Halakha and Ethics – Lesson 2

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand. That’s usually how Kantian morality is explained: that it’s an autonomous human morality and doesn’t need God. Kant himself actually brought a proof for the existence of God from morality, so people generally ignore that a bit. But I don’t accept this idea, because the question is: how do you derive right and wrong from that? What does it mean to “listen to yourself”? If you are your own legislator, then everyone can be their own legislator. In what sense do you condemn me if I legislate for myself to be a contract killer? Because you legislated differently for yourself—so what? Why am I obligated by what you legislate? Unless you understand that there is something objective in this law that obligates, not that it stems from how you’re built, how you feel, whatever you want.

[Speaker F] Because I know the world, I also know my neighbors, and I know that this tendency—the same sort of attitude they have toward gossip on the one hand and helping an old woman cross the street on the other—they relate to it in a pretty similar way, unless they’re psychopaths, and there are such people, and that’s a diagnosed and fairly clear disorder; there are criteria.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’ve already assumed the conclusion. The moment you described the others as psychopaths, you assumed the conclusion. In other words, you assumed that what I feel is obligating, and anyone who feels differently is a psychopath. And I’m asking: where does that come from? Where do you get that from? Not where do you get why you think that way. The fact that you’re built that way, fine—but that’s just a fact. I’m asking why what you feel is valid. So what if you feel it? So what if you think it comes from a higher place and he comes from a lower place? So what? Those are just words—higher, lower. Why is that binding? Someone who doesn’t feel that way just doesn’t feel that way. You do feel that way—so do whatever you want.

[Speaker F] A person reflects on himself and gains insights from that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But no—insights aren’t the point here. Insights, when you reflect on yourself, are facts. The question is where obligation or prohibition comes from. It can’t come from observing facts. That’s the naturalistic fallacy, by the way. That’s exactly what Kant rejects when he talks about naturalism. He’s basically saying: from a fact—for example, those who explain morality through evolutionary development, that altruism has survival value. If we help each other within a group, then we survive better. That can’t ground morality. It can provide a naturalistic explanation of how the moral tendency came about, a scientific explanation. But you can’t derive from that that one must also behave that way. “Must behave that way” belongs to a completely different conceptual sphere, a completely different semantic field. Description is one field and norms are another. This is prescription and that is description. Two different things. You can’t derive one from the other, and therefore all my introspection won’t help here. Because ultimately, all I’ll discover is more facts and more facts. Facts about how I’m built—from a higher place, from a lower place, from the middle, it doesn’t matter where—but these are just facts about how I’m built. How does it follow from that that I’m also obligated?

[Speaker F] Sorry that I’m mixing lectures, but it’s like your certainty and your familiarity with yourself that you have choice—you know you have free choice. I know that I need to help my friend.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but that’s not the same thing. Because to say that I have free choice—that really is a fact. If I look inside myself, I can discover that fact. We can argue whether maybe I’m not seeing correctly, not experiencing it correctly, fine, that’s an argument. But there’s no principled problem with that. Just as I look here and see that there’s a wall, I look inside and see that I have free choice. But you can’t look and discover that you must do something. That’s not the result of observation. In order to legislate a law that obligates or forbids doing something, there has to be a legislator. I can’t just look at a fact.

[Speaker F] I hear a voice inside me. Okay. A very clear voice inside me tells me: help the neighbor.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And do you know what you’re supposed to do with someone who hears voices inside? There’s treatment for that from professionals. In other words, the fact that you hear a voice inside you says nothing about the question of what you are obligated to do. So you hear a voice inside you—that too is a fact. How from facts—this is exactly where I feel there’s some unbridgeable gap, logically speaking—between the facts, everything you’ve described until now is facts, and the question of why one is obligated to do this. Obligation is not derived from a fact, from any fact—not a psychological fact, not a spiritual fact, not inner observation, not insights. All these observations produce facts. Spiritual, physical, whatever you want. How does the “must” come out of that? How in the world—I’m not even talking about a materialist world, where spirit doesn’t exist at all—I simply can’t understand even the concepts, not just how they think there is such a thing as “must” or “forbidden,” but what “must” and “forbidden” even mean. How can a collection of molecules be forbidden from doing something, or obligated to do something? To me it’s just meaningless verbiage. But I’m saying—even if I am a dualist, I don’t think I can be the binding source of the things I do. That can explain why I do it, or why I have a tendency to do it, or why it feels good to do it. Sure, all that can be. But why must I do it? Why do I think I’m not okay if I don’t do it? You can’t derive that from facts. Simply…

[Speaker D] But your solution too—that there has to be some Holy One, Blessed be He, some higher power that instructs me and therefore I’m obligated—even there you’re not in the realm of facts. Because there too you’re in the realm of intuition, the intuition that tells you there must be some higher power here obligating me. Because that’s not a fact. No, it’s not a fact. No, no, no, it’s not a fact. And what you call a higher power obligating me to do things, I can call—or Arielon can call—the human spirit. There is some spirit, some thing that just as you define it as a divine power, someone else can define it as a power—I can’t define it, but it exists and tells me what to do.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll ask one question. I’ll just ask one question. Is this thing you call the human spirit some kind of object?

[Speaker D] I can’t define it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’ll tell you—no, I have—I’ll explain. If the human spirit is an object, then that’s what I call God. It’s just homonymy, it doesn’t matter, call it…

[Speaker D] Yes, but in that you’re right, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What people who are trying to avoid the existence of God claim is that it’s not an object, but some sort of—I don’t know exactly—idea, something called the human spirit. I don’t know—ideas don’t obligate me to do anything. Ideas can at most be facts. And for something to obligate me, some authority has to stand behind it, something with the power to obligate me, to tell me what is forbidden and permitted.

[Speaker D] And the authority you define also has no proof.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say there is proof. I didn’t say there is proof.

[Speaker D] But you attack the human spirit because it’s not an object, it’s something vague; the definition of the Holy One, Blessed be He, is also something vague.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I’ll explain again what I’m claiming. I’m not claiming there’s proof for the existence of God. And I’m not attacking the human spirit. All I’m saying is something simple. If a person thinks there is binding, valid morality, then he believes in God. He can reject the existence of valid morality and not believe in God. I have no way to choose between those two possibilities; neither is preferable to the other. But one thing is impossible: to believe in the existence of valid morality and not believe in the existence of God. To me, that’s inconsistent.

[Speaker D] And not believe in the existence of any higher power.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes—not the God of Sinai, not morality, not Torah. All I said was: there has to be something that is the source of validity for moral obligation. That’s why I said I’m not speaking at all on the plane of God in the religious sense. Okay? But there has to be something that serves as some foundation; it has to be some sort of being. It’s not the human spirit—those are all kinds of rhetorical flourishes that conceal behind them one of two things: either a vacuum, or a kind of being that I call God and you can call whatever you want. It really doesn’t matter. And again, the discussion about God in the religious sense is a completely different discussion, a different question altogether.

[Speaker B] I want to say one small thing about what Heli said, about that person helping the old woman cross the street. There’s that child who arrived late to school and the teacher asked him, “Why were you late?” So he says, “I did a good deed, a scout’s good deed.” So he says, “What did you do?” He said, “I helped an old woman cross the street.” “So why did it take you so long?” “Because she didn’t want to, she resisted the whole time while I was trying to get her across.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Since you brought that up, I have another story about someone helping an old woman cross the street. Some young man came to the yeshiva, some kollel fellow came in late—he was even late for prayer, came after the prayer service. The supervisor asked him, “Tell me, why were you late?” So he says, “Look, there was this woman with several children and everything—I had to help her, and what could I do, I was forced to miss prayer.” He says to him, “Rest easy, you did wonderfully. That was the right thing to do, excellent, beautiful.” He says to him, “And would you mind if that was my wife, Rabbi?” In other words, that’s the same kind of story, in that vein. Okay, in any case, let’s return to our topic. So my claim, basically—the claim I want to make—is that not only is there some kind of ethical fact behind moral obligations, or the ethical norms of forbidden, obligatory, and permitted—I think there is—but there is also some factor behind them, let’s call it a commander, or an authoritative factor that legislates these laws, and it is from its power that they draw their validity. That’s why they obligate. That’s basically the claim. And now Kant comes and takes one additional step. He basically wants to say that the moral act cannot be defined without reference to the motivations for acting. In other words, when you do an action that we might call a positive action, a good action, that still doesn’t mean you acted morally. In order to count as someone who acts morally, you need to do it out of commitment to the moral command. Now of course that doesn’t mean you have to be a robot and neutralize your natural feelings, your natural desire to do good, but there does need to be some commitment to the moral command, to the ethical command, at the base of the action. Where does that come to expression? If, for example, one morning I wake up on the wrong side of the bed and I don’t have that same natural inclination to do good—will I still do it? If I still do it, that means I’m a moral person. And then even on a day when I do it just because I feel like doing good, and because it feels nice in my gut when I do a good deed—that’s perfectly fine, permitted. You don’t have to turn off your feelings or your inclinations to do good, but you do need to be motivated by a commitment to the command—Kant’s categorical imperative. You have to do your action out of commitment to the command. Without that, you can’t define the act as a moral act. Let’s say.

[Speaker C] And why, why, why, why exactly? Why for the sake of that distinction?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, one second. I want to illustrate this for a moment. With my favorite story, yes, of Amnon Yitzhak, who tells about some rabbi who slaughtered a sheep at four in the morning, wrapped it in a prayer shawl, put it on the road and shouted, “Oh righteous one, the righteous one has died, the righteous one has died!” People woke up—four in the morning—they see the rabbi there weeping over that righteous one lying on the road. Everyone joins, of course, in an emotional funeral procession, and they all carry on weeping. They get to the cemetery and see that this righteous one is nothing more than a slaughtered sheep. They want to put the rabbi into the grave together with the sheep. The rabbi says to them, “Tell me, what exactly is the problem?” So they say, “What do you mean? You said ‘righteous one,’ you woke us up at four in the morning, you slaughtered a sheep for us—what, are you making fools of us?” So the rabbi says, “What do you want? Whenever I rebuked you, you said, ‘What do you want, Rabbi? I behave perfectly well. I don’t hurt anyone, I don’t kill anyone, I don’t steal, everything is fine.’” So the rabbi told them, “Very good. By those criteria too, the sheep is righteous. It also doesn’t steal, doesn’t hurt anyone, doesn’t murder—everything is fine.” What’s behind this story? To me it’s simply an expression of the idea that if you conduct yourself naturally, even if you do the best deeds in the world, because that’s simply your nature—you love doing good, or if you want, you’re programmed to do good—that’s not what we would define as a moral figure. A sheep is not a moral figure. Even though all its life it helps others and doesn’t steal and doesn’t kill and nothing of the sort. Why? Because it didn’t make the decision, and it doesn’t act out of commitment to the moral command. A person—a moral being—is a being that acts out of commitment to a moral command. And again I say: this doesn’t have to be a person who is evil by nature and constantly overcomes himself. Maimonides, in chapter six of Eight Chapters, discusses whether it is preferable to be one who restrains himself or one who is upright—whether one who conquers his inclination is preferable or one who behaves in… So he says that in moral matters, specifically, it’s preferable to be someone who identifies with the good and not someone who is wicked in his soul but merely overcomes himself. But it is still true that he has to do it out of commitment to the command, in addition to being a good person. And the practical difference is: on the day when he won’t be so inclined toward good, when he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, the question is whether he will still do the good deeds because of his commitment to the command. In that situation he is a moral person. This basically means that when I judge a person’s act—say someone who lost money, and as a result someone found the money, the Talmud actually talks about this, some poor person found the money, bought food for himself, and his life was saved—was the person who lost the money a morally righteous person? It’s pretty obvious that he wasn’t. He didn’t do it intentionally, he didn’t mean to lose money at all. Good results happened to come out of what happened to him, but it happened to him—he didn’t do it. It happened to him, and therefore it’s hard to define that as a moral act. A moral act is an act done out of commitment to the moral command. That is basically the Kantian claim. As opposed to acts done because that’s how I’m programmed, because I feel like it, because it feels good to me—even though all of that can be for the good. A truly good person, good to the core, behaves wonderfully all his life, but simply because that’s how he’s built—he’s a sheep. So in that sense it’s hard to see that as moral conduct. And then the claim is that there is something in moral behavior that goes beyond the question of what you do. You can’t judge whether you are moral or immoral solely by the question of how you behave. That’s not enough. The question is also why you do it, or what your motivation is for doing it. And so this definition of morality now completes the picture, and now I’m summing up everything we’ve gotten to so far. The claim is basically that a moral act is an act done out of commitment to some objective command—in other words, a moral fact—behind which stands a legislator, and when you do it, you do it out of commitment to it, not because you happen by chance to do something that also fits the moral value or the moral criteria. That’s the point.

[Speaker C] Even if I do it under protest?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can’t hear you.

[Speaker C] Even if I do this act under protest. After instruction—one has to do it. What will people say?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can’t hear you, I lost control.

[Speaker E] He says under protest—under protest means, yuppie-style, like if someone puts a gun to my temple.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, if I’m saying I do it under coercion, then of course not. What do you mean?

[Speaker C] I do it because a transcendent command obligated me, but I don’t do it out of motivation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because of something vandal? Just “vandal”? So “the Merciful One exempts one who was coerced”—when you do a good deed with a gun pointed at you, that’s what I understood the question to be.

[Speaker C] You said—but—

[Speaker E] About that they basically say that the way—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With a gun pointed at you, fine—but what can you do, you were coerced.

[Speaker C] You explained that Kant requires there to be motivation. Right. And I’m saying: then he does it because he is obligated. Right. And I’m asking: even when he does it in protest? He doesn’t agree. He thinks it’s not moral, or not good, or not appropriate, or not suitable for him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then why is he doing it?

[Speaker C] He’s doing it because there is a transcendent command. According to Kant, is that okay or not?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. If the person says there is such a command, then he does think it’s okay, I don’t understand the question.

[Speaker C] No, he doesn’t think it’s okay. He is obligated by it, but he doesn’t think it’s okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is he obligated by it? But if he thinks it’s not okay, then why is he obligated? He’s obligated to evil? What do you mean? What… I don’t understand the situation. You can say that about ISIS people, I don’t know—they are obligated to what God, in their view, commands, even though they themselves may understand that this act is a terrible moral wrong, but they think it is a religious commandment. That can be discussed, but we’ll get to that later—that’s really the question of Torah and morality, or faith and morality, which is what I’m aiming at in the end after all these introductions. But in the purely moral context I don’t understand the situation.

[Speaker E] So basically you’re saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the Sages already said about this that “greater is one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does.” Does that basically fit with this whole Kantian outlook?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, the road to hell is paved with good intentions—I’m not sure I would connect that to here—but regarding “greater is one who is commanded and does,” I think that’s right.

[Speaker E] No, but it does, because the road to hell is paved with good intentions too, because if the moral act is determined by motivation, and this is a morality that is completely deontological, then that’s it—then maybe you don’t get to hell, you get to heaven.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? You don’t get to hell, you get to heaven, even though you did bad acts?

[Speaker E] No, but you can get to… it’s not necessary that you get to hell, but it’s—but you can get to hell.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t understand. Okay, there’s no point discussing proverbs. But I’m saying, if you’re talking about intentions as a moral criterion, then the claim is that if you do it with good intentions, you perform a moral act, even though the act itself may be problematic, because maybe you don’t understand and in fact this act is a bad act. But you do it with good intentions. Okay? So in principle it really is a moral act—there’s room to discuss that. It could be that you would combine the two criteria, that—

[Speaker C] That can be debated—whether the act also has to be good and also—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —be done with good intention. But there really are those who want to argue that only intention determines it, and the act doesn’t. The act can be harmful and bad, but you didn’t know that, so if you thought it was a good act then you’re a good person. So that already falls into the category of a commandment fulfilled through a transgression. Right—no, actually I would… I would perhaps see that as an unintentional transgression, not a commandment fulfilled through a transgression. A commandment fulfilled through a transgression is when you did two things, one of which is a commandment and one of which is a transgression—you did them together. Here you’re talking about when you committed a transgression but your intention was for the good, or a transgression for its own sake, or an unwitting sin, or something from that family. It’s one act that you’re doing. A commandment fulfilled through a transgression is two acts.

[Speaker D] Isn’t this connected, by any chance—I happened to be learning now about the dispute between Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Rabbi Yehuda—what is primary, the act or the intention?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the cave, yes.

[Speaker D] When they came out of the cave, so the act they were—what they were arguing about, but afterward all along the way, for example on the Sabbath, someone who digs without intending to—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We talked about this once—that even more than that, Rabbi Shimon interprets the reason of the verse. In other words, he expounds the reasons of the verses, and Rabbi Yehuda does not expound the reason of the verse. And some people connected that to the disputes about an act on the Sabbath not needed for its own purpose, and an unintended act. Exactly. According to Rabbi Shimon, what determines things is intention and not necessarily the act. And Rabbi Yehuda focuses on the act and not the intentions. And therefore Rabbi Shimon also expounds the reason of the verse because from his perspective it’s not only what is written that matters, but also why it is written—the intention behind the words and not only the thing itself.

[Speaker D] Yes, definitely, but Jewish law is that the act is what matters. What? Jewish law follows Rabbi Yehuda.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not entirely clear. Regarding expounding the reason of the verse, that’s true. Regarding the dispute about whether—

[Speaker D] The act—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —is primary or the intention, where does Jewish law stand? And regarding an act on the Sabbath not needed for its own purpose and an unintended act—on unintended acts, everyone actually rules like Rabbi Shimon. And regarding an act on the Sabbath not needed for its own purpose, Maimonides rules like Rabbi Yehuda, but even there almost all decisors rule like Rabbi Shimon. Jewish law follows Rabbi Shimon—that the intention is what matters.

[Speaker C] Except in a case of inevitable result.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And an inevitable result is something else, because there Rabbi Shimon agrees. Yes. Right. In any case, going back to us—this is basically the summary we’ve reached so far. Maybe it can be illustrated with a favorite example of mine, which I think I discussed in one of the early Ein Ayah classes, about this game theory algorithm for dividing a cake equally between two children. If parents want to divide a cake equally between two children, how do we ensure that? In game theory there’s a well-known trick: you let Reuven cut the cake into two pieces, and Shimon gets to choose first. And of course you tell them ahead of time that this is what’s going to happen. In that situation Reuven will be careful to divide the cake perfectly into two equal pieces. Why? Because if he makes one piece a little bigger, he knows Shimon will take it. So the optimal strategy for Reuven is to divide the cake into two precisely equal pieces. Then Shimon will take whichever he takes, but I get my full half. Now this trick is a nice trick mathematically, but of course on the human level it’s a terrible failure. It’s a terrible failure because what you achieve here is that the cake really is divided into two equal parts, but the educational lesson—which I think is the main thing here—you miss completely. Because what you are trying to do is maneuver the person through interests into doing the right act, which is to divide equally between two people. But since the criterion for a right act is not only what you do but also from what motivation you do it, or what—

[Speaker C] Feeling—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —you have, what your intentions are around the act, then the moment we educate children in this way to share equally, we are educating them to be complete egoists. In other words, we’re educating one to choose the biggest piece there is with great precision, and the other to look after himself as well as possible so that he gets the maximum. And that’s how we arrive at the perfect division. Okay? So we reach the desired result, the desired practical result, that the cake is divided equally between them. But we’ve totally lost the education. Because in the end, what difference does it make if the cake is divided equally? Our goal is that the children be educated toward sharing. And therefore this trick achieves the practical outcome but misses the motivations. And if I’m speaking in the context of moral education, then this is exactly the sort of education that won’t bring us to the moral goal. It will at most bring us to correct behavior. But a moral goal is correct behavior done out of good will or out of commitment to the right command. And therefore here the whole thing completely misses the point. And again, this is an illustration of the idea that when I measure an act, I don’t measure it by what you do alone, but no less important is why you do it. Okay? In the case of Kantian morality, the “why” means commitment to the categorical imperative. Good. So that’s regarding God in this context. Now I want to move to stage two of the discussion. We’re still in the moral discussion, in the introduction to what morality is, and now I want to move to the second stage of this discussion. Now I want to talk about what a value is. A value, in light of the picture I’ve described until now, is basically some fundamental ethical principle that I find in my moral observation. In other words, I draw it from my moral observation, and I understand that there is value to human life, or there is value to protecting a person’s property, or to respecting a person. It doesn’t matter—various such values. Basically, in this sense, as I said before, you can’t really ground a value in something outside it. I can’t ground it in facts. Convention is not a sufficient basis. At most one can say: because that is how the Holy One, Blessed be He, legislated, or thus, whatever entity you decide this entity is, determined it. That’s not a justification; it only says therefore this thing is a value. But why do it? The answer is: because—that’s what a value is. That is essentially what Leibowitz always used to say: you can’t rationalize values. Rationalize means to place values on something more fundamental than they are, something that will explain them, ground them. A value is the thing by means of which I ground other things. The value itself has no way of being grounded. He writes this perhaps in the sharpest way, at least that I know of, in one of his collections—after all, all his books are just collections of essays—there is a collection called Faith, History, and Values. The last article there talks about an American woman named Karen, where there was a major dilemma about whether to disconnect her from machines or not. At that time there really was a big dilemma around this; today I think we’re somewhat past that. And there was a very big debate whether yes or no. She was terminally ill, suffered greatly, was no longer conscious at all, no longer functioning—I don’t remember the exact details, but it was really a very, very difficult case. And Yeshayahu Leibowitz argued in that article that there is absolutely no possibility of permitting disconnecting her from the machines. And why? Because the value of human life is a postulate, and it cannot be rationalized. What he was basically arguing was that if you allow disconnecting her from the machines, what you are really saying is that life is a means by which you can do various things. And once she can no longer do anything with it, then it has lost its value, and therefore one may disconnect her from the machine and lose that life. And his claim was that a value is not something that can be rationalized; it doesn’t serve anything, it doesn’t function for something more fundamental than itself, and because of that there is no way to qualify that value. There is no way to say that in a certain situation it does not obligate or does not exist, because whenever you say such a thing, you are effectively turning the value into something instrumental, something that serves something else, and once it no longer serves, then it no longer exists. And you can’t do that—that was his claim. By the way, one can discuss, for example, what happens in value dilemmas, where I have a dilemma between two conflicting values. Then I have to prefer one over the other. So what is that—isn’t that rationalizing values? It seems to me that there Yeshayahu Leibowitz would say no, because what overrode this value was a counter-value. And that is not a qualification of this value itself. In other words, when I say I can disconnect her from machines because her life is worthless, she can’t do anything with it—that is a decision that does not arise from a counter-value, but rather from the claim that the value of life in this situation does not exist. And that, Leibowitz says, one cannot say. The value of life always exists. You can, however, sometimes—for example in war, if someone rises up against me, “if someone comes to kill you, rise early to kill him first.” I defend myself and kill him. In that case, where did the value of life go? How can it be that suddenly we qualified it? Did we say that here there is no value to my enemy’s life? No—here the value of my life overrides the value of his life. One can discuss why, but the moment what overrides that value is another value, that is something else. That is not called rationalizing values; that is setting a scale among them, but it is still a value judgment. Nothing can qualify a value judgment except another value judgment, which may perhaps stand above it on the scale or something like that.

[Speaker C] Right, so how does he explain “be killed rather than transgress”? Again? How does he explain “be killed rather than transgress”? What’s the problem? Here are two values, and we say it doesn’t work.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? There are two values, one overriding the other—on the contrary, that’s exactly the point. When there are two values, one can override the other, but you can’t say that a certain value serves something else, and when it no longer serves, it has lost its content, it has no value. Human life—once a person is alive but can’t do various things with that life, then his life has lost its value and therefore it is permissible to kill him. If that is the consideration, Leibowitz says, such a consideration cannot be made. If there is another value that overrides this one, that’s something else. He doesn’t write it there, but I assume he would say that is possible, because after all we have value dilemmas all the time and we have to make decisions—one value at the expense of another. But that is a value decision. A value decision is fine, but you can’t qualify the value or turn it into something instrumental, something that serves goals outside itself. Yes.

[Speaker G] I’m asking whether you think like Leibowitz. What’s the point? Leibowitz always used to say that he accepts values upon himself and you can’t obligate. I myself once asked him—I asked him at his house many years ago—I said to him, you keep saying that you accept values upon yourself and so on. I said to him, suppose you’re a judge and in front of you there’s a boy thirteen years and one day old and so on, who takes a needle out into the public domain, and he was warned, and you need to kill him. Because if you think the value falls on you and you must fulfill it, as you put it, you must—but if you accept it upon yourself, why do you accept upon yourself killing him? I don’t understand. So he said to me, “You understand nothing,” and he was right in what he said, but I’m still asking whether you—according to how you formulate it—you are taking his formulation, yes, hello Yehudit—I’m asking whether you accept his formulation of accepting a value, or whether you are obligated, as you define it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll explain. On this issue I really do not agree with Leibowitz at all. I’ll tell you more than that: I once wrote an article that his students wouldn’t agree to publish—they edited the journal Daat, never mind—they wouldn’t agree to publish it there. I don’t know why, but maybe because they didn’t… I argued that he did not understand himself either, not only that you didn’t understand him. In other words, I claim that when Yeshayahu Leibowitz said his famous “because that’s how it is,” that “because that’s how it is” was not the one he described—it was a different “because that’s how it is.” And I argue—and here this continues what I’ve been saying until now—that these values are posited by… I can’t ground them in something prior to them, but that does not mean they are arbitrary. On the contrary—what is something non-arbitrary? Something for which I have an explanation, right? But if the foundation of all explanations, the most basic point, is the value, then how can it be that the value itself is arbitrary, but if I have an action that I can justify by means of the value, then that action is not arbitrary? The only thing involved when I justify is the value—the value is the thing. Go on, yes yes. Therefore my claim is that when I say I cannot ground values, it does not mean that values are arbitrary. On the contrary, it means that the obligation in them is self-evident; it does not require grounding. Not that it has no grounding and I decided it arbitrarily. Rather, Yeshayahu Leibowitz was a positivist, and positivists are incapable of letting it pass their lips—or admitting—that one can accept something even though there is no argument that proves it. Okay? Anything for which there is no argument proving it is arbitrary, and therefore from Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s point of view the answer was “because—that’s how it is,” and if I want I’ll wipe you out—that’s what he would sometimes add when he really wanted to go all the way. But basically I think—if I may sin a little with paternalism—that deep down, what he really meant, if he weren’t such a devout positivist, is what I’m saying here: he meant to say that the thing is not arbitrary, but rather not amenable to justification. That is not the same thing. Not amenable to justification because it is the most fundamental postulate; it is self-evident, it doesn’t require justification. On the contrary, it is so obvious that if I justify by means of other things, they too become correct.

[Speaker G] Because I have the value of life, and therefore I forbid disconnecting that girl from the machines, so—

[Speaker C] Not disconnecting—

[Speaker E] Disconnecting the girl from the machines—is that an arbitrary decision? No, it is based on the value of life. And the value of life itself is arbitrary? Then if it’s arbitrary, what does it help that I based the prohibition on disconnecting her from the machines on it? In other words, that formulation that he accepts upon himself—you don’t accept that formulation? You’re saying he himself didn’t mean that, but that’s already a discussion of his language and his personality. As a conception, you don’t accept it—that’s what you’re saying. Yes. But the distinction here that the Rabbi is making is that what Leibowitz meant was that he cannot justify it. I don’t think Leibowitz would use the words “because I feel like it”; “because I feel like it” sounds a bit Marxist. “I feel like it” sounds materialist. But I understood the Rabbi to be saying that Leibowitz would say he cannot justify it, that it cannot be done—it’s impossible to do a reduction of these claims.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In his words you do see more than once that he says, “because that’s how it is because I feel like it.” That’s how he says it. I claim that if I could dig into his soul and look for what he really meant—and of course these are always speculations—I think he means what you said, that it is not an arbitrary act.

[Speaker G] He never says “I feel like it.” He never says—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “I feel like it.”

[Speaker G] He says “I accept it upon myself.” That’s not the same thing, no no, that’s a big difference. “I feel like it”—you know what I feel like? I feel like a popsicle.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he always says—Eleanor Roosevelt, someone mentioned Eleanor Roosevelt earlier against the Japanese man, yes, where his value is to commit suicide for the emperor, and her value is to hand out a cup of milk. Or he spoke about Ofira Navon, I think, who handed out Playboy to soldiers in the canal, versus Eleanor Roosevelt who handed out a cup of milk to every child. But these are statements that basically imply as though the whole business is about an arbitrary decision—simply because I decided this way and he decided differently. But it seems to me that that’s really not what he means. He means to say that you can’t justify it. Now, he also claims that since you can’t justify it, then I also won’t be able to convince someone who thinks differently from me, and therefore in practice it becomes a bit arbitrary. Not because he doesn’t believe in what he does. As you asked him, Yaakov, I think he would execute that child because he really thinks that is the right thing to do, not because he feels like it. But he can say to you: fine, but if you don’t accept the halakhic system, then of course you’ll think I’m a murderer when I kill.

[Speaker E] But he wouldn’t do it—but I’m not sure he would do it, because I think that for the same reasons that the value of life was a sort of postulate, for that reason too he opposed the death penalty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A voluntary death penalty.

[Speaker E] He wasn’t a pacifist, but he opposed the death penalty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what he would have said. The death penalty in Jewish law—I don’t know what he thought about that, because it wasn’t…

[Speaker F] And that child example is really a demagogic lab example.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—a lab example is the best thing there is, because a lab example takes an extreme case by which one can test ideas. It doesn’t actually matter in practice; one can find all kinds of tricks. I’m talking about the principled question, like an ukimta, yes, we talked about that. This lab example—I want to argue in principle, again—Leibowitz is only an example. I’m not interested in what he specifically really thought. Rather, I’m saying that Leibowitz could have said: I would execute him. Why? Because I think that is what the Holy One, Blessed be He, expects of me. Because it’s like the Binding of Isaac.

[Speaker F] That’s exactly the Binding of Isaac. After all, he said all the commandments are like the Binding of Isaac. You even took a little child and offered him up as a burnt offering—that’s what you did.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, right, that’s what he would say—I think so too. That’s what he would say, and he’d say more than that, and I’ll get to that later: that it is indeed an immoral act, but it is my halakhic / of Jewish law obligation. And now I have a conflict between values, and in a conflict between values one always overrides the other. That’s not the same thing as disconnecting life-support machines, where you say that the value does not exist under certain circumstances; rather, here it is another value that overrides this one. Fine—when there are conflicts, there’s nothing to be done. You can’t fulfill both; you have to choose one and give up the other.

[Speaker E] I have to say something here, Rabbi, if I may, because if by any chance Yeshayahu Leibowitz is listening to us—well, I studied with him in brain research too, and I saw how sensitive he was to experiments that were done on monkeys. So if he was sensitive to research done there on monkeys, on the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere—I still remember those phrases of his—I’m sure he would not volunteer to come and kill that child who was gathering wood.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I don’t agree with what you’re saying now. Again, not specifically about Leibowitz, but about the conception itself. I don’t agree, because on the principled level he would define this as a dilemma, or an Binding of Isaac, as Haya said earlier, and the religious obligation may override the moral obligation. Maybe—I don’t know. So no, I don’t think I can derive that. But that really brings us into the depth of the issue that I want to get to later—Jewish law and morality, or Torah and morality—and I’ll get to that later. Right now I’m only at the stage of building, or arranging, the tools on the board. So now the next stage, which I can already see I probably won’t have time for, is basically the question of how I actually construct this scale of values. And here there is a not-simple problem in analytic ethics, yes, in moral philosophy, called the incommensurability of values—that values are measureless, that they have no common measure. Common measure, yes—incommensurable means they don’t have a common measure. They have no common measure. What does that mean? If I say: what is there more of in the world, water in the ocean or good-heartedness among human beings? So you can’t answer that question, right? It’s not measured in the same units; there is no meaning to that kind of comparison. You can’t answer such a question. Various moral philosophers claim that in fact when we… when we come to build a scale of values, there too we basically have the same problem. Because if indeed every value stands on its own and on its own foundations, not on anything outside itself, it does not serve anything—then say you are now in a dilemma between saving a life and Sabbath observance, or some value dilemma, it doesn’t matter which. Jean-Paul Sartre describes a dilemma of some student of his in occupied Paris during the Holocaust. The student came to consult him about whether to join the army of Free France, yes, de Gaulle’s Gaullists, or stay with his mother and help her. The question is what to do. This is a dilemma that is not between Torah and morality or whatever, but a dilemma within morality itself. Two moral values: fighting evil and helping his elderly mother. What do you do in such a situation? So leave me for the moment with dilemmas between saving a life and the Sabbath, or morality and Jewish law—let’s talk about dilemmas within morality, because right now I’m dealing only with morality. A bit later you’ll see why all these discussions are so important also for the topic we’re dealing with. So there is a basic philosophical or logical problem here. Because it is not only the question of how I know which value overrides which. The question of how I know which value overrides which is a practical question, an epistemic question. That is, how can I manage to reach the correct answer—whether the value of helping one’s mother or the value of fighting evil. All right? But the deeper question is whether there is even an answer at all—not whether I can get to the answer. Because when I asked the earlier kind of question—what is there more of, water in the ocean or good-heartedness among human beings—it’s not that I have no way of reaching the answer. There is no answer. The question is meaningless. It is not a question that has an answer. The problem is not that I have no tools to reach the answer; the more fundamental problem is that there is no answer. Now the question is what happens in a conflict between values, or when I try to rank values and determine which is higher than which on the scale. Fighting evil or helping your sick mother—how do I rank that? After all, neither of them is instrumental. That is, neither of them—at least that is the assumption that follows from what we have seen until now—a value is not something that comes to serve something else; it is something that stands on its own. So the value of human life versus the value of property. Fine? Which takes precedence? Usually we think that human life overrides property. Okay, why? How do we determine that the value of human life is higher than the value of preserving property? After all, in the end neither of them is a means to something outside itself. So what common standard do these two values have, by which I can measure them both on the same scale and arrange them and determine which is above which? There is no common standard. Not only is there no common standard—neither of them separately has a standard by which I can measure it, even before the question of whether the standard is common. Because if value really is the most fundamental thing, which does not come to serve anything else, how can I measure the worth or importance of a certain value? By what standard? After all, if I were to say, for example, that values were instrumental—the value of life serves having a good time, yes, pleasure, enjoyment, happiness. The value of life is a means to happiness. Say there are people who would say that, and therefore poor Karen, who can no longer have any happiness, one may disconnect her from the machines, because once life no longer fulfills its function of bringing happiness to a person, it loses its value. If you have such an instrumental conception of the value of life, where life serves the value of happiness, then life is not a value. Because if—meaning, if you viewed a value as something instrumental, you could measure it easily. Let’s see how much happiness this life brings, and then I can certainly measure it against another value and see how much happiness it brings, and then I can definitely arrange this above that or below that because I have a yardstick. But if the value does not come to serve anything, I have no way of measuring it. There is no yardstick to measure how important it is in itself, and of course when I measure it against something else, then all the more so there is nothing to discuss. After all, each one stands on its own and does not serve anything, and certainly not the same goal. So if it is not the same goal, how do I measure them at all? By what standard do I measure them in order to arrange a scale of values, one above the other? This is called the problem of the incommensurability of values. Essentially, the claim is that we have no way to build a scale. If I understand value as the conclusion we have reached up to now—that value is the most basic postulate and cannot be grounded in anything outside itself—if so, the question is how we build a scale of values. And now one can really ask Leibowitz: how do you determine, in a clash between values, which overrides which? Earlier I said that he—he is not willing to qualify a value. He is not willing to say that the value of life does not exist when it does not bring happiness. Okay, but when I kill a soldier who threatens me in war, that perhaps he would be willing to accept, because here it is a value against a value: the value of my life versus the value of his life, or I don’t know, my happiness versus his life, whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. So now the question is—seemingly, with that he could manage. But now comes the next question, which says: wait, wait—even there I don’t see how he manages. Because if a value is not something measured on the basis of something more fundamental than it, then I really have no way to compare two values. So even in a clash between two values I have no way to decide which overrides which and how we determine which one to follow. And that, essentially, is the problem of incommensurability. Did you want to say something?

[Speaker B] Yes, what you said regarding what there is more of—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If anyone else wants to comment or ask, now’s the time. I’ll continue next time.

[Speaker B] What you asked, what you said—that you can’t know what there is more of, water in the sea or goodness in people—well, it’s not true that the question has no meaning. Obviously the question has meaning; I understand the question.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a question of your theory of meaning. It may be that one can say the question has meaning but has no answer. Let’s at least agree on that.

[Speaker B] I’m not even sure about that. I think there’s more water in the sea.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of that I’m sure, and I’m sure you are too. It’s a question of what determines meaning, but in my view it has no answer. It’s not that I cannot know the answer—there is no answer.

[Speaker E] We have these kinds of references, as it were, that we—for example, in the story of the tribes they mentioned earlier, they said they didn’t want to go, they wanted to settle in the eastern side of the Jordan, and they mentioned the cattle first and only afterward the children, and from that we learned that they did something improper. They spoke about the property before they spoke about life, for example?

[Speaker C] So what’s the question?

[Speaker E] I’m asking whether, basically, when a person accepts upon himself, for example, the Torah, then he at least has a framework within which he can come and then know how to judge that one value is more important than another value.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to disagree with you, and that’s what I intended to talk about next time. I’ll say it in just one sentence. If, for example, I ask the question whether there is more water in the ocean or more goodness in the hearts of human beings, I have no way to know what the answer is; I claim there is also no answer. Where would the practical difference be? Even if you bring me a verse showing which there is more of, I won’t accept it. Because my problem is not that I have no way to reach the answer. My claim is that there is no answer to this question. So here it won’t help for you to tell me: this is a scriptural decree. A scriptural decree that says there is more water in the ocean—there is no such thing. Because a scriptural decree can tell me: look, even though you don’t understand, the Holy One, blessed be He, understands better than you, and if you cannot reach the answer, then He reveals it to you. I understand that. But that is only in a place where there is an answer and I just cannot get to it. But if there is no answer to the question, then even a scriptural decree cannot help me. Therefore, even if you show me that the value of life is more important than the value of cattle because there is a verse, that does not solve the problem for me. Because if I think there is incommensurability between values, then even verses will not help me. Because there is no answer to the question—it’s not that I can’t get to the answer. Unless you claim that there is an answer, only I cannot get to it, and then you say the verse can help me. So that really is what we’ll discuss next time.

[Speaker C] What Sartre answered him was that he doesn’t know, and only when he gets upstairs will they tell him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but if he says that when he gets upstairs they’ll tell him, that means he thinks there is an answer—he just doesn’t know how to answer it. Right. Okay. Fine, anyone else?

[Speaker C] When is next time? On Thursday. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Twice a week? Is it three times a week?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Today is instead of Thursday that wasn’t—the last Thursday. It’s usually on Thursdays. This Thursday.