Faith and Its Meaning – Lesson 22
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- The proof from morality and the logical structure
- Marx, “opium for the masses,” and the difference between pragmatism and exposing assumptions
- Natural law, human tendencies, and the naturalistic fallacy
- Kant: the categories of the categorical imperative versus the content of the imperative
- Claims, sentences, logical positivism, and the problem of “murder is forbidden”
- Descriptive pluralism versus the normative question of moral truth
- David Enoch’s “spinach test” and the distinction between the subjective and the objective
- Aesthetics, Bach, Abd al-Wahhab, and the attempt to extract an objective dimension
- Morality as circumstance-dependent with objective truth in an “if-then” form
- An analogy to logic and Jewish law: the objective element is the relation, not the details
- Ethical realism, “moral facts,” and observation through the eyes of the intellect
- The debate with David Enoch about the need for God
- Ari Elon: “the rabbinic person” versus “the sovereign person,” and a critique of sovereignty
- Moral progress, Abraham our forefather, slaves, and the analogy to science
- The theological conclusion and defining God’s role
Summary
General Overview
The text presents an ethical argument in a logical form according to which if there is no God, morality has no validity; but there is valid morality, and therefore the conclusion is that there is a God. It emphasizes that this is not a pragmatic argument in the style of “let’s adopt God so that there will be morality,” but rather an expositional one: whoever holds that morality is truly binding is already implicitly committed to the assumption of God. The author distinguishes between facts and norms by means of the naturalistic fallacy, and argues that binding morality requires ethical realism, that is, the existence of “moral facts” that are not derived from natural facts and do not depend on social agreement. He then uses Kant to distinguish between the question of whether the moral imperative is categorical and objective, and the question of what its content is, and concludes by arguing that God is required for the binding validity of morality, though not necessarily for determining its content.
The proof from morality and the logical structure
The argument is presented as follows: if there is no God, then there is no valid morality; but there is valid morality; therefore there is a God. The logical distinction is established through the rule of inference according to which if A implies B, then one may infer from not-B to not-A, and therefore from “if there is no God then there is no morality” it follows that “if there is morality then there is a God.” The argument is presented as logically valid, but it is mistakenly perceived as question-begging because it sounds like a pragmatic argument that invents God in order to gain “moral services.”
Marx, “opium for the masses,” and the difference between pragmatism and exposing assumptions
Marx is presented as correct in that for many people religious faith is “opium for the masses,” something that calms them and gives them a sense of order and protection. The author distinguishes this from his own argument by saying that he is not claiming “I want morality, therefore I will assume God,” but rather assumes that there is valid morality and then concludes that whoever holds this assumption is committed to the assumption of God. The argument does not prove to a person that there is a God; rather, it tries to show a person who holds that morality is valid that he already believes in God implicitly, and therefore must choose between only two options: “there is no God and there is no morality,” or “there is a God and there is morality,” while the option “there is no God and there is morality” is ruled out.
Natural law, human tendencies, and the naturalistic fallacy
The text rejects the possibility that morality is a law of nature like gravity, because a law of nature compels compliance with no possibility of violation, whereas morality allows choice and violation. It clarifies that the claim that human beings have a tendency to do good, or a tendency not to murder, is a factual claim, but it cannot justify a norm, because facts do not generate values. Even if there is a “good inclination,” the gap between a natural tendency and the binding validity of moral values is presented as enormous.
Kant: the categories of the categorical imperative versus the content of the imperative
Kant is presented as holding two different claims: one is that the moral imperative is categorical, absolute, and objective, and therefore not a subjective emotion; the second is what the content of the imperative is. The text clarifies that utilitarianism deals with the possible content of the categorical imperative, not with the question of whether the imperative is categorical, and therefore utilitarianism can fit with Kantianism so long as utility is not “the reason to be moral” but rather the definition of what morality requires. A central Kantian formulation is cited: the moral act is an act that a person would want to become a general law according to which all human beings would act.
Claims, sentences, logical positivism, and the problem of “murder is forbidden”
The text distinguishes between sentences and claims that can be judged true or false by comparing them to a state of affairs in the world, and presents the position of logical positivism, according to which a sentence that cannot be empirically tested is a meaningless “pseudo-claim.” Against that background, the question arises whether “murder is forbidden” is a claim, and the text presents a difficulty: there is no external observation that can determine the truth or falsity of a moral prohibition as such, in contrast to descriptive claims like “Israeli law forbids murder” or “people think murder is forbidden.” The tension is formulated this way: people tend on the one hand to say that morality is subjective, and on the other hand to condemn a murderer as if there were objective moral truth, and the text presents this as an inconsistency.
Descriptive pluralism versus the normative question of moral truth
The text attacks the use of descriptive pluralism as proof of moral relativism, arguing that the fact that different groups hold different norms is a sociological fact that does not decide who is right. The normative question is presented as “are the Eskimos right or am I right,” and the position is that one of the positions is correct and one is mistaken even if there is no empirical way to decide. Moral monism is defined as the position that at least in some questions there is one correct answer, even if there are questions in which several courses of action may be acceptable.
David Enoch’s “spinach test” and the distinction between the subjective and the objective
David Enoch is presented as proposing the “spinach test,” in which a statement like “how good that I don’t like spinach, because if I liked it I’d eat it, and spinach is disgusting” is absurd, because it judges one subjective taste from the standpoint of another taste. By contrast, a statement like “how good that I live today and not in the tenth century, because today I know quantum theory and relativity” is not perceived as absurd, because the scientific truths were true then as well. The text then argues that a statement like “how good that I live today and not in the eighteenth century, because then I would have enslaved slaves and discriminated against women” is also not funny, and therefore points to a perception of moral prohibitions as objective, similar to scientific truths.
Aesthetics, Bach, Abd al-Wahhab, and the attempt to extract an objective dimension
The text examines a postmodern claim according to which musical evaluation is a function of taste, so one could “program” a community to see Schubert as the great genius, thereby making Bach circumstance-dependent. Against this, it proposes a distinction according to which musical genius is evident in the ability to succeed with “randomly selected” audiences and across foreign cultures, and therefore there are objective dimensions in ability even if expression is circumstance-dependent. This distinction is extended to aesthetics in general and to the thought that the objective dimension may be the “if-then” relation between circumstances and the correct product, rather than a uniform product that is not culture-dependent.
Morality as circumstance-dependent with objective truth in an “if-then” form
The text presents a model in which objective morality does not require uniform behavior in every culture, but rather determines that there is one correct answer given certain circumstances. The example of modesty in Jewish law is brought to argue that the application changes according to circumstances, but the dependence between the circumstances and the norm is objective. The example of the Eskimos is also presented as a possibility according to which taking the elderly out into the snow may be the humane solution under certain conditions, and this does not prove subjectivity but circumstance-dependence of the same principle.
An analogy to logic and Jewish law: the objective element is the relation, not the details
In logic, it is argued that objectivity does not lie in the content of the premises but in the necessary derivation of the conclusion from the premises, that is, in the skeleton of “if-then.” In Jewish law, it is argued in parallel that Jewish law is not a fixed “bottom line” but a function of circumstances, and the example of “there is a presumption that a person does not repay a debt before its due date” is presented as something dependent on human reality, where the validity lies in the relation between the circumstances and the ruling, not in an eternal descriptive datum. The text claims that this move is valid for ethics and aesthetics as well, where the content-laden language is misleading but the underlying structure rests on the relation between circumstance and norm.
Ethical realism, “moral facts,” and observation through the eyes of the intellect
The text argues that a conception of binding morality requires assuming “moral facts,” and therefore ethical realism, in which “murder is forbidden” is a true claim similar to a scientific claim. The justification is presented as non-sensory observation, “through the eyes of the intellect,” of the idea of the good from which norms derive, and the text argues that whoever accepts valid morality is a “hidden mystic,” because he is committed to a kind of observation that is not empirical. The rejection of explanations based on social convention, sociology, or evolution is presented as an escape from commitment to this mechanism, and the position is that if one rejects it, one reaches the conclusion that there is no valid morality.
The debate with David Enoch about the need for God
David Enoch is presented as arguing that moral facts simply exist “out there” without any need for God to validate them. The author replies that one can always escape logical difficulties by declaring an axiom, but presents his own position that if there is moral realism, then God is required as the background for its binding validity. He notes that the two of them had a debate and defines the heart of the disagreement as a dispute with someone who is both a moral realist and an atheist.
Ari Elon: “the rabbinic person” versus “the sovereign person,” and a critique of sovereignty
Ari Elon is presented as distinguishing between “the rabbinic person,” who is subject to an external law, and “the sovereign person,” who legislates his own values for himself. The text examines this through the example of a “hired murderer” who legislates his own values, in contrast to a moral figure like Mother Teresa, and argues that the distinction cannot determine who is good and who is bad without an external standard that is not itself the product of self-legislation. Sovereignty is presented as belonging to the choice whether to go with good or evil, while the determination of good and evil themselves is presented as an objective given, and only afterward is there room for autonomy.
Moral progress, Abraham our forefather, slaves, and the analogy to science
The text responds to the difficulty of how great figures in the past held slaves by saying that there is moral progress, similar to progress in science, and that circumstances may prevent full recognition of moral principles even among people with high “moral capacities.” It presents the possibility that something was “not okay,” but beyond the understanding of people of that generation, just as sages in the past did not know later scientific theories. The claim is that morality, like science, advances through observation with the eyes of the intellect, formulation of rules, and their application, even though it does not involve empirical falsification.
The theological conclusion and defining God’s role
The text concludes that the proof from morality depends on understanding valid morality as objective and binding, and therefore as requiring a transcendent external source with authority that gives validity to moral rules. It returns to the dichotomy according to which one may choose “there is no God and there is no valid morality” or “there is a God and there is valid morality,” but one cannot hold “there is no God and there is valid morality.” Finally, it argues that up to this point we are dealing with the “categories of morality” according to Kant, and that later the question of the content of morality will be discussed, with the preliminary claim that God gives binding validity but does not necessarily determine what is moral and what is not, because the contents are not arbitrarily “set” but are binding even on Him.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time we got a little into the proof from morality, and at the end of the lecture I just tried to close the circle so the picture would be complete. Now I’ll try to flesh it out a bit more, or fill it in. We talked a bit about the nature of morality. We saw that morality is some kind of response to a command, and not just that—it isn’t defined merely on the basis of the action itself; motives are also needed. On the other hand there’s the naturalistic connection, meaning you can’t derive moral norms from facts. It comes from somewhere else. And because of that, the claim was—and I’ll really do this briefly—the claim was that you can build an argument with a theological or expositional structure, like we did with the argument from epistemology. Here it’s the argument from ethics, which basically says that if there is no God, then there can be no validity to moral rules. But there is validity to moral rules, therefore the conclusion is that there is a God. We talked about the fact that in implication, if A implies B, then you can’t infer from that that not-A implies not-B, but you can infer that not-B implies not-A. And therefore, if I say, let’s say, that A is “there is no God,” and B is “there is no morality,” okay? Then A implies B. If there is no God, there is no morality—that means there can’t be morality without God. What follows from that? That if not-B, then not-A. Meaning, if there is not-B—that is, there is morality, valid morality—the conclusion is not-A, meaning there is a God. A is “there is no God,” right. So therefore, therefore this is in fact a logically valid argument. Contrary to what people usually think about arguments of this type, it is a logically valid argument. But why is the feeling somehow that it goes backward? That it’s theological, that it begs the question? Because basically it sounds to us like some kind of pragmatic argument, meaning a pragmatist one. It basically says: okay, let’s adopt God, because otherwise there won’t be morality here and it’ll be awful to live here. That basically means we invent God so He can provide us with moral services, okay? That’s the principle—like Marx said, yes, that faith or religious faith is opium for the masses, and he’s right, of course. Meaning, for a great many people, faith is just opium. It comes to calm them down, it comes to help them, it comes to tell them the world is okay, someone is taking care of you, don’t worry, you’re not alone here, or that there is morality, and all that—that really is opium for the masses. Now, the opium-for-the-masses thing is very similar to the argument I’m talking about here, but the difference is critical, exactly as I said about the argument from epistemology. I’m not saying: since I want there to be morality, moral conduct and so on, therefore let’s invent God. Meaning, let’s assume there is a God so that this will give us a more moral world. No. I’m saying that without God there is no morality—that’s true. Now what happens from here on? My claim is that there is valid morality. That’s an assumption. Not that I want there to be valid morality—I’m claiming that there is. Morality really is valid. I ask myself, wait a second—this is my immediate feeling. I have some immediate perception that moral norms are binding, that they are valid. And then I ask myself, I work backward, and I ask: wait, but if there is no God then there wouldn’t be valid morality, because there can’t be valid morality without God. So if my assumption is that there is valid morality, then apparently I also implicitly believe in God; apparently there is a God. And once again, with all the limitations of a theological proof, a theological argument, which means: true, you can say, okay, you’re right, you convinced me—there is no morality and there is no God. I can’t prove to a person that there is a God. What I can prove to him is that he believes in God. He may be mistaken, but I can prove to him: if you think there is valid morality, then you basically believe in God. Now do your soul-searching—either you give up both, or you embrace both, but you can’t embrace one and give up the other, just like with the train to Scotland. You can say it was arranged by chance and then draw no conclusion from it, from the stones spelling something out, right? You can assume it was arranged intentionally and then say, okay, apparently we reached Scotland. You can’t say it was arranged by chance, but if it’s written out then we reached Scotland. That can’t be. Same thing here. Meaning, you can say there is no God and there is no morality; you can say there is a God and there is morality; you can’t say there is no God and there is morality. That can’t be. That is not an option. So this doesn’t prove that there is a God; it only forces you to choose between two options and rules out the third. Maybe that’s—
[Speaker C] A law of nature? Meaning, morality is a law like nature, like gravity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But with gravity I have no choice—I have to obey it, because I have no option not to obey. But with morality I do have the option not to.
[Speaker C] The fact that it doesn’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that it happens is a fact. I’m asking why it shouldn’t happen, or why—why it isn’t fitting that it happen. No, don’t ask me—I said, the fact that human beings behave morally is no proof of anything. Is it a law of nature? No, and it’s not a law of nature. What is a law of nature? A law of nature is that maybe we have a tendency to be moral. Fine. We also have a law of nature that we have a tendency to speak slander. So does that mean it’s good to speak slander? What does one thing have to do with the other? The fact that we have a tendency toward something doesn’t mean that’s what we ought to do. And all of that is said factually: we have such a tendency. Right, obviously. We have a good inclination. Meaning, we have a tendency to do good—that’s obvious, almost everyone has it. Okay, so from there to giving validity to moral principles or to moral values, the distance is enormous. Meaning, facts do not generate values; that’s the naturalistic fallacy. An immediate perception that morality is valid. How do you know there’s a wall here? Law of nature.
[Speaker C] How do you know there’s a wall here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because you see it.
[Speaker C] Right, but morality you don’t see.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I do see it. I see it with the eyes of the intellect, not with physical eyes. I see with my conscience, with my abstract conceptions. But I simply see that morality is valid—I “see,” in quotes, that morality is valid. Now I ask myself, okay, but how can that be? After all, without God it can’t be that morality is valid. So apparently there really is a God. Even though I don’t see that there is a God with the eyes of the intellect, and that’s why I need an argument to prove it to me.
[Speaker C] The ancients invented God, invented laws, and little by little trained people into them, and genetics. A possible hypothesis, a possible hypothesis.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I’m saying—you have to decide. You can say, I have such a feeling, but it really has no validity and nothing at all, and then you can remain an atheist, correct. But if you think it has validity, you don’t accept that they invented it and passed it down to us and genetics and all that, and you think it has validity, moral values, then you are assuming there is a God. That’s why I say: this places you at a crossroads where you have to choose one of two paths. It doesn’t tell you which of the two to choose. It only tells you that there is no third one. You think there could be a third one: I won’t believe in God, and nevertheless morality is valid. No—there is no such path. At this crossroads there are only two paths, not three. And between those two you have to decide what you choose—what you think, not what you choose, but what you think is true. Okay? So that’s the framework. Now I want to go into the matter a bit more. We began with Kant’s categorical imperative. Kant’s categorical imperative basically says, first of all, that Kant’s claim around the categorical imperative is divided into two parts. One claim is that the moral imperative is a categorical imperative. That’s a categorical claim, meaning: to what category does the moral imperative belong? It belongs to the category of absolute categorical claims. Okay? What does that mean? It means that morality is not subjective, it’s not emotion, it’s not—rather, it is something objectively binding. It is a categorical imperative. Someone who doesn’t follow it is not okay. Yes, if I were to say this is a subjective matter—I do it because that’s how I feel, and he doesn’t do it because he doesn’t feel that way—then I couldn’t have any claim against him, right? If I do have a claim against him, that means the imperative is categorical; it binds everyone. It’s not just something that happens to be my feeling, or that I have such a tendency, and so on. So that is Kant’s first claim: that the imperative is categorical, or that it is not a subjective emotion; it is an objective claim. Okay, in a moment I’ll sharpen that a bit more. Kant’s second claim is: what is the content of the categorical imperative? Right, there is a categorical imperative, that’s clear. Meaning, without that there is no morality. Okay, now what does this categorical imperative say? Here too there are various suggestions. For example: do the act that will bring the maximum benefit to the maximum number of people, or to the maximum number of creatures, or to the maximum—there are different formulations—or to the maximum benefit for yourself. There are different formulations; even egoism is often presented as a thesis, as a moral position. Meaning: my moral position, my moral approach, is to do what will bring me the greatest benefit. Okay? So that, for example, is a utilitarian approach. Now I want to sharpen the point specifically through the utilitarian approach. If I tell you, look, don’t murder because murder causes harm—meaning, the family is miserable, they feel terrible, and so on—okay? That’s an invalid argument. Right? Because of the naturalistic fallacy. The fact that it causes suffering is a fact. The fact that murder is forbidden is a norm. You can’t derive a norm from a fact. Therefore even someone who accepts the utilitarian approach can still be Kantian. What does he mean? I do the thing that will bring maximum benefit to the maximum number of people. Why do I do that? Not because it brings benefit. The fact that it brings benefit is a fact. I do it because one must be moral. Only what is the content of being moral—what is it to be moral? To bring maximum benefit to the maximum number of people. Do you understand the distinction? A lot of philosophers get confused about this. People think utilitarianism is incompatible with Kantianism. Not true. Utilitarianism addresses the question of what the content of the categorical imperative is. Kantianism only says that the imperative must be categorical. Okay? Otherwise it’s not morality. If you do things just because your feelings tell you to, that isn’t morality. More than that: if you do things because—whatever the because is—then it’s no longer morality. Meaning, you have to do things just because that’s what morality says. The word “because” appears here in an extended sense, meaning just so—meaning because this is what is moral and this is what should be done. You don’t need a principle outside morality in order to ground morality. Once I’ve defined something as a moral principle, that’s enough to explain why one should act that way. Okay? So therefore the question whether we adopt utilitarianism or not has nothing to do with the question whether morality is self-interested or not self-interested, categorical or not categorical. Those are two different questions. I can hold a utilitarian approach and say, I do it because it brings benefit, and I’m simply acting out of self-interest. Maybe self-interest for the public at large—I act for the sake of benefit. Benefit is what causes me to act. That is not compatible with Kantian morality. But another kind of utilitarianism can be compatible with Kantian morality. A utilitarianism that says: I do what will bring maximum benefit to the maximum number of people. Why do I do that? There is a categorical imperative requiring moral behavior. The content of morality is to do actions that bring maximum benefit to the maximum number of people. And that is the content of morality; it is not a justification for why one should be moral. Those are two different things. It’s really the halakhic distinction between definition and reason. People always ask, wait a second, are you deriving the rationale of the verse? No, no, that’s the definition, not the reason. Everything’s fine. Basically you take a reason and say, no no, that’s not a reason, that’s the definition, and everything is fine. It’s like you take a question mark and stretch it out and turn the question mark into an exclamation point. Now from a question it became an answer. Okay? A lot of the time—we have a very nice bit by Kobi, Jackie Levy—Jackie Levy. He explains what? He has some bit about preachers in synagogue. He says, you can say the same thing, he repeats exactly the same thing but with a different tune, and now it’s an answer. Before it was a question, and now it’s an answer. It’s wonderful. You should look for it—I don’t remember anymore how to search for it. But in any case, the point is that beyond the question whether morality is categorical, we also need to ask ourselves what the content of morality is. Now Kant adopts a thesis regarding the content of the categorical imperative that is not specifically utilitarian. We’ll talk about that a bit later, but it isn’t necessarily utilitarian; it’s something else. What is it? So he does some philosophical gymnastics for that, but the end result is that you should act in such a way that you would want your action to become a general law. And you should do something that you would want all people in the world to behave accordingly. That is the criterion for whether the act you are doing is indeed moral. Meaning, if you’re in a dilemma whether to do this act or not, do the calculation in your head. Let’s say all human beings do this act—is that a good world? Yes. Better than if all human beings did the other act? If yes, then that is what I should do. Okay? That’s basically Kant’s thesis in a nutshell. But that is the content of the categorical imperative. It has nothing to do with its categories. The content of the categorical imperative is: do all your actions according to what you would want to become a general law. There are several formulations in Kant and there are differences between them, but that’s the principle. Now I want to expand a bit on these two Kantian claims. First I want to talk about the categories of the matter. What exactly does that mean? So look. In philosophy we usually distinguish—in logic we distinguish—between sentences and claims. Or claims are a special group of sentences. A certain species within the genus of sentences. What characterizes claims? They are sentences that can be judged in terms of truth or falsity. Okay? Let’s say I say there’s a phone here—that’s a claim, right? Because either it’s true or it’s false. I say this lectern has wings—that’s a claim. A false claim in this case, but it’s a claim. Now, how do I determine whether a given claim is true or false? Usually the accepted view—and again, a thousand philosophies, oceans of philosophy have been written about this—but usually this is based on comparison. If I make a claim and want to check whether it is true or false, I need to compare the claim to the state of affairs in the world that it describes. For example, if I now say that this lectern has wings, how do I know whether that is true or false? I simply look. If it has wings, it’s true; if it doesn’t have wings, it’s false. Okay? So the way to determine whether a claim is true or false is by comparison. Observation, comparison, whatever. Now there are philosophical approaches that take this definition of a claim a bit too far, in my opinion. What do I mean? For example, they say: suppose I say, I have a claim—the number of ants in the world is, I don’t know, one hundred billion. For example. Is that a claim or not? Yes, yes. On the face of it, yes, right? Meaning either it’s true or false. Maybe I have no way to know, but it’s either true or false. Now the logical positivists say no. It’s a pseudo-claim; it’s not a claim. Why? Because if I have no practical way to observe and test it empirically, then it claims nothing. Because again, they took the idea that in order to determine that a certain sentence is a claim, it must be judged in terms of truth or falsity. And after all, the judgment of truth or falsity is made by comparison—empirical observation and comparison, right? Now here you can’t make the observation and the comparison, so it’s not a claim. Now of course, you can define things this way—not a claim or yes a claim—that’s just definitions. But I think this is an artificial definition. In the simple sense it is obviously a claim. It’s a claim because it is either true or false. So what if I don’t know? I don’t know the theory of relativity either—so does that mean it’s not a claim? What does one thing have to do with the other? Or maybe I do know relativity, but I don’t know the unification of relativity and quantum mechanics—nobody knows it yet, they’re still working on it. Okay? So what does that mean? That there is no truth on the matter? If someone were to state that claim, it wouldn’t be true because I have no way of knowing it?
[Speaker C] Yes, you could even say—suppose someone tells you—if you eat cheese on Tuesday, then you’ll have a headache at age eighty.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so that’s a claim. Either true or false. Check it, or don’t check it, but it’s a claim.
[Speaker C] Now that’s just nonsense, like a person tells you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Check it. Eat cheese on Tuesday and see whether you get a headache. Why is that nonsense?
[Speaker C] Well, take a billion people and now start doing an experiment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes! What’s the problem? I don’t understand. If you don’t want to, if it bores you, then don’t do it, but you can do such an experiment. If you can do such an experiment, then it’s a claim. Fine? And what I want to say is that even if you can’t do such an experiment, it’s still a claim. As long as hypothetically there is a way to determine whether it’s true or false, it’s a claim. That’s what the logical positivists don’t accept. Based on what? Everything impossible? No, everything impossible. We have no way to measure it.
[Speaker E] I don’t know, but if we take a number of ants, remove them from the total, count how many ants remain, and then if you’re right, tell me that there remained one hundred billion minus eight, and I really removed eight, that’s a sign that you were right. If not, then you were wrong.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, who’s going to say—how do you know there were one hundred billion before you removed them? What? How do you know there were one hundred billion before you removed them? Well, again, this isn’t… Or to say that the difference between what exists now and what existed before is eight. Fine, it’s obvious that this isn’t… okay, never mind, these are hairsplittings. In the end, the important point really is the distinction between claims and sentences.
[Speaker C] And that’s everything religion talks about—it makes claims you can’t check. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And therefore the claim of the logical positivists—Tarski and his gang—is that all metaphysics and religion and all that are not false claims. They are pseudo-claims. They simply claim nothing. Metaphysical claims—whether there are angels or there aren’t angels—I’m not arguing with you about whether you’re right or wrong or whether you have evidence or not. You said nothing; I heard nothing. You moved your lips, but you didn’t say anything. He calls these pseudo-claims; they aren’t claims at all. So they look like claims to you, but they aren’t. It only seems that way to you. Okay? Fine, that really is the extreme end. So what are the hairsplittings? No, it’s not superstition—it means nothing. When you say there are a billion ants, what I really translate that into is: perform such-and-such an action, count, and you’ll arrive at a billion. That’s the translation of “there are a billion ants.” Now if that’s the translation, then there is no translation, because you have no way to perform an action and arrive at a billion. Yes, and therefore if there’s no translation, then no—the sentence is meaningless, it has no meaning. And for them only empirical meaning is meaning. Now we can discuss the question whether the claim “murder is forbidden” is a claim. What do you say? If I say “murder is forbidden under Israeli law,” that’s a claim, right? You can simply check the law books and see. So here you can make a comparison and reach a conclusion whether it’s true or false. By the way, that one is false. There is no law saying murder is forbidden. Whoever murders, his punishment is such and such—that’s what is written in the criminal code. It doesn’t say murder is forbidden. In any case, I’m talking about “murder is forbidden under Israeli law.” That really is a descriptive sentence. Like under Indonesian law—it doesn’t matter. It’s a claim about what happens somewhere. Or: human beings generally think murder is forbidden. That too is a claim. You can simply check people and ask them what they think. Right? That too is a claim. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the claim “murder is forbidden,” period. Fine? Is that a claim? Why apparently? From where do you infer the—
[Speaker D] Where can you check it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Huh? You’re a logical positivist. With the ants you agreed that it’s a claim, that there are one hundred billion ants in the world. Is that a claim? You can’t check it. So you agree with me that the positivists don’t define claims in a sensible way, right? So leave the positivists aside. Now I’m asking according to the truth, not according to positivism. Is the sentence “murder is forbidden” a claim? In my intuition—
[Speaker C] Yes, I understand all that, but I still think it’s not a claim.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not a claim. Why? Because if you want to check whether it’s true or false, what are you going to compare it to? What will you observe? There’s nothing to observe. You can’t look in a law book, because I’m not making a claim about what happens in a law book. I’m making a moral claim: murder is forbidden. And what am I going to observe? I can’t observe anything. Therefore it’s not a claim. Right? And what does it mean that this thing is not a claim? It basically means there is nothing outside us that really says murder is forbidden. But if that’s so, then why really is murder forbidden? Is murder really forbidden? Not in circumstances? Not in circumstances—under given circumstances.
[Speaker C] Is it really forbidden?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Don’t run away. Huh? Why? On what basis do you determine that?
[Speaker C] That’s just how it came out.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, that’s just how it came out? On what basis do you determine that? It’s not a claim. It’s not a claim, so what is it then if it’s not a claim? You say, listen, I don’t have an external standard against which I compare and check whether murder is forbidden or permitted, right? Rather what? That’s how I feel inside, some feeling built into me, I don’t know—
[Speaker C] Exactly, what about evolution, I don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Human beings throughout history came to the conclusion that—
[Speaker C] The fact that they—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Came to what? They came to a lot of conclusions. They came to the conclusion that there are flying demons. So what? I’m asking whether it’s true, not what conclusion they came to. The conclusion they came to is a descriptive sentence. People came to the conclusion that murder is forbidden. Right, that is certainly a claim. You can check and see that they indeed came to that conclusion. I’m asking whether that conclusion—
[Speaker C] —is correct, not whether people came to the conclusion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They came to the conclusion that there is electricity—how did they come to that conclusion? There are observations. What do you mean? They worked on it and arrived there—so here too.
[Speaker C] How? How?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Exactly—look at how. I can show you how they arrived at electricity. They made observations, experiments in a laboratory, and came to the conclusion that there is electricity. And what did they do with “murder is forbidden”?
[Speaker C] They probably had tribes and one murdered the other… and what became clear?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean they didn’t progress? Who said they had to progress?
[Speaker C] Not that they didn’t progress—it doesn’t turn out well for anyone.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t turn out well—what does “well” mean?
[Speaker C] You haven’t defined for me what “well” is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re evading. You’re being circular the whole time. You won’t manage to do this without using the word “good,” and then I’ll ask you what “good” is, how you know what is good and what isn’t good. I do it because it’s good.
[Speaker C] How do you know it’s good? Because people… pain is subjective, a person feels it, but it’s objective in the sense that everyone knows how to say what pain is the way they know what white is. Most people know what “painful” means. So pain—murder is a kind of pain. So people understood that pain…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, but pain is a fact and murder is a norm. You didn’t understand me.
[Speaker C] People move away from pain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that murder causes people pain is obvious. I’m not arguing about that. That is certainly a claim.
[Speaker C] It doesn’t bring—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —them food—all those are factual claims. Factual claims that I accept. How is that related to the question whether murder is forbidden? The naturalistic fallacy. You’re bringing me a collection of facts—so what? Am I forbidden to hit you because it hurts you? No. The fact that it hurts you is a fact; the fact that I am forbidden to hit you is a norm. A norm is not derived from a fact.
[Speaker C] I got to the point that there is electricity—it’s part of the development of the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re bypassing the problem. What does “development” mean? I’m asking you to give me a justification, not how you got there historically. Give me a justification why murder is forbidden. I can give you a justification that there is electricity—turn off the switch, and there’s your justification.
[Speaker C] No, but I’m showing you how you got to it in the first place.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why do I care how I got to it? Ask historians how we got there. Why should I care right now? I can justify to you that there is electricity here—how? I’ll switch it off and you’ll see there’s no light; I’ll switch it on and there will be light; so I’ll say there is electricity. Which is what had to be proved. Now do the same experiment for “murder is forbidden.”
[Speaker C] We’ll put people on an island and I’ll tell them they’re allowed—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —to murder each other, and then they’ll murder each other. They’ll murder each other, excellent, and everything will be fine.
[Speaker C] So what’s the problem then?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So they’ll murder each other, and then what? How will you reach a conclusion? What’s your criterion? When has the experiment failed? When has it succeeded?
[Speaker C] There won’t be anyone left to tell about it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There won’t be anyone left to tell about it, so there won’t be—so what? How do you decide what’s permitted and what’s forbidden, what’s good and what’s bad? The last one will always remain, unless he shoots himself. That’s Josephus.
[Speaker C] He also wants to kill.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Josephus Flavius, yes. He’s the last one left. There’s no way to measure something, to observe something, in order to check whether something is bad or good. You can observe facts, you can say that murder causes people pain, harms people, you can say that people don’t remain alive if you murder them—an interesting claim. But from there to saying that murder is bad—how? All of those are facts. “Murder is bad” is a normative judgment. You can’t derive a judgment from facts.
[Speaker C] Let’s assume that before Newton people didn’t know the laws of gravity, they didn’t know the laws, but if they saw a stone falling, they understood that there was some kind of something here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Very good, so—
[Speaker C] The same thing happened with murder. You still don’t know the law, you still don’t know…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It has nothing to do with knowing the law.
[Speaker C] There’s apparently some law that operates on…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What law? What do you mean, a law? But this isn’t a physical law; I can murder.
[Speaker C] You can, but apparently it isn’t good for us as…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And is it a physical law that it isn’t good for us?
[Speaker C] What, that it won’t lead to the survival of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It won’t lead to survival—so what? Who said it’s good to lead to survival? You always have to assume some premise about what is good and what is bad. You can’t ground a norm in facts. Not good for survival, yes good for survival—those are facts. Painful, not painful—those are facts. You can’t ground good or bad in facts. That’s the naturalistic fallacy. That’s the starting point of the whole game, the whole Kantian move, and in general. So you have to understand that if indeed we reach the conclusion that murder is forbidden, this isn’t a proposition—we’re basically ending up with relativistic morality. Subjective morality, relative morality, where everyone does whatever he feels—but there isn’t really anything objective by whose force I can come to you with complaints if you behave differently from the way I behave. Okay? And that’s not usually how we feel about morality, right? So what does it mean that it is a proposition? Against what are we supposed to compare it? Compared to what do we decide whether “murder is forbidden” is a true or false proposition, and so on? And there’s a problem here that people don’t sharpen for themselves. On the one hand, it’s very convenient for everyone to say, no, this isn’t a proposition, it’s subjective. On the other hand, it’s obvious that murder is forbidden, and if someone murders, you’ll rebuke him, you’ll say, what do you mean—you’re behaving immorally.
[Speaker C] In a world where, let’s say, the Nazis had won the Second World War…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again you’re giving me facts. If the Nazis had won, we all would have been mistaken and thought that murder was permitted. So what? It still would have been forbidden to murder, and we all would have been wrong. Those are facts. What we think is a fact. I’m asking what is true. Is murder forbidden or not? Even in Sodom, where everyone murdered, it was still forbidden to murder. And the fact that everyone murdered is a fact, or that no one murders—that too is a fact. Neither of those two facts says anything about the question of whether murder is permitted or forbidden. Because those are facts.
[Speaker C] Maybe with a population that is forming, you’re relating…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m not relating to any population. That’s exactly the point. If I relate to a population, I’m talking about something descriptive.
[Speaker C] If you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you relate to a population, you’re talking about a descriptive claim. Say: in this population they think murder is forbidden—that is certainly a descriptive claim; check it and see. I’m not talking about that. It has nothing to do with populations. Murder is forbidden, period. Every person as such, no matter what he thinks, what he doesn’t think—if he thinks murder is permitted, then he’s mistaken. Murder is forbidden. Even if he thinks…
[Speaker C] Maybe we’re all captive to conventions…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe, maybe, it could be. But if I’m not captive to conventions, what does the claim mean? Afterward we’ll see whether I agree with it or not. The claim says that murder is forbidden on the objective level. You can say, fine, you have such an illusion, but it isn’t true. Fine, we’ll talk about that later, but first of all that’s the meaning of the statement that there is a moral prohibition against murder, right? You can’t map that onto the statement “I feel very bad when I murder,” right? That’s not it. It doesn’t mean—fine, someone else is a psychopath, he doesn’t feel bad after he murders, so is it permitted for him to murder? Right? That’s not relevant; we don’t examine it that way. So there’s a problem here that has to be addressed. When on the one hand we treat the moral law as an objective law, binding on everyone, and on the other hand the claim “murder is forbidden” is not a proposition. The sentence “murder is forbidden” is not a proposition. Because there’s nothing to compare it against. But if there’s nothing to compare it against, then everything is within us. So then what? So it is subjective? You can’t dance at two weddings. There’s something very problematic here. And a great many people live perfectly peacefully with both of these things, and it doesn’t bother them in the slightest. Okay? Fine, we already talked about this—that there are lots of people who are inconsistent, and inconsistency doesn’t bother them in the slightest. But they’re still inconsistent. And that changes nothing. As I said, I’m not dealing with descriptions; I’m dealing with judgments. If I were dealing with descriptions, I wouldn’t get very far. So the claim I want to make is basically what’s called—or maybe one sentence before that—when I talk about moral pluralism. Moral pluralism is often brought as proof that there is no single objective moral truth. Moral pluralism, meaning that there are many moral truths, is simply a comparison between different populations where you see that there are different moral norms. Among the Eskimos, they take the elderly out into the snow to freeze to death there, and among us they try to care for them, I don’t know, in assisted living, in nursing homes, all kinds of things like that. Okay? So it’s a fact that there are different norms; there are good people in both places. So that supposedly means that morality is relative. There is no absolute morality, no objective morality. Now that’s nonsense. Why is it nonsense? Because here we’re talking about descriptive pluralism. And descriptively it’s obvious that there are different populations that think differently about moral questions. That’s obvious—there are moral disputes in the world. You can’t deny that. The question I’m asking is not the descriptive question, but the normative question. The question is whether the Eskimos are right or I’m right. And the assumption is that one is right and one is wrong. Therefore the fact that there are two positions doesn’t say anything. The question whether both positions are correct does not follow from the fact that they exist. The fact that there are two positions does not mean that both are right. Fine, I ask myself. Excuse me? Yes. If you ask the Eskimos, I’ll tell you what they’ll answer. You don’t have to bother traveling there to Eskimo-land. I can answer you. I’m asking a philosophical question. Should the elderly be taken out into the snow, or should they be cared for? Okay? The claim is that there is one objective, binding answer—
[Speaker C] Even at that level of detail, even for that kind of detail.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s say so, just not… that doesn’t mean everyone will agree to it. The Eskimos will say one thing, but one is right and the other is wrong. It could be that I’m wrong, by the way, but one is right and the other is wrong. Maybe we’ll argue about who is right and who is wrong, or we’ll persuade—I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, maybe we’ll remain in dispute. And if we remain in dispute, then we have no way to decide. That still doesn’t mean there isn’t one truth. Okay? Leave the Torah aside now; I’m not speaking now from a religious Torah perspective at all, and so on. I’m talking about moral theory. Okay? Philosophical ethics. So what I’m asking now, basically, is this: the question about moral pluralism can be asked on the descriptive plane, and on the descriptive plane it’s trivial—obviously different people and different groups have different moral views. And I can ask it on the essential plane: is there one moral truth? Not whether everyone agrees about it—that is obviously not true—but is there one moral truth? And here you can argue. A pluralist will say no. A monist, who thinks there is one truth, will say yes. By the way, it could be that there are moral questions where maybe there is more than one way to act and both are fine, or several are fine, and there are moral questions where there is only one correct way and no other. From my perspective that is still monism. Pluralism is a view that says there is never more true and less true in the realm of morality. Someone who says there are open questions even in morality is not a pluralist in my view, as long as he says there are also questions for which there is one answer. Okay? That’s the definition. Therefore, when I talk about moral pluralism, or relativism as relativity, you can talk about it on the descriptive plane—how many views there are in the world; that’s a question of a scientific claim, you can check it. Okay? As opposed to the question of how many moral truths there are in principle, which is not a question that can be checked empirically. Therefore that is a normative question; the first is a factual descriptive question. Okay? And now I ask: on the normative plane, not the descriptive one, am I a pluralist or not? Do I think everyone is right in morality? Not only that there are many opinions—that there certainly are—but that all the opinions are also correct. Okay? If not, then I have to explain how that can be. Meaning, then what is the criterion? In science there can be arguments, but in the end, the experiment is supposed to decide. And when we manage to perform the experiment, it will become clear which of us was right and which was wrong. But it’s clear that in a factual scientific dispute, one is right and one is wrong.
[Speaker C] That’s my experiment: I see what, let’s say, morality—we’re going back to the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you can’t test it, because you’re testing facts. I’m not talking about the question of what people think about morality; I’m talking about the question of what is true. Not what happens in practice—what is true. I don’t care what they do, I don’t care what they think. No society lives that way and no society thinks that way—and all the societies in the world, every one of them, could have been wrong from beginning to end. “I wrote on my hand: I am sane,” like in the story of Rabbi Nachman. Yes, everyone is crazy. That still doesn’t mean I’m not sane. I’m not asking a descriptive question. I’m not asking what people thought, what people did. Newton is irrelevant, because Newton is about propositions.
[Speaker C] Understood that in time, at that time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and therefore the claim was that stones fall to the ground, and that’s perfectly fine. That’s a claim that was confirmed. No, it’s not the same to that extent, because there you can do an experiment and here you can’t do an experiment. What does this experiment confirm? It confirms that people think murder is forbidden. I’m not looking for confirmation of the claim. I have no idea. So today—it’s evolutionarily ingrained in them, I don’t know—what do I care where it came from? I’m asking whether it’s true, not where it came from. Is it true or not true? That’s the question. And here it won’t help me if you prove to me that every person in the universe thinks that way. And we talked about the wisdom of the masses, right? The wisdom of the masses means that what the masses think is probably not true until proven otherwise. That’s the wisdom of the masses. Therefore it’s always very important to use the masses in order to know the truth. Always check, you know: “the view of ordinary householders is the opposite of Torah wisdom,” as the SeMaK writes in section three. Yes, Sheinfeld was a well-known Haredi publicist, father-in-law of Sorotzki, the hagiographic writer. So he went to the Rabbi of Brisk—this is how the Haredi story goes—and the Rabbi of Brisk asked him: Tell me, how is it that you always hit upon Torah wisdom? You’re just an ordinary layman, a publicist, you’re not some great rabbi or Torah scholar—how do you get it right? So he said: What’s the problem? I go out into the street, ask a few people, and write the opposite. “The view of ordinary householders is the opposite of Torah wisdom.” Okay? Now, the problem today is that Torah wisdom is more crooked than the view of ordinary householders, but as for the principle itself, I agree. The fact that everyone thinks this way doesn’t mean anything. I’m asking what is true, not what people think. So what if everyone thinks that? I think they’re all wrong. Okay? That’s the question I’m talking about now. That’s the question I’m talking about now. Meaning, you have to understand the tension. The important tension here is the following.
[Speaker C] No, but if I look at it as a physical law—if the world was built, I mean, I’m telling you that human beings live, there is some physics like that which causes them not to murder. I just don’t know that law yet.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you’re talking to me about a descriptive statement: do people tend to murder? The answer is no. True, but that’s a descriptive claim. I’m asking whether people are forbidden to murder, not what their tendency is. Do you understand the difference between “I have a tendency to speak slander” and “it is forbidden to speak slander,” or “it’s a commandment to speak slander”? The fact that I have a tendency—does that mean it’s therefore proper to behave that way? What does one have to do with the other? So I have a tendency not to murder—does that mean it’s forbidden to murder? Why? What’s the connection? Maybe the tendency not to murder is like slander. Maybe it’s an evil inclination. Maybe something, essentially… You keep mixing up description and norms. When you talk about wars in the world, then maybe someone is basically saying that everybody fights everybody. Okay, so you see that… I see that everybody fights everybody; that’s what I see, nothing more than that. No, I keep comparing it to a law of physics that I still don’t know how it works. But I keep telling you there’s no room for that comparison; I don’t understand that comparison. What does a law of physics have to do with this? A physical law—you do an experiment and check whether it’s true or not. Right, but if you were before the experiment… if you were before, you wouldn’t know whether it was true or not. Okay, so what? So I see a thousand stones were thrown… so you did the experiment. Yes, so now there are a billion people alive, who lived over all the years, and they don’t murder one another. Fine! So that means there’s some law here… No! There’s a law here that people have a tendency not to murder. I agree. But that’s not my question. That’s a factual descriptive question. Right, right, exactly the same thing, and therefore it’s not an interesting question. Because the question you’re asking is a descriptive one: what tendencies do people have? That’s a question for the psychology department. Go there, do a survey, check people’s tendencies—that’s a scientific question, you can investigate it. I’m not talking about that question. I’m talking about the philosophy department, not the psychology department. The philosophy department does not ask what people think; it asks what it is proper to think. What it is supposed to ask. Okay? How ought one think. Therefore it has nothing whatsoever to do with what people think. Maybe we would simply have expected a more normal distribution, and because we have a very non-normal distribution, maybe that’s an indication that there’s some hidden law we don’t know. I don’t agree. A law of what? That forces us to think this way? No problem—but then it’s a physical law, not morality. It’s still… no problem, but it’s not morality. Again, you’re just saying there is no morality. Correct. No problem, and therefore I’m saying I’m operating on the plane of theological claims. You can say there’s no morality and there’s no God. Right now I’m clarifying the question for the view that there is morality. What does it mean when I say there is morality? Okay? That’s what I’m saying. So now, now, I’ll bring an example. Did I mention the spinach test? Not here. Okay. There’s David Enoch, a philosophy lecturer at the Hebrew University, and in one of his articles—he deals a lot with ethics, the philosophy of ethics—in one of his articles he proposes a test he calls the spinach test. What is the spinach test? Spinach, yes. A child comes to you and says, “Look how good it is that I don’t like spinach, because if I liked spinach, I might eat it, and spinach is yuck.” What’s problematic about that argument? That if I liked spinach, then what would be the problem if I ate it? You’re judging what I would do if I liked spinach through the lenses of my present self, who doesn’t like spinach. But if I liked it, then it wouldn’t be yuck, right? Fine, spinach, fish. Okay, I’m saying—he framed it in terms of spinach. If you want, write an article about fish. In his article he talked about spinach; write another article where you do it about fish. Okay. So that claim is funny. Why is it funny? Because liking spinach is a subjective matter; there’s nothing objective about it. If you don’t like spinach, then no; if you do like spinach, then yes—there’s no problem. Therefore don’t judge someone who likes spinach through the lenses of someone who doesn’t like spinach. It’s irrelevant; it’s a misunderstanding, a categorical misunderstanding. That’s why it’s funny, because it’s a child who doesn’t understand, if he says such a thing, right? A grown-up, an intelligent person, isn’t supposed to say such a thing. Now let me ask you another question. Suppose I say: “How good it is that I’m alive today and not in the tenth century, because I know quantum theory and relativity.” What do you say to that? Back then I wouldn’t know; if I lived in the tenth century, I wouldn’t know. It’s not as funny as the spinach, right? Why not? What do you mean not clear? It’s not clear what the point is here? The issue is that I’m happy I didn’t live in the tenth century but rather today, because in the tenth century I wouldn’t know relativity and quantum theory, and today I do know them. I’m smarter. I don’t know if I’d be happier, but I’m smarter. I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, but I’m making that claim that I’m very glad that I’m smarter. Is that stupid? Is that funny? No, right? Why not? How is that different from the spinach? It’s ostensibly the same claim as the spinach. If I were in a different situation, then something else would happen and that’s yuck, or I don’t want that. Fine—if you were then, you were then; what’s the problem? So what’s the difference between that and spinach? The difference is that relativity and quantum theory were true in the tenth century too—they just didn’t know them, right? And therefore the claim that quantum theory and relativity are an objective truth—that’s not a truth dependent on my perception. Even if people didn’t know it a thousand years ago, it was still true; they just didn’t know. Okay? So therefore this test, the spinach test, really gives us litmus paper that helps us decide whether a certain claim is subjective or objective, right? If it’s funny when someone says a claim of that kind, then it’s spinach—it’s subjective. If it’s not funny, then it’s objective. Okay? Now I ask, suppose: “How good it is that I live today and not in the eighteenth century, because if I had lived in the eighteenth century, I would have enslaved slaves and discriminated against women. And I’m terribly glad to live today because back then, I assume, people weren’t aware of these values,” something like that—I’m not blaming them. But I’m saying: today I’m aware of those values, and I’m very glad I live today and not then. Is that similar to spinach or to relativity? It’s not funny, right? It’s really not funny. At least not to me. So what does that mean? It’s similar to relativity. But notice what we learned from here: that the prohibition against enslaving slaves or discriminating against women is an objective prohibition. Not because I think it’s forbidden—because if it were just because I think it’s forbidden, like I don’t like spinach, then fine: if I had lived in the eighteenth century, I would have thought it was permitted, so what’s the problem? Yes, enslaving women is yuck, enslaving slaves is yuck, therefore I don’t want to live then because I’d have enslaved slaves. Like maybe the white American in Virginia—that really is what I would have thought. So I say: that’s what I would have thought; too bad I’m not in the eighteenth century. Ah, fine. There are things like spinach, but I just don’t think they’re funny. “How good it is that I don’t live in the eighteenth century because I’d have had long hair like Mozart and that’s ugly.” That’s not as funny as the spinach. If it’s not funny, then you say there’s something objective here? But the fact is no one would say it’s objective. No, no—then you can’t say both things. You have to decide. No, so I’m saying: either it’s like spinach, or it’s objective. There is no third option. What does the Rabbi think about that example? What? Mozart’s hair? I’m saying there are objective aspects in aesthetics too. So everyone there was stupid? Not stupid, but they had not reached the aesthetic attainments we have reached. In ethics too they weren’t evil; they hadn’t reached the ethical attainments we have today. No, it could be yes. Again, I’m not judging the claim specifically about the hair; I’m just giving an example of how one can relate to a claim of this kind. I’m not sure I would say that hair length is something objective, but I’m saying: yes, someone could come and say that in aesthetics there are objective dimensions. That too, of course, will be implemented differently in different cultures and so on, but there are still certain structures that are objective. Yes, I may have asked this once before; I have an example of this. Bach was a musical genius, Johann Sebastian Bach—there were several Bachs, but Johann Sebastian Bach. Not long ago I heard Gil Shohat, a well-known musician, in a radio interview. He said: the number one genius in the history of music is Johann Sebastian Bach. He said it unequivocally. Now, I don’t understand much about music, but I heard it from several people. Gedel, Asher, Bach—of course, the book—and in any event, that’s the claim. Now, I’m less of a genius in music, I have to confess—don’t tell anyone—and I’m probably a bit less than Bach. Okay. Now the question is whether that really says something about the differences between me and Bach. Why? Because think about it: after all, it’s obvious that the fact that we value Bach’s work is a result of some sort of musical taste. Right? It’s clear that different musical tastes lead to different evaluations of different kinds of music, right? Meaning, a song people love in Russia they won’t love in Indonesia, or, I don’t know, Belgium, Israel, whatever. Sometimes yes, but there are also differences in taste. Especially in distant cultures—today everything is global so it’s harder to see this—but in distant cultures the music is different, right? There’s Eastern music, African music, all kinds. Okay, now do you understand that I could produce a group of people for whom the number one divine music is what I compose. If I could program them, build them in my image and likeness, everything were in my hands—yes, I’d sculpt them from clay—I’d make the people, their brains, everything. I’d build it in such a way that the moment they heard my off-key compositions they would melt with admiration for my musical genius. Okay, in principle there’s no problem creating such people. Okay? It may even be possible in practice, but in principle it is certainly possible. Okay? So what, really, is the difference between me and Bach? He simply operated in an environment that happened, by luck, to fit his abilities exactly. It appreciates exactly what he produces. And me it doesn’t—it was just luck for him. Meaning, if we had been born in a different culture, one that appreciated specifically my off-key stuff and despised Bach, then I would have been the number one musical genius. So it’s just random. So in fact there isn’t really a statement here that Bach is more of a genius than I am, right? Back to order, yes. But you can’t say that about Newton, and you can’t say that about Einstein. Why? Because many also say that about Newton and Einstein. They didn’t discover objective truth, they discovered… I agree with you, but the new critiques said it about Newton and Einstein too. But leave it; I’m talking about aesthetics and ethics, not by accident—I’m not talking about facts. Fine, it’s obvious, because I can bring you Abd al-Wahhab, I don’t know, an Arab, and they’ll tell you he’s the greatest genius in music, more than Bach. All the Arabs love him. Fine, so now I ask not who is the greater genius, Bach or Abd al-Wahhab, but who is the greater genius, me or Bach. Same thing, you say. Okay, so I claim no, and I’ll tell you why not. I have a hypothesis: that if I were to create people—better, if I randomly sampled people, not create them in my own image and likeness, because that’s shooting the arrow and then drawing the target around it. Okay? What’s called reverse engineering. I create people so I’ll have an audience for my music, not create music that fits the audience. Okay? Now I say: you randomly sample people, meaning they have some unknown musical taste. Now Bach and I both come to the same island with the same group of people, and we both try to adapt the music we create to the taste of those people. Who would succeed more? I believe Bach would. I have a speculative hypothesis. No, but if you put Bach in China, it doesn’t matter—maybe there’s some Chinese composer who has the… Not Chinese, not Chinese. Bach and I, China is equally foreign to both of us. No, I’m talking about… there was some composer in China before… But I’m not talking about him. Abd al-Wahhab had that too. That’s why I say I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about two people who come to a culture completely foreign to them, okay? Bach and me. We both arrive in China. And now we sit there, look around—he will do better. More correctly, right? Now why? Because he’s a greater genius, simply a greater musical genius. Fine, but even if I’m a more talented architect than you, I don’t know, or a better carpenter, and you and I arrive, right? Then I’ll be the better carpenter. In other words, in other words, I’m claiming that there is such a thing as genius in music. There is such a thing. But you also said there wasn’t. So what I’m saying is: I want to claim that there is genius in music. That means that the fact I can do reverse engineering and create a community that fits my musical norms—that’s obvious. But then I have to see the arrow and draw the target around it. Bach created music for the existing population. He didn’t create the population so it would fit his music, and therefore he is a genius. So what does that mean? After all, musical taste does change, right? Now let’s move to Abd al-Wahhab. Okay? Now you tell me Abd al-Wahhab is also a genius; his population appreciates him a thousand times more than Bach. True. Really I have no way of determining it. I don’t know which of the two is the greater genius. That really is a function of the circumstances in which you operate. I don’t know. But I can tell you that both of them are more genius than I am. And therefore I want to claim that there are objective dimensions in musical ability even though they are also circumstance-dependent. Meaning, that same genius can be expressed in Germany one way and in Iraq another way, okay? But it’s the same genius. Meaning, both of them are genius in music. And I want to extract the objective dimension from the subjective appearances. There are subjective appearances, and this is not pluralism. I want to claim that both of them really are geniuses on the same level. This is not pluralism, because it’s not that one is genius and the other isn’t. On the contrary: I want to claim that there is genius, and only Abd al-Wahhab and Bach are both geniuses on the same level. But there is such a thing as genius. I am not a genius on their level. That means there is genius, because the postmodernist will say no, everyone is equally a genius, and if there had been a different culture then you would have been the musical genius. That’s the earlier argument I made, right? So I say: I want to claim that despite that—let’s return to aesthetics, with the hair example you mentioned before—I want to claim: clearly aesthetics is also a function of circumstances. Under any given set of circumstances, something will be perceived as more aesthetic and something else as less aesthetic. It is probably in fact more aesthetic for that group or that culture or that population. Okay? And still, there are objective dimensions in aesthetics. What does that mean? The conditioned dimensions. Given that this is the culture, there is only one thing that will be the most aesthetic. The relation between the circumstances and the creation is objective. Now of course in every other type of circumstance that same objective relation will produce a different result, a different musical result. But the relation between the circumstances and the result is the objective dimension. Here everything explodes, because then we’ll say: if someone came today who was considered beautiful by the standards of the old world, then relative to those circumstances we would say, fine, he really isn’t all that beautiful; people wouldn’t get excited about him. But he has aesthetic talent, not that he is beautiful. So he would know how to make a haircut that suited them and would be more beautiful than my haircut. As a beautiful person who today is objectively beautiful by our standards, we would say no. So I want to claim, returning to the moral world: if Abraham our Patriarch came to our generation, would he be able to be convinced that we are more moral because we discovered a moral elevation that didn’t exist in his generation? Here I’m not convinced. Because I want to claim yes. I want to claim yes. And that is exactly the point. I’m saying that aesthetic ability also projects onto what is aesthetic, because after all we are in a given culture, right? Our culture. In our culture it is objective that this is the most aesthetic thing. Since relative to this culture the if-then relation dictates only this result. Do you understand? So therefore there is such a thing: this hairstyle is the most aesthetic there is, objectively. It doesn’t matter that among Indonesians a different hairstyle would be objectively the most aesthetic. But if I arrived in the Nazi Party and said that killing Jews is immoral, they would tell me that among them they’re right and I’m immoral? Would they be right if they said I’m immoral? I didn’t say that every norm that exists somewhere is justified. What I said is that the fact that norms change from place to place does not mean there aren’t dimensions here that are objective truth. It does not mean that everyone who thinks something is right. In the nineteenth century, was it moral to kill Jews? No. It also was not moral to enslave Blacks, even though that’s what they did. They were mistaken. So the most moral person there would not have been enslaving Blacks? The person at the peak of morality? I think so. No, he would not have enslaved. Like eating meat—you eat meat today. In another hundred years they’ll say that’s immoral. Here too there is progress; we attain more and more moral insights just as we attain scientific insights. Let’s think: in Abraham our Patriarch’s generation, the most moral human being on the face of the earth did not grant equality to women, held slaves, yes, everything. He wasn’t even in the Torah. It could be there was no such person. And no one succeeded in reaching those insights. Because it usually happens on a broad front; the whole culture advances together in some way. But yes, correct, in principle yes, it was true then too—that’s the claim. The claim of moral objectivity is the claim that morality is true, trans-temporal, above everything. It can indeed be circumstance-dependent. Meaning, if the circumstances then were different from the circumstances today, then even according to today’s moral rules, if we apply them to those circumstances, they would yield different results from today’s results. That I agree with. That exists anyway. Fine—but there is still one correct moral answer given the circumstances. Think about logic. When I say: all shtenders are made of wood. This thing is a shtender; therefore this thing is made of wood. Okay, what exactly is logically true in that argument? Not that all shtenders are made of wood, not that this thing is a shtender, and not that this thing is made of wood. So what does belong to logic? The derivation of the conclusion from the premises. The if-then, the hypothetical connection. Right? That if you adopt the premise “every X is Y,” and a second premise “A is X,” then you must also adopt the conclusion that “A is Y.” I don’t care who A is, who X is, and who Y is. So you see that in logic too, truth is only the truth of if-then relations. You can’t say of some particular claim that it is the most logically true. There is no such thing. Logic is deriving a claim from premises. And if the premises are different, the claim derived will be different. So what is objective in logic? So each person has his premises, reaches one conclusion; another has other premises, reaches the opposite conclusion. So what is objective in logic? What do we do in logical disputes? We check the hypothetical relation. If the premises are such-and-such, then the conclusion is such-and-such. About that no one can argue. You can say I have different premises and then the conclusion will be different. But the if-then is the objective dimension. Same thing in morality. Given that the circumstances are such-and-such—or in ethics and aesthetics. Given that the circumstances are such-and-such, then there is an objective Torah, if you will, that tells me what is most moral, what is most aesthetic, what is most everything. I’m representing objectivism right now; one can disagree, but that is objectivism. Do you understand? Now this doesn’t mean that in every society people have to behave the same way. When the circumstances differ, the results may need to differ. We apply the same principles differently. For example, in the rules of modesty, that’s a very common way of thinking. In the rules of modesty in Jewish law. It’s a function of circumstances. Under certain circumstances it will be completely fine to go, I don’t know, with short sleeves, and under other circumstances it won’t be modest. Now who is more okay? Neither is more okay nor less okay. But that doesn’t mean modesty is a subjective matter. Not true. Modesty is something circumstance-dependent, but the dependence between the circumstances and the rule of modesty is an objective dependence. It’s subtle, but one has to understand it. That is the claim that there is objective morality, and therefore all these claims—yes, but he thinks this way and he thinks that way—that means nothing. You assume certain premises or act under certain circumstances. So even with the Eskimos, for instance. It could be that among the Eskimos, because of the cold, people die quickly there in the snow. Okay, so they take them out to die in the snow; they die quickly, and that’s very humane. Whereas with us it’s hot; put him out to die on the mountain in the heat, he’ll rot there, he’ll stink, it’ll be a whole problem. So you put him in a nursing home. Okay, so what does that mean? That it could be that among the Eskimos I too agree that this is what should be done; it’s a function of circumstances. But that doesn’t mean it’s subjective. Absolutely not. It means the opposite. It means that given circumstances, there is such a function. Given circumstances—that’s the independent variable—the function tells me what should be done. Aesthetically, ethically, whatever it may be. Okay? And that is objective. Circumstances are something that can change; there is no holiness in circumstances. By the way, in Jewish law too it’s like that. People don’t understand. In Jewish law too it’s like that. And people think Jewish law is a collection of the things written in the Shulchan Arukh. Simply a total misunderstanding. Jewish law is always only a function. Give me the circumstances, and I’ll tell you what Jewish law says to do under those circumstances. Jewish law is only the if-then. Jewish law is not the bottom line of what must be done. The Talmud says: “There is a presumption that a person does not repay a debt before its due date.” Okay? And if suddenly a situation arose where people do repay before the due date? Then we’ll continue because after all this is the Torah, and the Torah shall not be changed? “There is a presumption that a person does not repay a debt before its due date”—an explicit Talmudic statement, ruled by all the halakhic decisors. So what can you do? The Torah does not say there is a presumption that a person does not repay his debt before its due date. The Torah says that if the circumstances are such that a person does not repay before the due date, then money can be extracted on the basis of that presumption. Only the if-then is Torah. Not the if, and not the then. Only the relation between premise and conclusion, or between circumstances and the halakhic instruction. The same in ethics, the same in aesthetics, the same in logic, in every domain. The objective dimension is only the schematic skeleton. The contents you plug into the schematic skeleton are always circumstance-dependent. In ethics, in aesthetics, in logic, in everything. Okay? The only place where people are aware of this distinction, because that is the domain, is logic. The whole field of logic deals only with if-then. Everything is formal. X, Y, Z—we don’t deal with concepts that have content. Okay? In other fields we also deal with this, but we do it through concepts with content, and that’s terribly confusing. People think we are really dealing with questions of what is customary here and what isn’t customary here. No. We are dealing with the question of what is correct. What is customary here is an indication, because I understand the circumstances and I understand what people think is correct under those circumstances, and from that I can extract the correct if-then relation. So I speak in a circumstance-dependent language. I talk about what happens here, what people think, what people do—but from that I am supposed to extract what is correct, not this specific instance that happens to be here. Okay? We’ve gotten to all this. Okay, so we were with the spinach test. And basically the claim is that when I talk about moral questions, it is more similar to relativity than to spinach. And that means that when I look at a moral claim, like “it is forbidden to murder” or something like that, I see it like a factual, scientific claim, and not like a matter of taste. I like spinach or I don’t like spinach. And now the question arises: so what does that mean? It means that there are probably moral facts, right? Just as there are scientific facts, there are moral facts. I return to your comparison with science. Right? There are moral facts. Because otherwise, again, I would have to relate to morality like spinach. And that’s just a more precise formulation of what I said earlier in a less precise way. What I said was that we do not perceive the prohibition against murder as some subjective whim of ours. If someone else murders, he can’t say: “Look, I don’t feel any prohibition against murder, so what do you want from me?” What I want from you is that you not murder. Okay? I will not accept such a claim. Meaning, for me this is like relativity, not like spinach. Okay? Now, you can’t make sense of such a thing unless you assume there is such a thing as moral facts. Moral facts means there is some mechanism, which can be described as observation of moral facts, from which I draw moral values, moral directives—that it is forbidden to murder, forbidden to steal, honor one’s parents, all sorts of things like that. Okay? And then it really becomes something very similar to scientific claims. I can now say that “it is forbidden to murder” is a true claim. Earlier I asked: after all, that’s not a claim—against what do you compare it in order to check whether murder is forbidden or permitted? Answer: I’m not comparing it to what people do; I’m comparing it to the Idea of the Good. I look at the Idea of the Good and it tells me: know that murder is forbidden. It’s simply a kind of observation, not a sensory one. Now one has to understand: this sounds mystical. But if you don’t accept this mysticism, then you have no morality. That’s your right; you can say, “I don’t believe in morality.” But there is no valid morality without this. Therefore everyone who believes in valid morality is a hidden mystic. Okay? And in a moment I’ll get to the point that this mysticism also includes the Holy One, blessed be He—but that’s another step further. First one has to understand that although this seems at first glance terribly mystical—what does it mean to observe with a sixth sense, with the eyes of the intellect, I don’t know what to call it, to observe the Idea of the Good, which is this Platonic concept, and derive from it rules that murder is forbidden, theft is forbidden, all kinds of things—what kind of thing is that? Surely these are just inventions, social constructs, I don’t know, something implanted in us somehow psychologically, sociologically, social agreement, all sorts of nonsense of that kind, right? But no. We all understand that this isn’t true. Everyone talks like that because when you look for justifications and understand that the only justification is this mysticism, you run from it like fire. Philosophers don’t like such things. So they say no, no, then it isn’t that; it’s subjective, it’s a convention, it’s this, it’s that, all kinds of nonsense. There is no such thing. In truth, either there is valid morality or there isn’t. If there is valid morality, then that means—and now I’ll call it by name—that means ethical realism. Ethical realism means there are ethical facts, and something realist is something objective that exists and I observe it. Therefore I say: if you don’t see it, then you’re blind, but you’re still mistaken. Murder is forbidden even if you don’t see it. In the tenth century too, among the Nazis too, no matter what. At most they simply didn’t see that fact, but that fact existed and was always true. Okay? That is basically the point. We’ve reached all this. Okay, so we were with the spinach test, which helps us sharpen for ourselves how we perceive morality. Now, I am speaking only to people who perceive morality in a realist way. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is everyone who is not a relativist—not someone who believes in relative morality, but someone who believes in absolute morality. If that’s you, then you’re also a realist. Although in philosophy they’ll tell you no, you can have one without the other—not true. You can’t. In that sense I’m very happy that I have full agreement with David Enoch. We had a debate on the question whether you need God in order to… If you’re not a moral realist, then you simply have no morality, so what good is it to prove that if you have morality then there is God? True: if there is morality, there is God. But there is no morality. Therefore the only point in arguing is with someone who is a moral realist and at the same time an atheist. Okay? And I claimed that that is an inconsistent position. Because if you’re a moral realist, then there has to be God in the background. Okay? Now I want maybe to sharpen this from another angle. What did he argue? What? He argued no—that moral facts exist, and you don’t need God to give them validity. They’re just there. Okay? Who created them? Yes, who created them, or what obligates me to whoever created them? I don’t know, that’s just how it is. You know, can you deal with someone who says “that’s just how it is”? That’s it. You can always hold a totally irrational position. Someone asks you a question, and you say, “For me this is an axiom.” Fine. I think there are three fairies under every electrical outlet. That’s what I think. Do you have evidence? For me it’s an axiom. There is some common sense you need. In my opinion there’s no common sense there, but yes—you can’t corner a person if he’s willing to declare something utterly lacking in common sense as an axiom. That’s that. It’s always a way to escape any logical difficulty. Anyway, he’s a very smart person. Don’t take from me any disrespect toward him. He’s very smart. But I think here he is captive—captive to his atheism. In any event, my claim is as follows; I’ll try to formulate it from another angle. There’s an interesting Jew, at times anyway, named Ari Elon. He’s the son of the late Justice Elon from the Supreme Court, brother of Benny Elon, one of the Elons. And he is a kind of secular maggid. Meaning, he became non-religious, but he’s still a Hasidic rebbe, a maggid, giving talks on secular Judaism, rabbinic midrashim, Talmud, everything—of course very anti-religious, very anti the religious establishment in particular. But that’s his thing in the world. Secular Judaism, all kinds of things like that—which to me is an oxymoron. There’s no such thing as secular Judaism. In any event, one of the claims he makes in several places—he loves wordplay, like every rebbe. Loves wordplay. He’s really like that, a true maggid. He also has a wonderful power of expression, and one has to be careful with people who have a wonderful power of expression, because often the eloquence overshadows the fact that the argument doesn’t hold water. Yes, that’s here. In companies, in business, when there are meetings and discussions, someone with good rhetoric can take you straight to hell. So he says this: there is a difference—he distinguishes between the rabbinic person and the sovereign person. The rabbinic person is the Jew, yes, the religious one, and the sovereign person is the secular Jew. Why? The sovereign person legislates his own laws for himself and so on. The rabbinic person—the rabbis legislate laws for him, the Holy One, blessed be He, I don’t know who, the Torah, I don’t know who. Meaning, they are subject to an external system that legislates for them good and evil. Whereas the sovereign Jew, or the sovereign person, is a person who legislates his own values for himself, not subject to some external source that dictates values to him. You understand that this is really a reflection of what I spoke about earlier? Can there be binding values without there being someone outside you who determined them, who gave them validity? He claimed yes. Okay? You understand this is simply another formulation of the same debate I was speaking about earlier. Now I asked a question—I didn’t speak with him; I wrote about his ideas. Suppose there is a marvelously sovereign Jewish person who legislates for himself the value of being a contract killer. All in all, a pretty lucrative profession; you get paid nicely for every hit. And he clings to his mission in minor things as in major ones, takes every job for a fair wage, and legislates that value for himself. Do you think that is a moral model for a secular person? I assume not. I ask him rhetorically—I never met him—but I assume not. Why not? What’s the difference between that and Mother Teresa, who legislated for herself the moral values of helping others and so on? What’s the difference? Each one is sovereign, legislating his own values, right? Mother Teresa in fact wasn’t Orthodox, but never mind—another moral figure. So what’s the difference between them? Both legislated their own values. Yes, because the values she legislated are good, and those values are bad—to be a contract killer. Who determined that this is good and that is bad? If my legislation is what determines good and evil—well, both of them legislated those two things, so from each of their own standpoints that is what is good. By what criterion do you judge that these are good values and those are bad values? No, no, leave it—I’m talking about morality now. Not Jewish law; Jewish law is a separate issue. So what determines good and evil? There must be—it is not optional, there must be—some factor external to you that determines what is good and what is evil. Where does your sovereignty enter? In the question whether to go with the good or with the evil. But to determine what is good and what is evil—that is not something you legislate for yourself; that is an objective datum. The question is whether you choose the good or choose the evil, or whether you are dragged to the good or dragged to the evil—all four possibilities exist. Someone who is dragged, whether to good or evil, is rabbinic; someone who chooses, whether good or evil, is sovereign. But sovereign does not mean good. Sovereign means autonomous, independent. The question whether he is good or not good is not determined at all by whether he is sovereign or not. It is determined by what he chooses in his sovereignty. And how do you know what is good and what is evil, which choices are good and which are evil? Here is reason. Reason of what? There has to be something—moral realism, right? There has to be some criterion that is not a product of my choice; it is given, it is something objective. And I look at it, I see that this is good and that is evil, and only now does my choice enter—whether to go with the good or with the evil. But determining what is good and what is evil is not a question of sovereignty; it is, one might say, a scientific question—simply to observe and see what is good and what is evil. The question whether to go with the good or with the evil—that’s where the question enters whether you are sovereign or not, whether you are dragged or whether you choose, in both good and evil. So what does that mean? That there can be secular rabbinic people and secular sovereign people, and there can be religious rabbinic people and religious sovereign people, right? The question whether you choose to be religious or are dragged into being religious—that determines whether you are rabbinic or sovereign. The question whether you choose to be secular or are dragged into being secular—rabbinic or sovereign. A sovereign religious person is committed to values that are not necessarily only moral. Fine, not important; I’m speaking right now about morality. Leave it for now, it doesn’t matter. This principle applies to the God of morality. Never mind. And there has to be someone external who determines for you good and evil, and you as a sovereign person decide to go with him. Fine, but you need to go with him. If you sovereignly decide not to go with him, then you are not a good person. Sovereign, yes—but not a good person. Okay, what does that mean? It basically means that the question of sovereignty versus rabbinism does not really capture the question of good and evil. And that is the greatest deception of this approach—that people ignore this. Because when I ask whether there is God or there is no God, I’m not asking who determined the values. Sorry—I’m not asking whether I determine the values or not. Obviously not. Obviously God determines the values. I’m asking whether there are values or not. If there are values, only He determines them. If there are no values, then He didn’t determine them and there are no values. After there are values, I can be sovereign and decide to go with them, or rabbinic and be dragged after them. In both cases I will do the good. You’re standing here on the balcony; you know the laws of gravity—don’t jump out if you don’t know them, or do jump if you want to commit suicide. Facts do not imply norms. Right, but someone who doesn’t know the laws of gravity falls from the balcony. Fine, and the laws of gravity are objective laws. The laws of morality are also objective laws, and they are not laws that a person determines for himself. Or in other words, again, I want to claim that you really cannot hold a view of binding objective morality without recognizing that it has some external source. Not a source within me. It cannot be a source that is within me. Because if it is a source within me, then there is no morality. Then everyone just does what he thinks—fine, no problem. But you can’t… Five hundred years ago there was a story in Jamaica—the great rabbis fought there, the “Jewish pirates,” as they were called. There, on that whole island of Jamaica, this was a huge thing. For them, morality meant taking down as many Spanish ships as possible. Okay, that was basically it. Not only for them; for Francis Drake too. Yes, true. Again, piracy once was a respectable profession. People made a living from piracy, and you got a license from the king to be a pirate. It was a regulated license: whoever had permission could be a pirate. Francis Drake was the official pirate of the Queen of England. Okay, so what’s the problem? So you think morality was different then? No. People then thought differently because they were mistaken. Who says they were mistaken? I do. You say that; you judge them not from there. How? If you asked them? I may be mistaken, but that’s what I say. The one who invented the… the great rabbis there were in this orientation. Fine, they too were mistaken. The great rabbis were mistaken too. Fine. The Pirates of the Caribbean, as it were. Pirates of the Caribbean, yes. So there’s some question here that is a bit semi-historical, semi-moral, but why isn’t it strange to us—or an indication that we are mistaken—that Abraham our Patriarch and those we relate to as the very greatest of the great held slaves and things like that? Isn’t that an indication against us? No, absolutely not. Because in his period I too would have held slaves. Because it may be that circumstances don’t allow you to recognize moral principles fully. There is progress in morality too. How can it be that Maimonides was such a genius and didn’t know relativity? So was he less smart than I am? No. But humanity advanced. In Maimonides’ generation I would not have known half of what he knew. But humanity still advanced, and therefore today I can be smarter than he was—not in abilities, but in results. And again I return to the same point. What determines wisdom is the abilities, the if-then, not the product. It’s the same thing. So therefore Abraham our Patriarch had wondrous moral abilities. And under those circumstances it really is legitimate to hold slaves—is that the claim? It’s not legitimate, but it’s understandable. One can justify such a thing. It’s not okay to hold slaves, but in that generation no human being could have reached that insight. It was beyond their understanding. Just as then too it was not the case that Newtonian mechanics was false. It was true then too. And the Holy One, blessed be He—listen—it’s not moral to hold slaves, said Abraham: “Ah wow, I never thought of that before, all right, let’s free them all”? It could be. It could be yes. And the Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t tell him? I don’t know. It feels very strange. I don’t know—the Holy One, blessed be He, leaves it… “He gave the earth to human beings.” That proves nothing. He also left relativity for us to discover on our own. All sorts of things. I’m saying this is like science, really like science in my eyes. Really like science. Except that it isn’t open to falsification, but in terms of the progress it’s observation, the creation of rules, and their application in different situations. Morality and science are the same thing. It just isn’t done with the senses; it is done with the eyes of the intellect, and it cannot be empirically falsified. You can’t do an experiment that falsifies a moral thesis. True. But beyond that—how one advances and all that—it’s all like science. That’s the claim. Again, I’m saying one can disagree, one can agree. But there is one thing I do want us to leave here with: to hold that there is valid morality means saying this. Okay? Now you can say, “I don’t think there is valid morality; it’s all delusions, all constructs.” Fine, all fine. But if you think there is valid morality, this is what that means. And therefore what I want to say is the theological proof. I say: if there is valid morality, then without God there cannot be such a thing. When I speak now about God, only in this sense—the factor or being that gives validity to the rules of morality. It has nothing to do with creation of the world, revelation at Sinai, nothing like that. A philosophical proof, right? I’m saying there has to be some transcendent factor, outside me, objective, possessing authority, that is the one that gave validity to the rules of morality. Without that, there is no morality. And that follows from everything I said before. That’s why it was very important to clear away all the subjectivity and constructions and arrive at moral realism and all that, because without it, it doesn’t hold water. Meaning, first of all you have to clarify very well what morality means. Once you understand what morality means, then it is completely obvious: there is no morality without God. There is no valid morality without God. There is no such thing. And now one of two things follows. You can say, fine, there is no God and there is no valid morality. I’ll continue behaving morally because I like it that way, that’s what I’m used to. Fine. But yes, you’re right: there is no valid morality in the sense that if someone else behaves immorally, there can be no claim against him. It feels good to me to behave morally; he doesn’t feel that way, so no. That’s the implication, yes, the practical difference. But of course you can also say, “I’m angry at him because it also feels good to me to be angry at him”—you can take this a long way. On the other hand, if you think there is valid morality, you must assume there is God. That is essentially the moral proof. Okay? If one properly understands what morality is. What? What are the rules that determine valid morality? No, what the rules are—that I’ll probably talk about next time; we won’t get to it now. That belongs to the second question. Until now I have been talking about Kant’s first question. Kant’s first question was the categories of morality: that it is objective, that it is binding, that it is not a subjective feeling, not a construct, not a convention, but binding. And that basically means there is God. The content of morality is something else. Now we can discuss whether God determined the contents of morality. I will argue that He did not. God is responsible for the categories of morality, for the fact that it has validity. But what is moral and what is immoral—that is binding even on Him. He did not determine that. He could not have determined it otherwise. That is the claim, and I’ll speak more about it. Now Kant’s second question—until now I spoke about the categories of morality. The second question is: what are the contents of this morality? How does one determine what is moral and what is not? What is the rule? How do I know what is moral and what is not? And that brings me back to the content of Kant’s categorical imperative. Okay? And about that I’ll speak next time, and there I will want to argue that precisely there you do not need God in order to determine what is moral and what is not moral. My conscience is good enough for that. But without God there is no validity to what my conscience says. Because if my conscience says something, then it says it. My conscience also wants me to speak slander. So what? The fact that I feel something inside does not turn it into something I ought to do. So to give something validity—for that I need God, not in order to determine what is moral and what is not moral. Okay? Good. Sabbath peace to everyone. Thank you. Yes. Thank you.