Platonism – Lesson 29
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
- Two extreme conceptions and soft Platonism on the social plane
- Two forms of personal conduct: “the moral saint” versus “I just go with the flow”
- The heart versus the mind, and the example of the debate over the hostages
- Moral value, Kant, and an agent versus a “sheep”
- A “Platonic” request for forgiveness and the question of agency
- Intuition versus emotion and ethical axioms
- Maimonides in the Laws of Idolatry: out of love and fear versus “accepting as a god”
- “The Lord is God” as a concept of authority, not as a reason
- Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance: love as the intellectuality of “doing the truth because it is truth”
- Wittgenstein and the structure of religious commitment
- Ramchal and Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman: command and essence in commandment and transgression
- Maimonides in the Laws of Kings: the resident alien, the seven commandments, and the distinction between a pious person and a sage
- Commentary on the Mishnah in Chullin: the sciatic nerve, “it was said at Sinai but written in its place,” and the source of obligation
- The distinction between personal motivation and theoretical justification and a basic norm
- The question of morality versus command: dilemma, the end of the good, and name versus description
- Eight Chapters, chapter 6: the virtuous person and the one who rules his soul, and the distinction between rational and revealed commandments
- Resolving the apparent contradiction: command as motivation and internalization as a separate issue
- Eglei Tal: enjoyment in learning, for its own sake and not for its own sake
- The indication test and “soft Platonism” in morality and Jewish law
- Closing questions: the direction of formation, weakness of will, and an ongoing dispute
Summary
General overview
The speaker presents two extreme conceptions regarding ideas and values, both on the social plane and on the personal plane, and rejects both rigid Platonism, which imposes an ideal model on reality, and the tendency to “just go with the flow,” without ideals and without intellectual supervision. He argues that what is needed is a “soft Platonism” that holds onto ideas and commitments, while recognizing that implementation in reality is complex and requires a balance among intellect, intuition, and heart. He applies this to morality and to the service of God through Kant and Maimonides, and stresses that moral and religious value comes from commitment to a command and not from action driven only by emotion, while distinguishing between emotion and intuition as a basis for thought. He then resolves an apparent contradiction in Maimonides between a model of “accepting as a god” and the ideal of internalizing the good within the soul, and concludes that the motivation is the command, but in moral commandments there is an added virtue in internal assimilation that creates a natural inclination toward the good.
Two extreme conceptions and soft Platonism on the social plane
The speaker describes a Platonic conception that clings to a utopian model and tries to impose an idea on reality, and identifies this as the Platonism Popper disliked. He sets against it the opposite conception, which one might seemingly learn from Popper himself: “kill the ideologies,” that is, remain without utopias. The speaker says that this conception also fails, because it is impossible to improve the world without a model toward which one strives. He proposes a “soft Platonism” that recognizes ideas and a complete model, but warns that implementation is always complex. Therefore, one must not “bang one’s head against the wall” with it, and one must not impose the model at the cost of violence against those who disagree.
Two forms of personal conduct: “the moral saint” versus “I just go with the flow”
The speaker transfers the same dichotomy to the private plane and presents the figure of “the moral saint,” who acts according to a set of principles, “Kant’s categorical imperative,” and examines every step in light of those principles. He describes this as unnatural conduct that replaces common sense and natural feeling with a constant calculation of “what is right and what is not right.” He then presents the opposite extreme: a person who says, “I have no ideals, I just go with the flow,” and acts according to conscience or feeling without ethical theories. He sees this as the opposite mistake, one that requires “Platonic intellectual supervision” to monitor and regulate the direction in which the heart is taking us.
The heart versus the mind, and the example of the debate over the hostages
The speaker gives his personal view that some of those pushing for “a hostage deal at any price, and now” are letting the heart lead and refusing to allow “intellectual regulation” to balance love and compassion against other considerations. He says that the heart naturally goes out to people who are suffering, but maintains that it is not right to “pay any price,” and that there are things he would not be willing to do. He adds that someone who goes only with ideals and ignores the suffering of the families is also acting problematically. He presents the need for a “middle way,” in which the heart is an input that is weighed, but is not the decisive factor.
Moral value, Kant, and an agent versus a “sheep”
The speaker argues that someone who goes only with the heart may reach mistaken decisions, and in addition, actions that come “from the heart” do not have moral value. He says that a moral act is an act done out of commitment to the moral command, and in that sense he says Kant is right. He uses the analogy of a “sheep” that harms no one because that is simply its nature, and argues that it has no “moral personality”; therefore, naturally non-harmful behavior is not morality. He says that a person must determine values and goals “with the head, not with the heart,” even if the heart does in fact point in the right direction.
A “Platonic” request for forgiveness and the question of agency
The speaker gives an example from Sde Boker of a request for forgiveness made not out of pangs of conscience, but out of the understanding that “you were in the wrong,” and he calls this “a wonderful request for forgiveness.” He argues that asking forgiveness out of guilt is, to a great extent, done “for yourself,” in order to calm your inner pain, and therefore it lacks moral value. He defines an action of value as an action of an “agent,” something that comes after deliberation, decision, and execution. He says that someone who does not go through a process of decision is not an agent but “a sheep.”
Intuition versus emotion and ethical axioms
The speaker agrees that values are “ethical axioms” that have no rational proof, but rejects the conclusion that value judgments are emotional. He distinguishes between intuition as the basis of intellectual and logical thinking, and emotion in the sense of love or personal preference. He says that emotion does not make claims about the world, whereas intuition does, and therefore morality belongs on the side of intuition, not on the side of emotion. He describes a semantic argument with an interlocutor who identifies “commitment” as emotion, and says he can accept the agreement so long as what is meant is intuition and not emotion.
Maimonides in the Laws of Idolatry: out of love and fear versus “accepting as a god”
The speaker cites Maimonides in the Laws of Idolatry, according to whom someone who worships idolatry “out of love or out of fear” is exempt, and he explains that the criterion for the transgression is “when you accept it upon yourself as a god.” He interprets “accepting as a god” as an unconditional commitment: “whatever it says, I do,” as a normative axiom. He explains that interested authority, such as fear of a police fine, does not turn the policeman into a “god,” and therefore is not idolatry. He defines “god” as an entity with authority by virtue of what it is, and explains that in the Bible the word “elohim” is also used for judges because their authority is binding.
“The Lord is God” as a concept of authority, not as a reason
The speaker argues that someone who asks, “Why should I obey Him?” while admitting that “the Lord is God” does not understand the meaning of the word “God.” He says that “God means someone or something such that whatever He says, I do,” and therefore no further reason for obedience is needed. He compares this to the answer attributed to climber Thomas Mallory about Everest: “Because it’s there,” as a model for a commitment based not on an argument but on a basic recognition. He presents religious service as an unconditional commitment similar to an axiom that cannot be proven but is grasped as true.
Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance: love as the intellectuality of “doing the truth because it is truth”
The speaker cites Maimonides at the beginning of chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance, where love is defined as “doing the truth because it is truth.” He explains that Maimonides is not defining love as an emotion but as intellectual recognition and commitment, what later authorities call “the intellectual love of God.” He argues that commitment is the definition of love for Maimonides, and emotion may be a result or an accompaniment, but it is not the essence. He connects this to marriage and to the wedding canopy ceremony where the marriage contract is read, and says that Jewish law places unconditional commitment at the foundation of the home, not the Hollywood ideal of emotion alone.
Wittgenstein and the structure of religious commitment
The speaker notes that Wittgenstein wrote about religious service as an unconditional commitment that ultimately ends in “that’s just how it is.” He says that religious commitment cannot be fully justified, and if a person does not grasp it himself there is no way to convey it to him, just like an axiom. He stresses that he does not use the word “feel” because he does not want to suggest that this is an emotion.
Ramchal and Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman: command and essence in commandment and transgression
The speaker brings, in the name of Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman citing Ramchal, the idea that every commandment and every transgression has two aspects: the command and the essence. He defines the command as responding to the order of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the essence as the benefit or value-result that the commandment achieves, or the damage that the transgression causes. He says that the religious value of the act depends on the motivation of the command and not on the benefit, even if the commandment has an essence and benefits. He calls this “robotic,” but presents it as the structure of the service of God.
Maimonides in the Laws of Kings: the resident alien, the seven commandments, and the distinction between a pious person and a sage
The speaker quotes Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings regarding the resident alien: one who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to keep them is among the pious of the nations of the world and has a share in the World to Come, provided that he does so “because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah.” He emphasizes that if the non-Jew does them “because reason has decided so,” then he is “among their wise men” and not among the pious of the nations of the world. He explains that this means the act may be right and wise, yet lack religious value if it does not stem from accepting God’s authority. He ties this directly to the distinction in the Laws of Idolatry between acting from internal motives and acting from divine authority.
Commentary on the Mishnah in Chullin: the sciatic nerve, “it was said at Sinai but written in its place,” and the source of obligation
The speaker presents the Mishnah in Chullin about the sciatic nerve and the sages’ response to Rabbi Yehudah: “It was said at Sinai, but was written in its place.” He quotes Maimonides in his Commentary on the Mishnah, who formulates a rule: everything from which we refrain and everything we do today is because of God’s command through Moses at Sinai, and not because earlier prophets were commanded about it; and he gives examples such as flesh taken from a living animal, circumcision, and the sciatic nerve. The speaker explains that the repetition at Sinai is the normative claim regarding what obligates us, not reliance on traditionalism or ancestral custom as such. He emphasizes that “traditionalism” in the sense of “because my father did it” or “because it’s folklore” has no religious value in his eyes, even if it has national value.
The distinction between personal motivation and theoretical justification and a basic norm
The speaker distinguishes between the psychological-moral question of motivation for observing a commandment and the theoretical question, “By what authority am I obligated?” He compares this to Hans Kelsen’s theory of hierarchical norms and the “grundnorm,” and presents the revelation at Mount Sinai as the basic norm of Jewish law. He says that in a state legal system the legislator is not interested in motive but only in the act, whereas Jewish law is interested also in the motivation for observance. He concludes that accepting God’s authority is both the foundation of the halakhic demand and the proper motivation for a complete religious act.
The question of morality versus command: dilemma, the end of the good, and name versus description
The speaker is asked what would happen if the Torah were entirely evil, and he replies that perhaps he would conclude that it is not divine and therefore would not obey it; and if he were persuaded that it is divine, a dissonance would arise between commitment to God and commitment to morality. He says that in a value-dilemma there is no necessary identity between the two kinds of commitment, and one has to decide. He explains that, from our perspective, “God” is tied to the ultimate good, and if He is not the ultimate good then “that isn’t God from our perspective,” but he still describes commitment as a structure that can continue even when difficulty emerges. He uses the distinction from analytic philosophy between “name” and “description,” and the example of Dartmouth, to describe how a commitment can become independent of the properties that originally generated it.
Eight Chapters, chapter 6: the virtuous person and the one who rules his soul, and the distinction between rational and revealed commandments
The speaker brings Maimonides in chapter 6 of Eight Chapters, who presents the philosophers’ view that the “virtuous person” is preferable to the “one who rules his soul,” and contrasts this with the words of the sages that “the greater a person is than his fellow, the greater his inclination is than his,” and “according to the pain is the reward,” and that one should say, “I would like to… but what can I do? My Father in heaven has decreed upon me.” He presents Maimonides’ resolution, according to which there is no contradiction: the philosophers are speaking about well-known moral evils such as murder and theft, where it is better not to desire them at all, while the sages are speaking about “revealed commandments” such as meat and milk, shaatnez, and forbidden sexual relations, where it is better that one say “I would like to,” but refrain because of the decree. The speaker emphasizes that Maimonides calls moral commandments “rational commandments” and ritual-halakhic commandments “statutes,” and that he brings proof for this from the language of the sages.
Resolving the apparent contradiction: command as motivation and internalization as a separate issue
The speaker raises a difficulty: Maimonides in the Laws of Kings requires that even rational commandments be done because of the command and not because of rational judgment, while in Eight Chapters it sounds as though it is preferable to internalize morality so that there is no desire for evil. He resolves this by saying that there is no contradiction because these are two different questions: the motivation for observance is always “because God commanded,” but the second question is whether there is value in implanting the values into the soul so that the natural tendency will be toward the good. He says that in moral commandments, a person who has a desire to murder or steal has a “deficient soul” even if he does not act on it, and therefore there is value in shaping a soul that identifies with the good. In revealed commandments, by contrast, there is no defect in the desire itself, and there is even reward for conquering the inclination.
Eglei Tal: enjoyment in learning, for its own sake and not for its own sake
The speaker cites the introduction to Eglei Tal in the name of Avnei Nezer, where the claim that learning with joy and pleasure is not “for its own sake” is called “a well-known mistake,” and where the essence of the commandment of Torah study is said to be to be “glad, joyful, and delighted.” He quotes Eglei Tal’s distinction between learning for the sake of pleasure, which is “not for its own sake,” and learning for the sake of the commandment, in which the pleasure itself is part of the commandment. He uses this to illustrate the distinction between a sufficient and obligating motive and a natural addition that does not detract.
The indication test and “soft Platonism” in morality and Jewish law
The speaker proposes an indication by which to distinguish whether an act is being done because of command: what would happen on a day when the person has no natural inclination or fitting emotion, and would he still do the right thing? He argues that if the command is a sufficient reason for action, then even when there is a natural inclination toward the good there is no deficiency in that, and in moral commandments there is even an added virtue of completeness of soul. He connects this to “soft Platonism” as a mode of conduct that combines intellectual-normative commitment with internalization and intuition that help one deal with the complexity of life. He adds that natural feeling can sometimes guide better than logical calculation in complex situations, and in this context he mentions “Kahneman’s System One and System Two.”
Closing questions: the direction of formation, weakness of will, and an ongoing dispute
The speaker accepts the possibility that the order can also be reversed—that one begins with moral recognition and from there arrives at the recognition that this is God’s command—and says that the main thing is that “both things” be present together: unconditional commitment and natural tendencies toward doing good in moral commandments. He is asked about the difficulty that full commitment ought to eliminate any competing attraction, and he replies that he disagrees and holds that there is such a thing as “weakness of will,” and that even full commitment is not necessarily the “slaughtering of the inclination.” He concludes by saying that this is an old dispute, that he remains with his position, and with the blessing, “Sabbath peace, good news.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Last time I tried to present the… I had started earlier—well, in the previous sessions I talked about two extreme conceptions. One of them is a Platonic conception that clings to some utopian model, some Platonic idea, and wants to impose it on reality. That’s the Platonism Popper doesn’t like. Opposed to it, there’s the conception one could have understood from Popper’s own words, which says to throw out the ideas. That is, to remain without utopias, without ideologies, right? To kill the ideologies. And that’s the opposite failure, which basically says that you have no way to improve the world if you don’t have a model against which you compare the world, something you strive toward. Not forcefully, but strive toward. And therefore there has to be some kind of soft Platonism that says: there are ideas, there is a complete model, but you have to know that implementing that ideal model in reality is always more complicated. Meaning, not to go at it headfirst, not to kill everyone who disagrees with you in order to impose your Platonic model on reality. That was on the social plane. On the… what I wanted to present… what I did in the last few sessions was to try to present the same thing on the personal plane. Not collective group ideology, but on the personal plane. And on the personal plane too there are basically two modes of conduct for a person. A person can be—right?—what I called the moral saint; actually, not I, that’s what it’s called in the literature. Someone who basically has some set of values or moral forms of conduct, Kant’s categorical imperative if you like, and “in all your ways know Him,” right? At every step he takes, he checks it in light of his principles and decides what to do. Right? I illustrated it—I gave an example of this—the wedding where everyone danced the way he had learned, right? Whoever learned in a certain way also danced in a certain way. And that is basically a very unnatural kind of conduct. A kind of conduct where you don’t let your common sense or your natural feelings lead you, but constantly make calculations about what’s right and what’s not right according to moral conceptions. And again, it’s very similar to what happens on the ideological plane, but now I’m talking about the private person, the individual. The other side says, “Oh, I have no ideals, I just go with the flow.” Meaning, I have no values, no Kantian conceptions, ethical theories, and so on. I go with my conscience or something like that. And in my opinion that’s the opposite mistake. And it’s the opposite mistake not only in the sense that it leads to incorrect conduct. That too is true. I think that someone who goes with the heart very often reaches wrong conclusions. You need some control of the intellect, Platonic intellectual supervision, in order to monitor, to regulate where the heart is taking you. My feeling, for example—my personal position, I don’t want to start arguments here—but my personal feeling, for example, is that in today’s debate about the hostages, part of the problem there—speaking about those trying to push for a hostage deal at any price and immediately—part of the problem is that they let the heart lead them. Meaning, they are not willing to let intellectual regulation, right, the Platonic side in our context, judgment about what is right and what is not right, temper the love, right? The heart goes out—you see people suffering terrible suffering, being killed, women being raped there by all kinds of… things like that, their families here are in a horrific state—so obviously your heart goes out to them; that is, your conscience, your natural emotion says you have to do everything possible to bring them back immediately. But in my view at least, my feeling—again, I’m not drawing a clear line here, because I don’t have a clear line either—but there does need to be some balancing consideration. There are things I would not be willing to do. So to say, “Everything, now, immediately, at any price”—that is a mistake. Not only a tactical mistake in the sense that our negotiation is less successful because Hamas becomes more stubborn—that’s also true—but it’s also a mistake in the sense that it is simply not right to pay any price. Meaning, it’s just… no, you’re not allowed to pay any price. And that seems to me to be an expression of the second mistake. The mistake that says—of course—someone who goes only with ideas and doesn’t listen to the stirrings of the heart, to what these people are going through, their families, and so on—that too is problematic. He says, listen, with all due respect to theories and everything, there are people here in a horrific state. So I say: here, you need to go on some kind of middle path, where you do not ignore what your conscience or your heart tells you, but you do not let that lead you. It is not what determines what you will do. It is an input that should also be weighed when making decisions. And my feeling is that in today’s debate there isn’t much of that balance. There are those who take it to the emotional extreme, the non-Platonic one, yes, the Popperian one if you like, and there are those who sometimes seem—or at least are presented, and not always justly—as if they completely ignore those natural feelings and go only with ideology and general principles, and that too seems problematic. It seems problematic, I said, for two reasons. First, someone who goes on the middle path—sorry, someone who does not go on the middle path—will end up with incorrect conduct. So someone who goes only with the heart will in the end do things that are not right, not even morally right. That is, the intellect has something to say here. Our ethical decisions should be made here, not here. The heart is input. So you can reach a mistaken decision. But there’s a deeper problem here too, I think, and that is that decisions made from here have no value. They have no moral value. When you do the action you do because your heart aches, that is an action without value. A moral act is an act done out of commitment to the moral command. In that sense I think Kant is right. Without that, you’re a sheep. A sheep also harms no one because it is in its nature not to harm anyone. Am I saying that a sheep has some extraordinary moral personality worthy of admiration? No. It has no personality at all. It simply has its nature. It follows its nature. Fortunately for those around it, its nature is pleasant. So it follows its nature and that’s fine; it’s pleasant to live next to it. But a human being is not supposed to be a sheep. A human being has to determine for himself the path, the goals, the values, the aims with his head, not with his heart. Even if the heart is taking you in the right direction. Now I’m saying—not because the heart will lead you into mistakes, but because actions done according to the heart have no value. No value. Meaning, the actions that have value are actions done through decision, through deliberation and deciding what, in your eyes, is the right thing. I brought that example from Sde Boker, of that Platonic request for forgiveness. That request for forgiveness in which I feel no pangs of conscience at all, but I understand that I was in the wrong, and I come and ask forgiveness from the person I harmed. In my view that is a wonderful request for forgiveness. A wonderful request for forgiveness because it is a request for forgiveness done purely for the matter itself, because you understand that you were in the wrong. Because a request for forgiveness that comes out of guilty feelings you have—then to a large extent you’re really doing it for yourself, not for the injured party. You want to calm your pangs of conscience. So maybe you are doing the right thing, but what you are doing lacks value. It’s not an action—what they call in philosophy—it’s not the action of an agent. When a person who acts is considered an agent, that is in a place where he makes decisions, weighs things in his mind, decides, and carries out what he has decided. If he doesn’t go through that process, then he is not an agent; then he’s a sheep. In that sense I think that going only with the heart or with this natural feeling is problematic for those two reasons. Both because it will lead to mistakes, to things that are not right to do, and because an action of that kind is not an action with moral value. And that brings me to the end of last time.
[Speaker B] But still, I have to say, I really feel the opposite, as usual, because a value judgment is not rational at all. Basically, you can’t justify it—the rational reasons that supposedly the intellect needs, that I weighed, have no basis, no foundation. You can’t justify values rationally, and we decide only emotionally, and to say that this has no value dissolves—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The—
[Speaker B] —the whole world of values altogether.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I agree with the first part but not with the second. I’m repeating this because we already argued about it. I don’t agree. Meaning, I agree that they have no justifications; values are ethical axioms, meaning axioms have no proof. But I do not agree that this is because it is the result of emotion. Not at all. There is intuition, there are perceptions that are foundational perceptions, and that’s fine—I’m completely in favor of going with that. That is also the basis of all logical thought. All logical thought is based on assumptions. That is not the same thing as following emotion. Emotion is something else. I think the next-to-last column was devoted exactly to this issue, to the difference between intuition and emotion. So when I say to go with the intellect, I do not mean to be a computer. Meaning, to be a computer: I have principles, I do the calculation, I reach a conclusion. It’s clear to me that even the intellectual process can’t be fully computerized. Part of it maybe can, but clearly it is based on assumptions that you cannot justify logically, because then you just go back to more foundational assumptions. But still, there is intellect and there is heart, and I think it is a mistake to go with the heart. So I’ll sharpen this a little more precisely in the halakhic-Torah context, or whatever you want to call it, which I began at the end of last time. At the end of last time… what?
[Speaker B] If a person asks, why be a decent person? Why not murder? Rabbi, all the books in the world won’t succeed in explaining that. So in the end what pushes you to decide not to murder, that murder is forbidden, is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the point, you don’t need to explain it. But if a geometry book explains to you that between two points there passes one straight line—can someone explain that to you? It’s an axiom. Fine, but is an axiom therefore emotion?
[Speaker B] No, but between two points there passes one line doesn’t obligate me to anything, whereas not murdering a person obligates me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What difference does that make?
[Speaker B] I’m asking you a question: between two points there passes one straight line—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What difference does it make whether it obligates me or not? You’re saying it’s emotion? It can’t be justified.
[Speaker B] I don’t know. In mathematics I really don’t know; I hadn’t thought about it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, leave that field aside; you don’t have to be a mathematician for this. Did you study geometry in high school? Yes, you finished medical school, I assume you studied geometry. So I’m asking: between two points—
[Speaker B] So I’ll tell the rabbi the difference, I’ll tell the rabbi the difference, I’ll tell the rabbi the difference. If the rabbi is right, I also have a feeling that between two points there passes one straight line, but if they ask me, listen, if we create for you another world where you can pass two lines there, I’d say it doesn’t bother me that there should be such a world. But if they tell me there’ll be another world where people can murder one another, I’d say—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not a matter of what bothers you and what doesn’t bother you. I’m saying in this world, in this world, between two points there passes one straight line. As it happens. As it happens, yes, as it happens that’s how it is, right.
[Speaker B] As it happens, but it’s true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And although I have no proof—how do you know it’s true? Obviously it’s intuition.
[Speaker B] I’m not disputing intuition, I also don’t know—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I call intuition and not emotion.
[Speaker B] I don’t need to read your column, I didn’t know there was such a column. I don’t know if there’s such a big difference between emotion and intuition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so again, I’m explaining: there is a very big difference, and that column speaks exactly about this point. Intuition is what stands at the basis of intellectual thought; emotion is like loving someone. I love someone, you don’t love him—do we have an argument? No. I love him because that’s how he speaks to me; he doesn’t speak to you that way, so you don’t love him.
[Speaker B] No, but moral emotion, moral emotion isn’t “I love him and I love chocolate, and you don’t want it, and someone else loves it.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly the point. That’s why I’m saying that morality belongs to the realm of intuition and not to the realm of emotion.
[Speaker B] Look, I’m not sure we really disagree that much here. I’m not sure that in the end I disagree with the rabbi; it could be that this is just a semantic matter, whether to call it emotion or call it… but it’s something like commitment…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if that’s what you said, then we don’t have any disagreement, everything’s fine, so excellent. Anyway, look, it seems to me this was the next-to-last column, or maybe two before the last, I don’t remember anymore, on intuition. One or two before the last. In any case, for our purposes, I want to illustrate this through Torah and halakhic conduct. So I started last time, I brought Maimonides in the laws of idol worship, where Maimonides says briefly, just briefly, Maimonides says that someone who worships idol worship out of love or fear is exempt. And what’s the alternative? Meaning, when are you considered an offender in idol worship? When you accept it upon yourself as a god. What’s the difference? Seemingly, to love and fear the Holy One, blessed be He, that’s the proper attitude toward a deity, right? That’s how we serve the Holy One, blessed be He. So if I direct that very thing toward an idol, that should have been idol worship in every respect, in the fullest sense. So what does Maimonides mean when he says it isn’t? Maimonides’ claim is that accepting something as a god means: whatever it says, I do. Unconditional commitment to whatever it says. A normative axiom. Okay? That’s what accepting it as a god means. And that’s different, for example, from if I don’t drive at high speed because I see a police officer and I’m afraid he’ll give me a ticket. That’s not idol worship. Why isn’t that idol worship? Because I’m doing it out of an interested calculation. I’m not obeying the police officer because he said so; I’m obeying him because I’m afraid he’ll give me a ticket, or simply because I know he’s right. Doesn’t matter. But I haven’t turned the police officer into a god. And in that sense, it’s not idol worship. Religious worship, both idol worship and the worship of God, is worship that has a god at its foundation. What is a god? A god is an entity that has authority by virtue of what it is. Meaning, if it says something, I do it not because it’s right, not because I love it, not because I fear it, but because it is a god. Yes, like Thomas Mallory, the mountain climber, who was asked why he climbs Everest, and he said, because it’s there. Meaning, someone who doesn’t climb mountains probably won’t understand that answer, but mountain climbers probably do understand it. They have some kind of—it’s obvious. Meaning, if Everest is there, I climb it; I don’t need reasons why. It’s self-evident. So here too, that’s the concept of a god. That’s why I said that in the Torah, “god” is the word that describes judges. Why? Because what characterizes a judge is this authority. That whatever he says obligates me, not because he’s right and not because he’s wise and not because I love him and not because I fear him, but because that is his authority. Meaning, because he is a judge. Or magistrate, yes, that’s the meaning. That’s why he’s called a god. Meaning, a god is not someone who created the world or someone who, I don’t know what. A god is, in the basic definition—he also created the world—but the basic definition of a god, the word “God” in the literal sense, the literal translation, the word “God” means one who possesses mandatory, unconditional authority. Meaning, whatever he says, I do, and I don’t need other reasons to explain to me why to do what he says. Therefore, for example, if someone tells me, look, I know that God is God, but still, why should I obey Him? Give me reasons, explanations. I say that someone who asks that question doesn’t know that God is God. If he knew that God is God, he wouldn’t ask that question, because God means someone or something whose word I do. You don’t need—it’s the meaning of the concept “God.” If you think He created the world, that’s something else. If you think He is God—God is this. And therefore you don’t need explanations why to obey God. That is the meaning of God. God is someone whom one must obey by virtue of who or what He is. And therefore Maimonides says that if I worship idol worship or the Holy One, blessed be He, out of love or fear, that is not religious worship in the full sense of the matter, because basically, like that request for forgiveness there in Sde Boker, basically you’re worshipping out of your own inner motivations. You’re trying to satisfy emotions or feelings inside you, of love and fear, to nourish those feelings. In contrast, accepting Him as a god means: I do it because that is the truth. Because that is what He said. What He said is what must be done. Something very cold and very un-Platonic of course—very Platonic, sorry, yes, Platonic. Meaning, something detached from ordinary emotions, detached from—I simply do it because that is what must be done. I brought an example, another source from Maimonides in the laws of repentance, chapter 10, at the beginning of chapter 10, where he defines love: to do the truth because it is truth. That is called love. He doesn’t define it as an emotion, he doesn’t define it as a feeling, as emotional turmoil, although in the next halakhah we saw that seemingly he does, but I explained that I don’t think that’s what he means. He says that worship out of love, as distinct from love and fear that he mentions in the laws of idol worship, where he really is speaking about the emotion of love and fear—here he speaks about love in the intellectual sense, what some later authorities call intellectual love of God. Intellectual love of God is not necessarily accompanied by emotion. It can be accompanied by emotion, but the emotion is not the point; the emotion may be a result, if anything. The thing itself is some clear understanding that we are dealing here with an entity whose word I do, to which I am absolutely committed. Basically, we understand commitment on the human plane as a result of love. Maimonides defines commitment as the definition of love. That is the definition of love: commitment. The feeling of love may come afterward, or may perhaps be involved in creating the commitment, but at the end of the day, commitment itself is the basis. By the way, there’s a practical implication here also for relationships between spouses and the like, because that Hollywood ideal, that everything is feeling and sensations, emotions and things of that sort—and in contrast, under our wedding canopy they read the marriage contract. From what property they’ll collect from the man if he doesn’t give his wife what he owes her, even from the cloak on his shoulder and so on. And everyone tears their hair out: what is this? What is this legal document doing here among all the angels with pink wings and Cupid in the wedding ceremony? And I think the explanation for that is exactly this: that in Jewish law, the building of a home, and also love, is understood as something whose foundation is commitment. First of all, you are committed. The feeling and all that, that’s alongside it. At the base, that’s part of it, it’s a result of it, but first and foremost it is some kind of unconditional commitment. Even if one morning you wake up and she doesn’t appeal to you, you’re angry at her, whatever—the commitment remains. And the commitment remains because you undertook it. Meaning, and in that sense, that is the love Maimonides speaks of in the laws of repentance, when he says that love is doing the truth because it is truth. Because I am obligated, therefore I do it. Why are you obligated? Just so. Because He is God, that’s all. The Lord is God, that’s it. I have no other explanations, not because of gratitude and not because of this and not because of that, but because He is God. That’s all. So there is something here—Wittgenstein, by the way, wrote about this. In his way, he explains that every matter ultimately comes down to “just so,” at least the early Wittgenstein. And he explains religious worship this way, as a kind of unconditional commitment, and various philosophers discuss what exactly he means, this kind of reason, that kind of reason—he doesn’t mean anything else, he means exactly this. Meaning, religious commitment is not something I can explain to you. I can’t justify it to you. If you don’t understand it on your own—yes, don’t sense it on your own, I’m not saying “feel” so it won’t be thought emotional—yes, if you don’t understand it yourself, I don’t really have a way to convey this thing to you. It’s not something—it’s like an axiom. Someone who doesn’t understand that between two points there passes one straight line, I have no way to explain it to him. I can demonstrate it to him: try drawing another line, he won’t succeed. Fine, I didn’t succeed, but maybe it’s possible. You won’t be able to explain it to him; it’s an axiom. But it’s true. It’s not an axiom because I happen to like it that way; it’s an axiom because it’s clear that it’s true, even though I have no justification. That’s a product of what I called earlier intuition. It’s not emotion; emotion doesn’t make claims about the world. So that’s what we saw at the end of last time: that Maimonides basically sees religious worship the way Kant sees moral action. It’s an action that has to come from commitment to the command, to do the truth because it is truth. Any other reason or motivation for doing that action is not an ethical motivation in the Kantian context, or a religious one in Maimonides’ context. Yes, that’s not how one ought to act when one is committed to a normative system. I’ll bring maybe one or two more sources so you can see the point more clearly—maybe before I bring more sources, one more remark. I’ve said this already in several other contexts: Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman writes, bringing from Ramchal in the essay on repentance. He brings from Ramchal that in every commandment and every transgression there are two aspects. One aspect is the command, and the second aspect is the essence. Yes, the command means that if I perform a commandment then I am fulfilling the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. And besides that, that commandment was probably also intended to achieve some benefit—that’s the essence. There is the command and there is the essence. And if I commit a transgression, then first, I have rebelled against the command—that is the primary problem in committing a transgression—and the second problem, or another problem, is that it is defined as a transgression because whoever does it brings about some problematic result. That’s the essence. So each of these things has two aspects. So now I want to sharpen the point. When I said earlier, when does a religious or moral act have value—but in this context, religious—when you do it because of responding to the command, not because it is right. Rather, it is also right, but you do it because there is a command. Meaning, because God commanded, that is called accepting Him as a god. An act done from accepting Him as a god—done from accepting Him as a god—is an act that has religious value. If that god is an idol, then it’s idol worship; if it’s the Holy One, blessed be He, then it’s the worship of God. But that is the meaning of a religious act. In the commandment act itself, if you ask what values are created or what benefits there are from the act of the commandment, there are two benefits: first, obedience to the Holy One, blessed be He, which is the truth; and second, the real benefit because of which this thing is defined as a commandment. But in terms of your motivation for why you do it, you should do it not because of the benefit; you should do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded. Something terribly, terribly robotic. Now I want to show this in Maimonides. Maimonides writes in the laws of kings at the end of chapter 8, where he speaks about the laws of the resident alien. He says as follows: “Anyone who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to perform them is one of the pious of the nations of the world, and has a share in the World to Come. Provided that he accepts them and performs them because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher that the descendants of Noah had previously been commanded in them. But if he does them because reason compels him, he is not a resident alien and is not among the pious of the nations of the world, but…” Basically he says: if you keep the seven commandments because reason compels it, a non-Jew who keeps the seven commandments because reason compels it, he is not a resident alien, he is not among the pious of the nations of the world, because he does it because this thing is right, because this thing brings benefit—benefit not in the sense of money, benefit even in the sense of value—but it brings benefit; that is rational judgment. He reached the conclusion that this is the right action. That is not religious worship. He is not among the pious of the nations of the world in that sense; there is no religious value to that action, but rather he is one of their wise people. What does “one of their wise people” mean? He reached the right conclusion. Meaning, he is a wise person; he does what is right to do, he does the correct action. But it has no religious value; it is wisdom, but not piety. Serving God is not doing the thing because it is right, but doing it because God commanded—that is called serving God. And in this sense it really goes back to what Maimonides said in the laws of idol worship: this is called accepting Him as a god. Only if you accept the Holy One, blessed be He, upon yourself as a god—that is the antithesis of the laws of idol worship. If you accept the Holy One, blessed be He, upon yourself as a god, then there is a value of serving God in that commandment. If you do that commandment because it repairs the world, because it makes you a better person, because it benefits others, or all kinds of things like that, then you have not served God. You did the right act, you are a wise person, you understand what is right, what is proper to do, and you also do it, so you are both wise and righteous—but not pious. Pious means: it has no religious value; you are not serving God. In that sense this is really the mirror image of what is written in the laws of idol worship.
[Speaker C] But a lot of the time there’s something in between. You say, wow, I do this—how good it is that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us to do such good laws. Meaning, we acknowledge that it’s a command of the Holy
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One, blessed be He, thank God, as the Hasidim sing. I’ll get to that in a moment. Okay? I’m heading there because it brings me back to soft Platonism. So right now I’m presenting rigid Platonism; in a moment I’ll soften it.
[Speaker D] What if I were to say that it’s hard for me to kill an Amalekite? It’s a commandment from the Torah, but it’s hard for me, so am I not God-fearing? Am I nothing?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, not God-fearing? It’s not categorical, but here you committed a transgression, yes. But Rabbi?
[Speaker B] Yes. If, say, Abraham our forefather, or even the Rabbi himself, heaven forbid—if, heaven forbid, since nobody is listening to us right now—the whole Torah were entirely a Torah of, heaven forbid, injustice and crime and rape and murder and cruelty and baseness. The whole Torah, ninety-nine percent of the commandments, our intuition, our supposedly lowly simple feeling says this is simply outrageous. But a god remains the same god; after all, we know nothing about Him, and that’s what He says. Would it even occur to someone like Abraham our forefather to accept upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven and obey those commandments and see in that some exalted value?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Someone asked me that question on the website; I answered it there. I’ll tell you briefly—I think there I elaborated a bit more. First, if that were the character of the Torah, maybe I would come to the conclusion that its source is not divine, and therefore I would not obey it—that’s first. But say I did come to the conclusion that its source is divine. There would still basically be a dissonance here. On the one hand I have the obligation, because I accepted Him upon myself as a god—He is the god, and what He says must be done. On the other hand I am committed to morality, and since I am committed to morality I am in a dilemma. Now, what would I do in that dilemma? I don’t know. Maybe I would go this way, maybe I would go that way. But that doesn’t mean there is an identity between the two things. Commitment to God and commitment to morality are not necessarily two identical things. I need to do it because of commitment to the Holy One, blessed be He—that is the religious value of the act. If it conflicts with morality, then I am in a dilemma and I have to decide what to do, like in any value conflict.
[Speaker B] No, but Rabbi, I know the point-specific response. Right now we’re talking on the macro level. Everything, all the commandments, are evil. I understand—if they asked the Rabbi, what does the Rabbi say about the god? He is evil, evil, simply evil, heaven forbid.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m saying on the macro level—I said the same thing.
[Speaker B] And the Rabbi would still accept His yoke?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I accept His yoke because He is the god. But at the same time, since it isn’t moral, I would be in conflict, even if it’s on the macro level. I also mentioned another possibility, the first possibility I raised: that in truth, if that really were the character of the Torah, maybe my conclusion would simply be that this is apparently not the word of God, this is not what the god wants from me, and then I’m not in a dilemma.
[Speaker B] Fine, correct, but that tells us something about what we really understand a god to be.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right—that He is the ultimate good.
[Speaker B] And if He is not the ultimate good, then for us that is not a god.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A god—never mind—but the commitment to Him, look, it’s the same thing if we go back to love. I love someone, a man or a woman. I assume that this love is connected somehow also to the qualities of the beloved, to the fact that it appeals to me. But at the end of the day, when I create the commitment, the commitment exists independently of the qualities. Now I am obligated to him by virtue of his being someone. When I finished, when I decided that this is the right person with whom I want to build my life, maybe that had to do partly with his qualities. Fine. But now my commitment is not to the qualities; it is by virtue of the fact that he is my spouse, and therefore I am committed. Same thing here. Yes, I once mentioned, I think in another context, that in analytic philosophy they distinguish between a name and a description. A name is something arbitrary: I call someone Jacob or Isaac or Moshe. I could have called him by any other name; I attach a name to him. That is arbitrary. A description is not arbitrary. A description has to describe something that really exists. I say this person is tall, so I can’t say he is tall arbitrarily. If he isn’t tall, then that sentence is false. Meaning, it has to be anchored in reality. Therefore descriptions can be true or false; names cannot be true or false. Now analytic philosophers talk about there being descriptions that have turned into names. For example, the city of Dartmouth. The city of Dartmouth was at the mouth—at the mouth—of the River Dart, Dart mouth. Now at some stage, so the philosophers say—I haven’t checked with geographers on the matter—but the philosophers say that the River Dart changed its course. The route changed; it no longer passes by the city of Dartmouth. But the name of the city Dartmouth remained. Why? Because Dartmouth may have started as a description, but once that description became a name, then it was no longer dependent on reality. Now that is its name. It doesn’t matter anymore that it is no longer relevant. Yes, so this is very similar to what I said before: my commitment to the beloved may have begun because of his qualities and the chemistry between us and so on. But now, after I decided on the commitment, that commitment exists in its own right. The same, I say, in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He. It may be that part of the reason I decided to be committed and decided that He is God is that I understand that He wants to do good, that I should do good. But after I decided that, once He is God, then I no longer need to go back to the fact that He is good. I am committed to this because He is God. Now if in the end it turns out that He is also not good, then maybe I will be in a dilemma, and then I have to decide what to do with that. If the whole system is not good—and that’s what you said, the global question—maybe I would come to the conclusion simply that this is not the word of God, and then there is no dilemma. If it’s only local things, as is the actual real situation now, then indeed, fine, there are dilemmas in those places. I want to move to Maimonides in Chullin, in his commentary on the Mishnah. In the Mishnah there appears a dispute among the tannaim. It says as follows about the sciatic nerve: “It applies to a pure animal and does not apply to an impure one.”
[Speaker C] Others can see the screen; I can’t.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t see it? I shared it.
[Speaker E] We can see it, we can see it. There’s a tab above, meeting or screen.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can see it right now. So in the Mishnah there in Chullin it says as follows, in the chapter on the sciatic nerve: “It applies to a pure animal and does not apply to an impure one.” The first tanna says that the prohibition of the sciatic nerve applies only to the sciatic nerve of a pure animal. In the sciatic nerve of an impure animal there is no prohibition. What does it mean there is no prohibition? If you ate it, then you ate impure meat, and you violated that prohibition, but not the prohibition of the sciatic nerve. There is no prohibition of the sciatic nerve. Rabbi Yehudah says: “Even in an impure one.” Meaning, the sciatic nerve applies both in a pure and an impure animal. Rabbi Yehudah said: But wasn’t the sciatic nerve prohibited from the days of the sons of Jacob, while an impure animal was still permitted to them? After all, the sciatic nerve was prohibited to the sons of Jacob after the struggle with the angel, and at that stage there was still no distinction between pure and impure animals; Mount Sinai had not yet occurred. They said to him—so the first tanna answers him—“It was said at Sinai, but written in its place.” Meaning, the Torah describes it in the book of Genesis, but in fact this command was said at Sinai, the command not to eat the sciatic nerve. This is especially interesting regarding the sciatic nerve because Rashba already notes in his novellae on aggadah on Berakhot, that we know from the Sages that for something to count as a prohibition there has to be a keyword: “beware,” “lest,” “do not,” or simply “not.” Those four words are the key terms. If they are not there, there is no prohibition. In the sciatic nerve it doesn’t appear. “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve.” “Do not eat” there is not a command; it is a description. It doesn’t say, “You shall not eat.” It says, “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat,” meaning the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve because of that story. Where is the command? Where is the prohibition against eating the sciatic nerve? There is no prohibition. So the Mishnah here says: there is a prohibition, and it was said at Sinai, they just placed it in the book of Genesis to give us the context of how this thing came into being. But in fact it was said at Sinai. So Maimonides there, in the commentary on the Mishnah, expands on this matter. I’m bringing here the relevant passage: “Set your mind to this great principle brought in this Mishnah, namely their statement: ‘It was prohibited at Sinai.’ And that is, you must know that everything from which we refrain or which we do today, we do it only because of God’s command through Moses, and not because God commanded it to the prophets who preceded him. An example of this: we do not eat a limb from a living animal not because God prohibited a limb from a living animal to the descendants of Noah, but because Moses prohibited a limb from a living animal to us in what was commanded at Sinai, that a limb from a living animal should remain prohibited. Yes, a limb from a living animal was already said to the descendants of Noah, and at Sinai we were commanded that it remain prohibited. Likewise, we do not circumcise because Abraham circumcised himself and the members of his household, but because God commanded us through Moses to circumcise, as Abraham, peace be upon him, circumcised. And likewise the sciatic nerve: we are not guided in this by the prohibition of Jacob our forefather, but by the command of Moses our teacher. Do you not see their statement,” this is at the end of tractate Makkot, “‘Six hundred and thirteen commandments were said to Moses at Sinai.’” All six hundred and thirteen were said at Sinai, not to Abraham our forefather, not to Jacob, but at Sinai. And all these are included among the commandments. So what is he basically saying? I think what needs to be said here is that the Torah itself was given at Sinai. And within the Torah there was also the book of Genesis. So it’s not that at Sinai there was some command and the book of Genesis is a fiction. Rather, at Sinai the book of Genesis was given, and within it also that command. And we do this not because in the book of Genesis there is a command, or because—sorry—because there was a command then, but because in the Torah given to us at Mount Sinai, that command appears in the book of Genesis. Meaning, that is the meaning of its being repeated at Sinai. That is, the very fact that it was given in the Torah is probably the repetition, not that the Holy One, blessed be He, now commanded it again. In any case, for our purposes, what Maimonides says here is very similar to what we saw in his words in the laws of kings. He is basically saying: we prohibit the sciatic nerve not because Jacob did this, and not because it is a memorial to the angel, and not because of anything like that, even though that is probably the infrastructure of how this prohibition came into being. But now we do it because we were commanded at Sinai that it is forbidden to eat the sciatic nerve. Meaning, the divine command is acceptance of Him as a god. Acceptance of Him as a god—not rational compulsion, not the reasons, not the essence of the prohibition, not the benefit of the commandment or the harm of the prohibition—those are not the motivations because of which we are required to do it. We are required to do it because there was a command at Sinai. And we are committed to the command because we accepted the Holy One, blessed be He, upon ourselves as a god. So he repeats—he almost repeats the same thing as in the laws of kings. I think there is a difference, and I’ll say this parenthetically: I think there is a difference between these two sources. In the laws of kings Maimonides is speaking about the question of what the motivation of the person performing the commandment ought to be. Should the motivation be because this commandment is good, it improves the world and so on, or should the motivation be because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded and I am committed—acceptance of Him as a god? So he says the motivation should be acceptance of Him as a god. Think for a moment about civil law. If someone paid taxes simply because he was afraid, or for motivations like, I don’t know, to appear a law-abiding citizen, but he isn’t really committed to the law—he didn’t do it because he sees the law as binding, but for side reasons—does the legislator care? It doesn’t matter, right? Meaning, as far as the legislator is concerned, whoever obeys the law, everything is fine. I’m not interested in his motivations. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is what he does or doesn’t do. Okay, those are basically the two important things. Maimonides says: in Jewish law, it does matter. In Jewish law, if you do not do it from the proper motivation—acceptance of Him as a god—then that is not piety, that is not the service of God. Not that it has no value at all; maybe it is a commandment performed not for its own sake or something like that, but it is not the full religious value. Okay? You are not pious. In this sense Jewish law differs from the ordinary legal system, because it is interested in motivations. The ordinary legal system is interested in what you do and what you do not do. Here, in the commentary on the Mishnah about the sciatic nerve, Maimonides says something a little different. Here he speaks about the theory of law, not about what ought to be in your head when you perform a commandment. In the laws of kings Maimonides asks: when you perform a commandment, what should be the motivation driving you to it? Acceptance of Him as a god. He is speaking about the motivation of the person doing the commandment, what the motivation should be that drives him to do it. In the commentary on the Mishnah in Chullin he is not speaking about that at all. He is speaking about the theoretical question: what is the reason we are obligated to do it? The command at Sinai. A question of that kind also exists in a regular legal system. In that sense it’s the same thing. Yes, Hans Kelsen was a thinker in legal theory, an Austrian, a well-known positivist, and he basically said that a legal system is built as a hierarchical structure of norms. Hierarchical norms. Meaning, there are certain norms that obligate us; above them there are norms from which those norms derive, and above those are still more norms, and so on, until you reach the top of the pyramid, where there is what he calls the basic norm, the Grundnorm. Yes? Meaning, the basic norm is basically the axiom on which the whole theoretical structure rests. Why am I suing you for not obeying the law? Because there is a basic norm that says one must obey the laws of the Knesset. By its force I come to you with claims; by its force I sue you. But that does not mean that when you obey the laws of the Knesset you have to do so while consciously holding in mind that the Knesset has authority and directing your intention for the sake of fulfilling the commandment of hearing the words of the Knesset. That does not interest the legislator. What does interest the legislator is the legal theory—by virtue of what am I demanding that you obey, or suing you if you did not obey. That is a theoretical question; it is not a psychological or moral or emotional question, whatever you want to call it, that speaks about the person’s motivation. Rather, the question is: what is the theoretical justification for demanding that a person obey the law? So here there is the basic norm, and in Jewish law it is the revelation at Mount Sinai. Meaning, the command of the Holy One, blessed be He—the very fact that there is acceptance of Him as a god—that is the basic norm of Jewish law. Now what does that mean, basically? That in the commentary on the Mishnah Maimonides is not interested in the question why I did it; he is interested in the theoretical question why I am obligated to do it. In the laws of kings Maimonides speaks about the question of what motivation caused me to do it, psychologically—a question that enters into the soul of the person. Without that motivation being there, that act has no religious value, or not full religious value. Okay, that is just the difference between these two sources. But for our purposes, we still see here that there is some conception of accepting Him as a god. Accepting Him as a god is the basic norm, accepting Him as a god also has to be my motivation for doing the actions, and without that this is not an action that has religious value. So this is one side of the coin, and basically up to this point…
[Speaker B] What exactly is the position of the Sages here? I didn’t quite understand. Didn’t understand? The position of the Sages there in this passage. What does it mean, it was said at Sinai but written in its place?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Written in its place and said at Sinai. Maimonides says this is not a historical claim; it’s a normative claim. When we observe this thing, we are not observing it because the sons of Jacob had the practice of not eating the sciatic nerve. We observe it because at Sinai we were commanded not to eat the sciatic nerve. The command at Sinai may have drawn on the practice of the sons of Jacob, but as far as we are concerned now—yes, the same move as with the Patriarchs, as I discussed earlier—as far as we are concerned now, what obligates is the fact that there was a command about it, not that the sons of Jacob practiced doing it.
[Speaker C] I think Rabbi Soloveitchik talks about the historical reason as opposed to the positive, normative reason. Yes, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is a hint to traditionalists from the Torah, says Maimonides. That traditionalism is valueless.
[Speaker B] The question is whether this whole Talmudic passage and Maimonides aren’t also meant to teach us what it means to say “given at Sinai,” because that’s not such a simple concept.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, we’re not getting into those questions at all right now. We were commanded by the Holy One, blessed be He—whatever you want to put into that concept. That’s a completely different question. But we were commanded by the Holy One, blessed be He, by force of the command—not traditionalism. Traditionalism has no value. Traditionalism is: I do this because my father did this, I do this because it is the custom, I do this, as Ahad Ha’am said, because it preserves the Jewish character.
[Speaker B] All of that has no religious value. Maybe it has some national value of one kind or another, but no religious value.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Religious value is when you do
[Speaker B] it out of acceptance of Him as a god.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because there is no commitment to it if you do it because it is cultural, it is folklore—Jacob didn’t eat the sciatic nerve, we also don’t eat the sciatic nerve. Even if you’re committed to the folklore. I say, I am committed with every fiber of my being to folklore, I will not deviate from it one iota all my life. It is valueless.
[Speaker B] Because it makes me feel good, because
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] it makes me feel good, because I want something. So that is one side. On the other side there is a Maimonides who seemingly contradicts this whole move, and here I come to soft Platonism. The Maimonides I’m talking about is Maimonides in the sixth chapter of the Eight Chapters. Let’s look at it for a moment. “The philosophers said…” Chapter 6, on the distinction between the virtuous person and the one who rules his soul. “The philosophers said that the one who rules his soul, even though he performs virtuous acts, nevertheless he does what is good while desiring evil deeds and yearning for them, and he struggles with his inclination and opposes in his action what his faculties and desires and the disposition of his soul would direct him toward, and he does what is good while pained by doing it.” That is the one who rules his soul. Meaning, the one who rules his soul is someone who has no natural tendency to do good, but he overcomes it and does it anyway; he overcomes his inclination. But the virtuous person—yes, these are two figures, there is the virtuous person and the one who rules his soul. Who is the virtuous person? “He is drawn in his action after what his desire and disposition direct him toward, and he does good while desiring and yearning for it.” Meaning, by nature he is drawn to do good; he has a strong good inclination. Okay, that is the virtuous person. The one who rules his soul is someone who has an evil inclination but overcomes it. This is somewhat parallel to the distinction in the Tanya between the intermediate person and the righteous person. The intermediate person is the one who rules his soul. Meaning, he has an evil inclination, but he always does the good thing without exception; in his deeds he is completely righteous, but he has an evil inclination and constantly overcomes it. And the completely righteous person in the Tanya is someone who slaughtered his evil inclination; he has no evil inclination at all. Both do the same thing, but one has an evil inclination and overcomes it, and the other has no evil inclination; he has internalized Torah values into his soul and now it comes naturally to him. So he says, “And the philosophers agreed that the virtuous person is better and more complete than the one who rules his soul.” The virtuous person is better—someone who also identifies emotionally, who is naturally drawn to do good. “But they said that the one who rules his soul can stand in the place where the virtuous person stands in many matters, yet his level is necessarily lower because he desires the evil act even though he does not do it; still, his desire for it is an evil disposition in the soul.” So say the philosophers. “And Solomon already said something similar: ‘The soul of the wicked desires evil.’ And he said regarding the joy of the virtuous in good deeds and the pain of one who is not virtuous in doing them—this is the verse: ‘It is joy to the righteous to do justice, and terror to the workers of iniquity.’ So this is what appears from the words of the Torah as matching what the philosophers mentioned.” So that is basically the thesis; in a moment comes the antithesis. The thesis basically says that the virtuous person is on a higher spiritual level than the one who rules his soul, the one who conquers his inclination, whatever you want to call it. “And when we investigated the words of the Sages on this matter, we found that in their view the one who desires transgressions and yearns for them is better and more complete than one who does not desire them and is not distressed by refraining from them.” Yes, the Sages tell us the opposite conception. The one who rules his soul is better than the virtuous person, against the philosophers. “So much so that they said that the better and more complete a person is, the stronger his desire for transgressions and the greater his distress in refraining from them.” And they brought stories about this and said, “Whoever is greater than his fellow, his inclination is greater than him.” By the way, that statement in itself doesn’t really say what Maimonides is putting into it. It only makes an empirical claim that someone greater will generally have a stronger evil inclination, a harder struggle. It doesn’t say that in the end he won’t slaughter it. Anyway, that’s what Maimonides says. “Not only that, but they said that the reward of one who rules his soul is greater according to the measure of his pain in ruling his soul, and they said: ‘According to the pain is the reward.’ And more than that, they commanded that a person should rule his soul, and warned against saying, ‘By my nature I have no desire for this transgression, even if the Torah had not forbidden it.’ As Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: A person should not say, ‘I do not want to eat meat with milk, I do not want to wear wool and linen together, I do not want to have relations with forbidden women’; rather, ‘I do want to—but what can I do? My Father in heaven has decreed it upon me.’” Meaning, here there is a clear statement that the one who rules his soul is the ideal model, not the virtuous person. I do want to, I do want to—but what can I do? My Father in heaven has decreed it upon me. Acceptance of Him as a god. Right? So this concept of accepting Him as a god is, in the eyes of the Sages, the higher thing. The philosophers claim not; the philosophers claim that serving because—serving because it is right, or naturally because I feel that way, according to conscience—that is the virtuous thing. Notice, this is really, on the face of it, exactly the dilemma I brought earlier. Rigid Platonism versus Popper, yes, versus throwing out utopias and going with the natural feeling. Maimonides says, “And according to the simple sense of the two views, at first thought the two statements contradict one another.” Yes? He has a difficulty. The philosophers say one thing and the Sages say another, so it requires examination. Why does it require examination? The philosophers say one thing and the Sages explain to us that they are mistaken—what’s the problem?
[Speaker B] Is that Tesla? Huh?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the philosophers say one thing, and our Sages tell us they’re mistaken—what’s the problem? No. From Maimonides’ perspective, if the philosophers say this, then it’s probably true as well. Especially since he also brought verses from Proverbs, from King Solomon, and so on. So from his point of view, this is a difficulty. It’s not that the Sages explained to us that the philosophers are wrong. But he says, don’t worry, this is not a difficulty. The two statements do not contradict each other; rather, both are true, and there is no dispute between them at all. And then he says as follows: the evils that the philosophers refer to as evils are those regarding which they said that one who does not desire them is better than one who desires them and restrains himself from them. These are the things universally recognized by all people as evil: bloodshed, theft, robbery, fraud, harming someone who did no harm, repaying evil to someone who did good, disrespecting parents, and the like. These are the commandments about which the Sages, peace be upon them, said: had they not been written, they would still have deserved to be written. We would have known them even if they had not been written. Some of our later sages, who were afflicted with the illness of the theologians, called these the rational commandments. And there is no doubt that a soul that desires any of these things and longs for them is a deficient soul. And the excellent soul does not desire any of these evils. Someone who wants to steal, or wants to murder, or wants to disrespect his parents has a defect in his soul. Even if he doesn’t actually do it, he is not a complete person. Nor will he feel distress in refraining from them. But the things about which the Sages said that one who rules his inclinations regarding them is better and earns greater reward—those are the heard commandments, the commandments accepted simply because they were commanded. And this is correct, because were it not for the Torah, they would not be evil at all. Therefore they said that a person should let himself desire them, and the only thing holding him back should be the Torah. What is he saying? He has a resolution. The philosophers’ words—that the superior person is the one on the higher level—speak about the moral, rational commandments. And the words of the Sages, who say that it is specifically better to conquer one’s inclination, speak about the heard commandments. And then he proves this from the words of the Sages. And reflect on their wisdom, peace be upon them, in that they gave examples not by saying, “A person should not say: I do not want to kill, I do not want to steal, I do not want to lie,” but rather they brought examples that are all commanded laws: meat cooked with milk, wearing wool and linen together, and forbidden sexual relations. These commandments and others like them are what Scripture calls “My statutes.” They said: statutes that I enacted for you, and you have no permission to question them. And the nations of the world object to them, and Satan accuses regarding them, such as the red heifer and the scapegoat, and so on. And those which the later scholars called rational, the Sages called commandments, as the Sages explained. In short, this is the conclusion: it has been clarified from everything we have said that among some transgressions, whoever does not desire them is better than one who desires them and restrains himself from them, while among others the opposite is true. This is a wonderful innovation and a marvelous reconciliation between the two statements, and the language of both statements points to the truth of what we have explained. Why? Because from the Sages’ perspective it’s pretty clear that they were speaking about wool and linen and the heard commandments. How do I know that the philosophers were speaking about rational commandments? Because for them there are no other commandments. Philosophers talk about what philosophy says, not Jewish law. Philosophy speaks about moral obligations, not about other kinds of obligations. So clearly the philosophers are talking about moral duties, and there they are right; while the Sages are talking about the heard commandments, and there they are right. Fine—that’s the claim. The big problem—and here I’m getting to the punch line—is that apparently what he says here contradicts what we’ve seen from him until now in all the sources we brought. We brought many sources from Maimonides himself. Why? Because he kept explaining to us that one must perform the commandments not because reason compels it, not because of natural inclination, but because God commanded it. Here he tells us the opposite? That someone who does it because God commanded it, and forces down his inclination, and has no natural tendency to do it—that person is inferior, at least with regard to the moral commandments, to someone who does it because God commanded it.
[Speaker B] Now one could have said, Rabbi, Rabbi—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, I just want to finish the line of thought, because we’re already at the end of the time. One could have said that Maimonides really is not talking about commandments in the passages from Maimonides we saw until now. That when Maimonides says that it is preferable to be the one who submits to the command, the one who accepts the yoke of God—that speaks only about the heard commandments and not the rational ones. But that cannot be right, because Maimonides in the Laws of Kings speaks about the Noahides, about a resident alien. A resident alien means the seven commandments, and there Maimonides writes, “These are matters toward which reason inclines.” The seven commandments—because that too is obvious. The seven commandments basically include the moral aspects of Jewish law. And about that Maimonides says that one who does them because reason compels him is not one of the pious of the nations of the world, but one of their wise men. Those too need to be done because of the command. So how does that fit with what he says here—that with these commandments it is specifically better if a person identifies with them, not if he does them only because of the command while overcoming his inclination? And the answer to this—I just want to finish it, so I’m doing it a bit quickly—the answer is that these two things are not even close to each other. There is no contradiction in Maimonides at all. Maimonides is asking two entirely different questions. One question is: what is the motivation, why do I do it? Because God commanded it. Even the moral commandments I do because God commanded it. Now there is another question. Fine, I do it because God commanded it. But is there also value in internalizing this within myself and trying to erase the evil inclination, or should I leave the evil inclination in place and deal with it anew each time? That is a completely different question. It is not talking about the motivation—why are you doing it? Why are you doing it? Because God commanded it, in both kinds of commandments, both the heard commandments and the rational commandments. That is explicit in Maimonides. What he writes here is this: fine, after I do it because God commanded it, I still have inclinations. Is there value in working on that, in absorbing it into the soul as well, so that I will not have inclinations to do bad things, or on the contrary—“I do desire it, but what can I do, my Father in Heaven has decreed it upon me”—to leave the inclinations in place, and then I receive greater reward, according to the pain is the reward. So he says: with moral commandments there is value in internalizing it into the soul. A person who has a natural tendency to steal or murder is a flawed person. Even if he doesn’t actually do it, his soul is flawed. But with pork, with wool and linen together—there, no. There you can leave it in place; there is no problem. On the contrary, you may even get greater reward. That is what Maimonides is saying. It has nothing to do with everything we’ve discussed until now. The motivation for doing it is because of the command, because God commanded it, acceptance of the yoke of Heaven. But along with that, with the moral commandments there is also value in internalizing it into the soul. And now what happens—and here I’m answering Shmuel’s earlier question—what happens, in essence, is the following. Maybe before “what happens,” let me show you another source that says this. The introduction to the Eglei Tal—this always comes up for me in this context. In the introduction, the Eglei Tal writes: “And as I speak, I vividly recall what I heard—that some people err intellectually regarding the study of our holy Torah. They said that one who studies and develops original insights and is happy and delighted in his learning—this is not Torah study so much for its own sake, as compared with someone who studies simply, getting no pleasure from the learning, and doing it only for the sake of the commandment. But one who studies and delights in his learning—his own enjoyment is mixed into his learning. But in truth this is a well-known mistake. It is not correct; it is an error. On the contrary, the essence of the commandment of Torah study is to be joyful and happy and delighted in one’s learning, and then the words of Torah are absorbed into his blood. Since he enjoys the words of Torah, he becomes attached to the Torah. If you were to say that because of the joy he has from learning, it is called not for its own sake, or at least both for its own sake and not for its own sake, then that joy would diminish the power of the commandment and dim its light. And how then would the good inclination grow from it? Since the good inclination does grow from it, clearly that is the essence of the commandment.” So these are well-known things that the Avnei Nezer says: to enjoy learning is an advantage, not a deficiency. One should not aspire to learn without pleasure. But the continuation is less well known. Further on he adds another passage: “And I admit, yes, I admit, that one who studies not for the sake of the commandment of study, but only because he enjoys studying—this is called study not for its own sake, just as one who eats matzah not for the sake of the commandment, but only for the pleasure of eating. And regarding this they said: a person should always engage in Torah and commandments even not for their own sake, because from not for its own sake one comes to for its own sake. But one who studies for the sake of the commandment and delights in his learning—that is study for its own sake, and it is entirely holy, because the pleasure too is a commandment.” What is he saying here? He is saying that truly, to delight in learning is a great advantage; the learning is better, it is absorbed into your blood, and so on. But if you study for the sake of the pleasure, or because of the pleasure, then that really is study not for its own sake. These are two different things. Which is exactly the same distinction I mentioned above in Maimonides regarding the moral commandments. With the moral commandments there is value in internalizing them within myself, so that it comes naturally to me not to steal, to honor parents, not to murder, and the like. But still, the motivation—why do I do it?—is because the Holy One, blessed be He, said so. Where is the indication? After all, each of us knows that at least regarding the moral commandments, every normal person has a natural inclination to do them, or to refrain from violating them. So what, is that not okay? Where is this measured? It is measured at the point—and here it is measured—in a situation where: what happens if I wake up one morning and I don’t have that feeling? If I will still do it, then apparently I do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. So even on a day when I do have that feeling, enjoyment in learning or the desire to do good—the good inclination, as it is called—and I do it because of that, it does not detract. Why? Because ultimately, even if that weren’t there, I would still do it because of the command. The moment the command is a sufficient reason, even if it is not the only reason, if it is sufficient, then I am serving for its own sake. The fact that I am also a good person does not detract—unless I am only a good person, and if I don’t have the good inclination on that day, I won’t do it. Then it is not a commandment, or at least not a commandment done for its own sake. But if I would do it even without the good inclination, and yet usually I do have a good inclination that leads me to do it, there is no problem. It does not detract; on the contrary, it is even an advantage. So there is a situation here—and let me finish—this is essentially parallel to the soft Platonism I spoke about on the collective plane; now I’m speaking on the individual plane. On the individual plane, I also want to say: first of all there is the obligation to the command, and the intellectual accounting, the rational decision that is basically the motivation for why I should perform commandments, why I should behave morally. But there is value in internalizing this into the soul and causing it—at least with the moral commandments according to Maimonides—and causing it so that in my natural inclination I will want to do it. Ah, but what happens if the natural inclination is actually what causes me to do it—does that somehow damage the commandment on the way? No, it does not damage it. Because if I would do it even without the natural inclination, then it doesn’t matter that I am doing it because of the natural inclination; I also have the dimension of serving God in the matter. And as I said earlier, there are these two things. This will also lead me to more correct conclusions, because my natural feeling actually knows how to hit more accurately on what is right to do than the intellectual calculation does. The intellectual calculation, logic, can miss. Life is complicated. This is Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2, right? System 1 works better with real-life problems. System 2, the logical system, is a system where you make some calculation, but how do you know—maybe your assumptions are wrong. If you don’t have some natural sense of what is right and what is wrong, you can miss it. So that is why I say that also in the personal, religious, and moral context, there is this model that stands between Popper and the rigid Platonists—what I call soft Platonism. To go with the intellect, to internalize it within myself, and then to go with the intuition that will give me more flexible, more correct, more suitable guidance, one that is not glued to rules, to the logic of the matter. And that, I think, is the right way to conduct oneself, and that is what is called soft Platonism, also in the sense that I feel that this is right, I feel it intuitively.
[Speaker C] There’s a nuance here in what you explained: that at the beginning I have the acknowledgment, I know that the Holy One, blessed be He, commands me—maybe I read the Torah, I believe, yes?—and after that I actualize it and it becomes part of my nature. But could it be exactly the other way around? First I feel, or I know, that this is forbidden, that this is moral, and from that I know that this must be what the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m willing to accept that, willing to accept the other direction too. Meaning, in the end, what has to be there is that you have both things: that you have the unconditional obligation, acceptance of the yoke, and also—at least with the moral commandments—the natural inclinations toward doing good. And the indication that you have both things is: what happens when, on some bright day, you don’t have the natural inclinations? Do you still behave properly or not? If you do behave properly, that means you truly accepted the yoke. As for the sequence—how it develops, whether first this and then that or the reverse—I don’t think there is one binding model here. Each person according to his own path.
[Speaker B] Thank you very much. Rabbi, apparently there is a difficulty in Maimonides’ words. Because if a person truly, deeply, and fully internalizes the obligation to obey the word of God, then he is no longer drawn to anything else. He no longer—this is really like what Rabbi Yohanan said about those geese, that it makes no impression on us, because once you don’t accept weakness of will and all this illusion, then when you are committed to some value to the very end, you have nothing else. So apparently what comes out? In the end, even if you fully embrace the obligation of serving God, the result is that you are no longer drawn to anything else. So what then? I think the answer to Maimonides is different. The answer is that in order to create this consciousness, in order to create this commitment, this relationship—that is the work. After you have already attained the value and the value has truly been achieved, then there really is no pain here, by the way, because there is no pain here—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You are in full identification with the value. You’re taking me back, you’re taking—you’re taking us back to an argument we’ve already had in the past as well. I disagree. I do think there is weakness of will, and even if you are fully committed, it is still not certain that you have slaughtered your inclination. So this is an old dispute between us, and I still hold my position.
[Speaker B] One more comment, one more question?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so have a peaceful Sabbath, good news. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.