is a God, that basically means that deep down he always understood there was a God. He just didn’t—he just wrapped it in all sorts of assumptions, this assumption and that assumption, a captive child if you like, it doesn’t matter, he grew up in a different environment, it doesn’t matter what—but deep down inside he believed in God. Not in some mystical sense. Really, he simply believed in God. Not paternalism that says there’s a Jewish point inside him and therefore every Jew believes in God. No, there may be many Jews who don’t believe in God, but those Jews also won’t be persuaded by these arguments to believe. But if someone was persuaded by this argument, that means that from the very beginning he already believed in Him.

I think that’s also the explanation of Maimonides’ famous ruling about “we compel him until he says, ‘I want to.’” Maimonides says that in cases of refusal to give a divorce bill, or with sacrifices, there is a requirement there that it be by his will. A coerced divorce bill is an invalid divorce bill. You can’t force a person to give a divorce against his will; he has to want the divorce, otherwise the divorce bill is invalid. But when Jewish law obligates—when you are in a situation where Jewish law obligates you to give a divorce—then it has been established as the halakhic ruling that if the religious court beats you until you say, “I want to,” and then you give the divorce bill, the divorce bill is valid. That is not called a coerced divorce bill. So Maimonides there launches into this kind of mysticism that says: no, deep down inside every Jew wants to fulfill the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the commands of Jewish law, and so on, and only his evil inclination overpowered him—and all the happy mystics say that even Maimonides repented. Meaning that he too discovered the wonders of mysticism. There is nothing mystical here at all. It’s completely simple. What do I mean? Think about a person who really is God-fearing, he keeps Jewish law, he is committed to the Torah, he wants to serve God, everything is fine. There are quite a few cases like that—whoever knows, knows. His wife has been driving him crazy over time. If he’s a priest then it can even happen in a moment, but if not—priests are hot-tempered, as is well known, that’s why there’s a tied divorce bill. But just generally, yes, his wife is annoying him, you get to a boiling point that’s insane—whoever knows situations like this, it’s unbelievable—you get to an insane boiling point and you convince yourself that here it’s obvious that I have to screw her over to the core. I’ll leave her chained until the end of the century. I won’t give a divorce bill, she won’t be able to marry anyone. She won’t be able to marry anyone. And little by little you start selling yourself this line that actually Jewish law also doesn’t obligate me to divorce her. And the religious court tells you: in such a situation you must divorce her. I’m not even talking about guilt in any way. Just, that’s the situation, that’s the state of your relationship. In this situation you must divorce her. That is the halakhic determination. And the religious court tells you that. Now, every other halakhic ruling that a halakhic decisor or a court tells you, you obey gladly and happily. We’re talking about a God-fearing Jew, committed to Jewish law and everything—there are plenty like that. But here he’s smarter than all the decisors and all the judges. It’s clear to him that here the Holy One, blessed be He Himself, is standing with him in all his ways. And it is absolutely clear that the Holy One, blessed be He, demands of him that he leave the woman chained and under no circumstances give a divorce bill. And all the confused people around him in their frock coats won’t confuse me. I’m sure I’m right.

Now what is happening here? It’s obvious where this comes from. Where does it come from? Go back to the turkey. Where did the idea come from that he wants to be a turkey? He doesn’t want to behave like human beings. He’s sick of it. In the analogue, yes? He doesn’t want to keep commandments, doesn’t want to serve God, declares about himself: I’m an animal. I’m not obligated to anything. And among the dead, free. Okay? That’s really the point. And then you develop for yourself some sort of theory, and little by little you believe it: a philosophy that there is no God and nothing, and we are human beings and everything is—everything is fine, turkey, whatever, and that’s it—and then I’m not obligated to anything and everything is excellent. And so I really and sincerely believe it, it’s real. Okay? So basically this starts from some desires or urges, if you like, to which you give a justification or a philosophical rationalization. And then little by little you convince yourself of that philosophical rationalization, okay? And you convince yourself that you really are a turkey. Okay? Or that you really are—in this case it’s an exceptional case no one thought of—a woman so wicked that it’s a Torah-level commandment to chain her, fine, nobody thought of that, even the Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t think of it. And therefore it’s obvious that here I’m right, there is no doubt at all, and I will stand my ground even if they beat me bloody, I will not give this divorce bill. Okay?

So what happens in that situation? When the wise man comes to the turkey, yes, to that fellow, he says to him: look, I’m not going to convince—after all we asked, he wasn’t cured, right? Fine, think you’re a turkey. You can wear clothes, you can eat with a knife and fork, speak like a human being, everything’s fine, right? If all this behaviorist therapy works, if he goes back to behaving like a human being, then he will also be cured inside. Because the whole reason he built inside himself the theory that he is a turkey was to allow himself not to behave like a human being. That’s what he wanted, after all. The philosophical theory that enables him to do this is that he’s actually a turkey, right? Now, if I succeed in getting him, one way or another, to behave like a human being, then he will no longer have any reason to hold on to the fabricated theory he invented. Because he invented it only so that it would allow him to behave—what? That’s what I’m saying. No, so I’m claiming not. No, no, that is exactly, exactly what I’m trying to explain. My claim is that deep down inside he knows he’s a human being. So what happened? He built himself a theory because he doesn’t want to keep commandments, he doesn’t want to eat with a knife and fork. Okay, so he convinced himself he is a turkey. Deep down, he actually knows the truth, but in his consciousness—people are complex creatures—in his consciousness he thinks he’s a turkey, really, he’s not lying. Okay? But this whole story is built on the fact that it enables him to behave however he wants. Now, if in the end I get him to the point where he doesn’t behave however he wants, then he will have no reason at all to keep holding this fabricated theory of his. The whole thing rests only on the fact that it allows him to do what he wants. But if not—if he won’t succeed in doing what he wants, if he’s not doing what he wants—then why hold on to a theory that he himself thinks is not true? It will dissolve on its own. Again, if this theory were a real theory, there would be no way to cure it. As I said before, if all the way down he were convinced he was a turkey, there would be no way to treat him. But if deep down inside he knows this, then why did he build all the layers around it? Because basically he wants this to allow him to do all kinds of things, right? Human beings usually don’t do things only because of desire. When you have a desire to do something, you create some rationalization for why it is also right to do so.

And that’s the analogue: the heart follows the actions. Meaning, in my opinion that’s the analogue. I don’t know, I didn’t ask Rabbi Nachman. What? My analogue, fine? “Evil pursues the righteous,” and he’s already there. I just now saw some nasty joke about the righteous and the Hasidim; I don’t remember it anymore. In any case, do you know why you can’t dress up as a rebbe? Because if you wear shiny clothes and put two thugs in front of you, then you really are a rebbe. How do you dress up as a rebbe? You can’t dress up as a rebbe. Anyway, so the claim is that the heart follows the actions in this sense. If deep down inside you know the truth, and you built a theory only so that it would allow you to behave differently, that’s a post facto rationalization, then the moment I give you behaviorist therapy—that is, I cause you to behave differently—the theory will also dissolve on its own. Everyone will understand that the emperor is naked, no longer—yes? The moment the pressure that forces you to hold on to the fabricated theory is removed, it will dissolve on its own. Therefore precisely because he was never fully sick, because deep down inside he knew, therefore in the end he also recovered. He didn’t just behave differently; he also recovered.

And I claim the same thing is true of “we compel him until he says, ‘I want to.’” And now this is no mysticism at all, it’s simple psychology. If a person really and sincerely is God-fearing and keeps commandments, there is one exception—what’s called a discontinuity, so to speak—there’s one exception in giving a divorce bill to his wife. He knows better than everyone else. But he is still God-fearing and committed to commandments. In all other contexts he is a person committed to commandments. There are many such cases. Okay? What does that mean? Clearly he developed here a theory that allows him to behave in line with his rage. He is basically angry at her, wants to hurt her. So in order to allow himself to behave that way, he developed a theory that here Jewish law does not require it of him, even though all the decisors and judges and everyone are telling him it does. Okay? So what am I doing here? I say to him like this: listen, first of all I beat you bloody, and when you say the words “I want to”—and you’ll say it because you don’t want to die, this will go until death—and you say the words “I want to,” now I take the woman and marry her off to her new chosen one, and you’ll stand to the side and shout, “It’s a coerced divorce bill, you can’t do that, she’s not divorced, I only said it because you beat me.” And I, with a light song on my lips, will lead her to the wedding canopy and betroth her, and I couldn’t care less about what you say. That’s what I tell him.

What will happen in such a situation? He will also agree to divorce her. Because he actually wants to fulfill what the Torah requires. He built himself a theory: “Here the Torah doesn’t require it.” I tell him, “Look, the theory won’t help you, because you built that theory in order to chain her. Here I myself will go against Jewish law and marry her off even though she is not divorced. It’s a coerced divorce bill, as you say, okay? I’ll marry her off—it won’t help you. You won’t get the result that you want to get.” There is no reason at all to keep holding on to this theory, because the whole reason this theory was born—after all, deep down inside he knows it isn’t true. Again, not in his consciousness, deep down inside. But the moment he understands that this theory won’t help him get where he wants to get, it will dissolve on its own. And therefore indeed we compel him until he says, “I want to”; in the end he really does want to. But… yes, yes, yes. What do you mean “classic”? That’s the explanation I’m proposing for the matter. The classic explanations are mystical ones, but I’m not—The Talmud says, “We compel him until he says, ‘I want to.’” Now the question is what the explanation is. And that’s what we’re discussing. I’m proposing this rationale. I don’t know. I didn’t ask them. In Maimonides it looks like mysticism; in my opinion Maimonides means this.

What’s the practical difference? For example, take a secular person now, say completely secular for the sake of discussion, yes, didn’t grow up—he never had even a passing thought of keeping commandments. It won’t help, and he doesn’t want to divorce his wife. It won’t help to compel him until he says, “I want to.” There is no room to complain to the religious court that it doesn’t compel him. There are many such complaints, that the religious court doesn’t really compel divorce bills even in places where it should. I’m saying here there is no room to complain to the religious court for not compelling him. You can’t compel him. Because here you’ll beat him until he says, “I want to,” and he’ll say, “I want to,” so that you’ll stop beating him. But obviously he does not really want to fulfill what the Torah says, because he is not committed to the Torah in other contexts either, not only in the place where he hates his wife. Side… okay…

[Speaker B] And that’s what you said at the foundation, a moral person. Now, a moral person—here it’s obvious to me that morally they tell me, “A woman like this is not permitted.” Okay, same-same. Why should that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the question is whether you think there really is such a moral rule. I don’t know. Here it’s a halakhic obligation, not a moral obligation. The obligation is a completely halakhic obligation to divorce her. Not a moral obligation. Okay? Now, I don’t know—where there is a moral obligation, maybe you’re right, but where the consideration is a halakhic consideration, you can’t compel someone who is not committed to Jewish law. Someone who is committed to Jewish law—compulsion is perfectly logical. There is no mysticism here at all. The practical difference is that you can’t activate this mechanism on someone who isn’t committed to Jewish law. Someone who goes in the mystical direction says that inside every Jew there is some point where he really wants to keep Jewish law, even if on the outside it looks like he doesn’t. So he says, fine, if you beat him, that point will come out. Always “he who spares the rod hates his son”; beating them a little won’t hurt. So in the end it will come out. Okay? That’s the mysticism. And then he says: it doesn’t matter who the person is, because deep down there is always that point. But I don’t think that’s true. There’s no need to reach mystical explanations, and the practical difference is that you can’t compel a person who is not committed to Jewish law.

But why? Why? Why specifically in this case? Because he’s angry, exactly. But now the question is… no, and if he says that, it may be that even then it won’t help to compel him until he says, “I want to.” I’m willing to accept that, it doesn’t matter, but that’s usually not the situation. Usually the person does not say, “I’m violating Jewish law”; he makes a rationalization for himself. A person often—almost every person who commits a sin, does something, a moral sin or a halakhic sin, it doesn’t matter—has, he makes for himself some rationalization as to why actually this is the right thing to do. Usually you don’t work against your own morality, except when you wrap it in various layers. What? It becomes like permitted to him—the idea is that he builds himself a theory that it’s permitted. Yes. The effect is a psychological effect, but it’s a psychology that also creates philosophy; meaning, in the end a person is a creature that also works with the intellect, not only with desires, he’s not an animal. Now sometimes the intellect is enslaved to the desires, but fine, it’s still like that.

So I just want to finish with two or three final points; let’s leave Anselm already because that really is too much. One remark is that simply the difference between thinking the thing itself and thinking the sentence that describes the thing—the distinction I made earlier—there is an interesting dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) on this subject. There is a Rashba in Berakhot 15 from whom it appears that human beings do not think verbally. Meaning, I think that’s not the correct interpretation, but there are later authorities (Acharonim) who understand him that way. The claim is that if there is a rule to say something only in the holy tongue, that means you have to utter it with your mouth. I don’t need another source to explain that you have to say it out loud. Because if it were a rule about thought, then it wouldn’t make sense to talk about in what language you do the thinking. There is no language in thought. Thought is about the ideas themselves, not through a verbal description of them. That is Rashba’s claim according to some later authorities. Not true in my opinion, and not true in Rashba either; factually it is certainly not true, but I think Rashba also doesn’t necessarily mean that—still, that is how some later authorities understood him. In my opinion what Rashba means to say—I may as well say it now—what Rashba means to say is that if the law is a law about thought, then Jewish law will not insist on what language you do it in. It’s not that in thought there is no language, but rather that Jewish law doesn’t care what language you think in. Jewish law does care what language you speak in. That is Rashba’s claim. You can accept it or not accept it, but that is Rashba’s claim.

And against this there is Tosafot in Shabbat 150—the Rosh comments on this—where Tosafot says that when one thinks in the bathroom, when one thinks words of Torah, it is forbidden to think in Hebrew but permitted to think in other languages. So you see that there is thought in one language or another, and from this they make disputes among medieval authorities (Rishonim), and so on. Yes, many things. “These may be said in any language,” chapter seven of Sotah, in the first Mishnah there. So the claim is that the question whether you can think sentences whose content you do not stand behind basically means that you are thinking only the verbal dimension of the matter. But even when you think the content itself, you can think it through the verbal description of that content, or think the content itself. It may be that this too is possible, not by means of language. What? Not necessarily visualizing it. You can also think intellectually about the thing. Not necessarily in words, but to think the thing itself intellectually, not visually. There is a book by the Damasio couple, well-known brain researchers, I think it’s called Descartes’ Error, where they talk about this a bit, also studies in neuroscience about what happens in verbal thought and non-verbal thought and the like. Okay, that’s one remark.

A second remark is that if indeed the person who was persuaded by an argument was basically already holding that position beforehand, think what that means, for example, about the claims that are wary of intellectual investigation of faith. Yes? Those who advocate what’s called simple faith, and don’t want arguments and philosophy and all sorts of such things. What are they afraid of? That if you enter philosophy, you’ll reach the conclusion that there is no God, right? But that basically means that from the beginning you thought there was no God, you just hadn’t brought it from potential to actuality. So what, is it better to remain a disguised atheist? It could be, but I’m not inclined to think so. And therefore this insight has many implications. It basically means that someone who becomes convinced that there is no God—he too always thought there was no God. This claim is a logical claim; it doesn’t matter what the conclusion of the logical argument is, whether there is a God or there is no God. Okay? It’s the same claim. Therefore it puts all these fears of philosophical inquiry into faith under a question mark, because in the end you’re only keeping yourself hidden from yourself. That’s all. You’re not turning from atheist to believer or vice versa; you simply don’t know what you have inside. That’s all.

On the other hand, it is clear that in the end what determines things is what the person consciously thinks, and not what is sitting deep inside him in some raw, undeveloped sense. So I’m not rejecting it out of hand, only drawing attention to this distinction. Think about someone who really is an atheist but is moral. Okay? Now, so I say that if he is moral, then implicitly he also believes in God. Right? Now suppose he put on tefillin—the Chabad people caught him and bothered him enough, and he puts on tefillin at the stand. Okay? And now the story doesn’t end. In the afternoon he repents. Did he fulfill the commandment of tefillin—does he need to put on tefillin again, or did he fulfill the commandment of tefillin in the morning with the Chabad people? So I claim that if he is an atheist, he has to put on tefillin again. He did not fulfill the commandment of tefillin. Because commandments require faith; if you do not believe, you did not fulfill the commandment. But but but but what about someone like this who is a moral person, so implicitly he does believe—did he fulfill a commandment when he put on tefillin? Good question. I tend to think not. I tend to think not, because in the end, when you judge a person, you judge him according to his conscious beliefs and not according to some things that are sitting in the… where? This mysticism that inside everyone? Yes, maybe. No, if it’s not mysticism, it’s very unlikely. If it’s not mysticism, then why should someone who never heard about God, never thought about God, never considered the matter at all—why assume that deep down inside he believes there is a God? That’s not likely. So apparently he’ll understand that his morality was mistaken—that’s what I think. At the very least, you can’t assume that that isn’t the case and instead the mistake lies in belief in God. So okay, let’s stop here.