חדש באתר: NotebookLM עם כל תכני הרב מיכאל אברהם

Halakha and Ethics, Lesson 10

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This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

Table of Contents

  • The problem of grounding values and the naturalistic fallacy
  • Leibowitz: values as conventional and institutional, and the failure of obligation
  • Psychologizing morality and emptying the ethical vocabulary
  • Nuremberg, orders, and moral demand beyond institution
  • The truth of ethical statements and a metaphysical proposal of ideas and the “eyes of the intellect”
  • Logic, necessity, and analytic claims versus facts
  • Only two options, the price of morality, and conscience as a cognitive compass
  • Moral disputes, the limits of decision, and examples from Sartre
  • Leibowitz, Maimonides, “the accepted opinions,” and a rereading of Guide for the Perplexed
  • The meaning of morality in Maimonides and the claim that the passage is not about ethics

Summary

General Overview

The text presents a principled difficulty in grounding values and norms that are not factual, and sets out Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s position according to which values are the product of agreement and institution and therefore lack self-binding validity. The author argues that conventionality does not explain obligation and leaves no content in concepts like “must,” “right,” “prohibition,” “condemnation,” and “praise,” and therefore empties ethics and translates it into psychology or description of facts. In contrast, a substantive-metaphysical alternative is proposed, according to which there is moral truth as an objective idea perceived by the “eyes of the intellect,” and conscience is a non-sensory cognitive tool. The text connects this to the Nuremberg trials and to the question of the validity of ethical statements, and finally rereads Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed and argues that the terms “accepted opinions” and “intellectual truths” there do not deal with morality but with etiquette and convention versus truth and falsehood.

The problem of grounding values and the naturalistic fallacy

The text states that observation is seemingly the only way to ground something with objective validity, but values and norms do not arise from observation because of the naturalistic fallacy. The text concludes that this seems to mean there is no way to ground values if one demands objective factual grounding, and that the same problem applies to aesthetic values as well.

Leibowitz: values as conventional and institutional, and the failure of obligation

The text attributes to Leibowitz the position that values are the result of agreement, convention, and membership in an institution such as a state or society, and that commitment to values arises only from the fact that it was decided that this is what we want. The text argues that the formula “we decided” does not generate obligation, because whoever decided can also regret it, and the fact that a person “accepted something upon himself” does not explain why he is obligated to uphold what he accepted. The text adds that even the rule “what I accepted upon myself I must fulfill” is itself a value that requires grounding, so conventionality hangs one value on another and leaves the obligating force without a source.

Psychologizing morality and emptying the ethical vocabulary

The text rejects a psychological explanation as an answer to moral obligation and argues that it belongs only to the factual plane and does not provide an answer to “why are we obligated.” The text states that if one follows a conventional or materialist-determinist conception through to the end, morality is emptied of content and all that remains are theories of behavior, desires, and consequences. The text argues that within such a move people go on using ethical vocabulary but “empty” it, so that condemnation becomes a speech act or an expression of subjective feeling that is not supposed to trouble or obligate anyone else, and the normative world becomes a “world of shadows.”

Nuremberg, orders, and moral demand beyond institution

The text presents the claim “we were following orders” as a model of institutional morality, in which what is right is what society or the system decided. The text describes the Nuremberg trials as an open confrontation with the question whether one may demand something of a person beyond the agreements in the society in which he acted, and whether there is room to condemn and judge or only to act out of a power-interest in preventing future harm. The text links the idea of a “black flag” to the possibility of a contradiction between law and a moral truth that does not depend on law.

The truth of ethical statements and a metaphysical proposal of ideas and the “eyes of the intellect”

The text presents an analytic-semantic formulation of the problem: in a factual statement, “true” means correspondence to a state of affairs in the world, but in an ethical statement like “murder is forbidden” it is unclear what exactly the comparison is made against if everything is institutional or subjective. The text proposes that the alternative that preserves ethical content is the assumption that there is a non-physical “reality” of ideal facts or ideas of the good, relative to which one can understand the truth and falsity of moral claims. The text uses Plato and Husserl’s notion of “eidetic seeing” to describe an intellectual observation of ideas, and connects this to Maimonides and the metaphor “the eyes of the intellect” as a form of cognition that is not sensory but is still cognition and not merely internal inference.

Logic, necessity, and analytic claims versus facts

The text distinguishes between laws of nature and logic and argues that logic is not a “law” in the same sense because it cannot be violated and does not depend on some other possible world. The text presents claims like “a triangle is not round” and “two plus three equals five” as analytic claims or identities that are not the result of observation and do not depend on an arbitrary psychological structure. The text connects this to the general question of how claims are validated in different fields, and identifies a common structure in dilemmas such as synthetic a priori judgments in Kant and the tension between legislation and interpretation in the legal world.

Only two options, the price of morality, and conscience as a cognitive compass

The text presents two consistent paths: conventionalism, which leads to the conclusion that there is no binding morality, only facts, habits, and feelings; or essentialism, which requires accepting a metaphysics of the idea of the good and intellectual observation. The text defines the price of the second option as “mysticism” in the sense of positing ideas and non-sensory cognition, and argues that without this there is no real ability to condemn, judge, or praise in the normative sense. The text argues that conscience is not merely emotion but an ethical faculty of observation, and admits that it is difficult to distinguish such seeing from mixtures of error and psychological influences, but presents it as the only alternative that preserves moral truth.

Moral disputes, the limits of decision, and examples from Sartre

The text argues that moral disagreements do not prove there is no moral truth, just as disagreements in the factual realm do not negate truth and falsehood. The text uses the example of the color of a distant object that there is no practical way to check, in order to distinguish between difficulty of proof and absence of truth. The text presents Sartre’s example of the student torn between joining the Free French army and staying with his mother as a case where there may be no simple resolution, but one should not infer from this that there is no correct answer.

Leibowitz, Maimonides, “the accepted opinions,” and a rereading of Guide for the Perplexed

The text describes how Leibowitz cites Maimonides and Pascal to argue that good and evil belong to “accepted opinions” while truth and falsehood belong to “intellectual truths,” and suggests that many commentators understand “accepted opinions” as conventionality. The text presents a detailed reading of Guide for the Perplexed in which Maimonides explains that “and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil” means “and you shall be like nobles,” and that before the sin, the human being already possessed intellect that distinguishes truth from falsehood because he was created in the image of God and was commanded. The text interprets Maimonides to mean that the move to “knowing good and evil” is a descent to the plane of “the ugly and the fine” as a realm of accepted opinions, manners, and conventions such as the disgrace of exposing nakedness, and not moral elevation. Therefore, after the sin, the punishment is the loss of intellectual apprehension and sinking into preoccupation with adornment and disgrace.

The meaning of morality in Maimonides and the claim that the passage is not about ethics

The text argues that Maimonides in the passage under discussion is not dealing with morality but with conduct and manners whose context depends on social norms, and therefore “accepted opinions” there are not “moral values” but matters of etiquette and social modesty. The text brings examples such as beach clothing and practices in different societies to show that modesty is partly conventional, and distinguishes this from values like “the value of human life,” which for Maimonides belong not to accepted opinions but to intellectual truths. The text states that in many places Maimonides identifies morality with wisdom, and concludes that Leibowitz’s use of this passage in a discussion of morality is mistaken, and that “this Maimonides passage has nothing to do with morality at all,” while preserving the remark that the text adds concerning Leibowitz’s article that it is full of errors even though its general foundation is correct.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time I used Leibowitz’s article a bit, the one about disconnecting from devices, to illustrate through it the problematic nature of grounding moral values, and really anything that isn’t factual, including aesthetic values. And the bottom line was that apparently you can’t—or at least it seems that the only kind of grounding we can offer that would have some sort of objective validity is observation. But since norms and values can’t arise from observation—that’s the naturalistic fallacy—then it follows that they can’t be grounded. And if they can’t be grounded, then the only alternative, at least the way Leibowitz sees it, is to view them as something based on agreement, convention, or yes, values are something institutional, he says. It’s the result of membership in an institution, a state or a society or something like that, and the validity or obligation of those values is simply because we decided that this is what we want to do. That too can itself be dug into a bit, because what does it mean, “we decided”? If I decided, then I’ll do it, and by the same token I can also decide now not to do it. Meaning, even if you don’t accept at all the possibility of seeing a value as something valid in itself, even then validating something on the basis of agreement, on the basis of a contract, won’t help. Because true, if I decided then I’ll do it, but the fact that I decided doesn’t make me obligated to do it, and it doesn’t enable someone else to criticize me if I don’t do it.

[Speaker B] What about what we accepted upon ourselves at Mount Sinai? Same thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I’m going on an institutional basis—meaning if everything is institutional, if everything is conventional—then right, there too it’s the same problem. Because then what? So I accepted it, and then one day I regretted it.

[Speaker C] What’s the problem? If we accepted it upon ourselves, you can add another—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Premise. If—

[Speaker C] If we accepted it, then I’m obligated. But where does that premise come from? No, “we accepted it upon ourselves” doesn’t mean that was the only thing there was, but rather that we also assume there is obligation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, if you assume that, then it’s no longer institutional.

[Speaker C] Right, I’m responding to “we accepted it upon ourselves.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I’ll answer that here too. Why not with ordinary values as well? The question is whether that’s being said here—he doesn’t say it. I’m saying that if you take that option, then I have no problem with Mount Sinai either. Right now I’m talking about the conception Leibowitz presented. The conception Leibowitz presents is one of conventionality, of institution. Now if that really is the case, even that itself isn’t clear. Because then you’re basically telling me that there are no values that obligate by themselves. The only thing you can demand of someone is if he doesn’t uphold something he decided on, or accepted upon himself. But that too is itself a kind of value: that what I accepted upon myself I ought to fulfill. And the question is, what is that itself based on? Meaning, you’re basically hanging something here in midair. Because if you don’t accept at all the concept of a value that is valid in itself, not because of agreement, then it’s also unclear why the agreement obligates. Ari, did you want to comment?

[Speaker D] It seems to me it’s more like—I understood it more in a psychological sense, no? Meaning, if you start doubting it, like there’s no truth at all in these values, there’s no sense in which they obligate or don’t obligate, we decided to do this, and if you undermine that then you’ll break it, and obviously we don’t want that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t want that, and I do.

[Speaker D] So I’m saying, not in the sense that it obligates—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In no sense, also in the sense that… okay, so in the end you’re not offering an explanation of obligation. You’re saying there is no obligation. Why do we do it? There are psychological explanations for why we do it. But a psychological explanation belongs to the factual plane, not to the plane of why one must do it. You can ask me, why do you do it? That’s a psychologist’s question, and he can answer it. I do it because I decided, I do it because I’m built in a certain way—none of that has anything to do with morality. It belongs to the psychology department, not the morality department. Therefore, if we really go all the way with the conventional conception, then the whole thing is completely emptied of content. In the end, we reduce everything to facts. We were trying to escape facts, after all. We said you can’t base values on facts. Notice how the circle closes here. We start from the claim that values can’t be based on facts. Right? There’s no choice but to base values on agreement. Fine. And why must the agreement be upheld? It need not be. Rather, that’s the explanation of why I do it. I do it because I have some sort of habit to… fine, so then we don’t need all this. I’m simply used to behaving morally, and so I behave morally… so what’s the point? If the question is a psychological question, then you should hand it over to empirical research. Meaning, why do human beings behave this way and not another way. If you’re talking about morality, you’re not talking about facts, you’re talking about the question why people must do it—even with regard to someone who doesn’t behave that way, I have a claim against him; that is, I say he’s not okay, he ought to do it. The concept of obligation—just as he begins with—the concept of obligation, right, prohibition, all these concepts are actually concepts that have been completely emptied of content. By the way, he himself doesn’t write this way, and therefore there’s a problem in his words, because he himself goes on using concepts like obligation, right, and prohibition. He claims their basis is institutional. If he takes that through to the end, then in fact he shouldn’t use these concepts at all, but only describe what people do. You can describe what people do. What? He calls it a phenomenon. What? Fine. Okay. So you can use the concepts, but really this is… very often when you have some problem and you don’t know what to do or how to ground something, you offer some kind of grounding that actually isn’t for that thing—you’ve already emptied it of content. It’s not that thing at all; you replaced it. More broadly, it’s like in what’s called the new criticism in post—postmodern thought, where there’s a critique of the concept of truth, and then they offer an alternative concept of truth. What’s an alternative concept of truth? It’s what I think, without commitment to any objectivity, without this obligating you, everyone with his own narrative. That’s not an alternative concept of truth. It’s simply not truth; it’s something else. You can call it by the same word, but it isn’t an alternative grounding of the concept of truth or an alternative conception of the concept of truth. It’s the view that the concept of truth simply means there is no such thing. The concept of truth doesn’t exist. I’m talking about something else, it’s just convenient for me to use the word truth, I don’t know, we’re already used to it, so I use it in that sense, but there’s no claim here beyond that. Very often, solutions to a problem absorb into themselves the assumptions that led to the problem, and so they really don’t offer a solution at all—they’re just throwing up their hands and saying, okay, there is no solution. And in the end, as a result of that, the value-core that morality has, as distinct from facts, disappears, and my ability to condemn someone, judge someone, or praise someone—it doesn’t matter, judge in both directions—does not exist. There are no such concepts as condemnation. Again, I can behave in a way that people call condemning, fine, no problem. Now for every substantive concept in ethics we attach some kind of shadow concept that really belongs to the factual world. So what’s usually called condemnation in the classical ethical conception now becomes merely telling someone that he’s not okay. But that isn’t really the concept of condemnation as we ordinarily understand it. The concept of condemnation is not a speech act. The speech expresses the condemnation; the speech is not the condemnation. The speech is the verbal expression of the condemnation. In this conception there is no—this expresses nothing; it’s just some utterance we call condemnation, fine. It expresses the subjective feeling… yes, it expresses a subjective feeling. Yes, that’s uninteresting. Meaning, it expresses nothing real, nothing that is supposed to trouble me or obligate me. So you express your condemnation—good health, take a pill. It shouldn’t bother me. In principle, the concept of condemnation means saying something that arouses in the condemned person some feeling that he was not okay—if I succeed—some feeling that he was not okay. But if I understand the concept of condemnation this way, it can’t work. Not that I happened not to succeed—no, it just can’t work. Because he is built one way and you are built another way, so what he does is according to how he is built, and what you do is according to how you are built. Fine.

[Speaker D] But it can work—wait—practically it can work.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean practically? Yes, you can program him differently, shape him in some other way.

[Speaker D] But if there is some certain common basis—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, we don’t have that. You can see that I behave differently.

[Speaker D] No, not that we’re identical, but there’s some shared layer—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but if he behaves differently because that’s how he is built, and I also behave differently because that’s how I am built—

[Speaker D] Maybe if we also have shared aspects, then your condemnation might arouse in me—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? Then in some sense you reprogram my feelings to be different. Okay, fine. That’s why I say, very often this imitation that takes place today—there was some lecture I couldn’t get to because I had something else, Chaim Sompolinsky spoke, I mentioned him when we talked about free will—so Menachem told me he’s moved on to the next stage: it’s already clear that the world is deterministic, and now the only question is how to define moral theory in such a world. A deterministic and materialistic world. In Jerusalem?

[Speaker E] Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was some conference for the retirement of Yemima Ben-Menachem. Actually there were interesting things, but I couldn’t travel. He was supposed to address this issue there. In my opinion there’s nothing to address here. I have no doubt—I can know exactly what he did, meaning, without being there. Clearly what he did was repeat the entire ethical lexicon and empty it of its substantive content. That is, turn it into a description of forms of behavior. Meaning, I behave this way because I want to achieve such-and-such results, and everything becomes some kind of thing that belongs to the factual world, without all the evaluative connotations that accompany it. And that’s what people always do in this context. I don’t think there’s any other way out. It doesn’t seem to me there’s some direction nobody has thought of. That doesn’t sound plausible to me. But fine, I don’t know, I wasn’t there. In any case, this is often characteristic. It’s like when you present someone with the implications of the conventional conception—we talked about the Nuremberg trials, right? That was around Holocaust Remembrance Day. So at the Nuremberg trials, when they judged the Nazi defendants, they claimed: we were following orders. Now what does “we were following orders” mean? That’s basically a conception of institutional morality, right? It basically says: after all, what does it mean—why should I uphold the rules of morality? Because the society I belong to decided that this is what it wants. Well, fine, that’s what we did. We did exactly what the society we belonged to decided. Now at the Nuremberg trials, what was behind this issue—not even behind it, it was right on the table—was the question whether there really is something beyond institution in morality. That is, can I demand of a person something beyond the agreements practiced in the society in which he acted? Can I demand, condemn someone, or can I only kill him so that he won’t harm me later? Again, these are the postmodern or conventional translations of morality. Yes, I’ll kill them because they’re just bothering me and they’ll kill me tomorrow, so I’m killing them now already. That’s the translation of “they deserve the death penalty” because they were wrong or wicked and so on. Everything can be translated, no problem. It’s just emptying it of content and translating, imitating. It’s really a world of shadows. Meaning, everything exists in that world too, only without substantive content. That is, you can keep using the whole world of concepts. And that’s what both materialists and determinists usually do—exactly that. Materialists empty the mental concept of content, and determinists empty the concept, the whole world of choice and will, of content, and go on using the same conceptual system. Not a single word leaves the dictionary. Meaning, the entire dictionary remains, only completely emptied of its substantive content. All right? Now what I said in the end is that I really think that if someone feels—or his intuition says—that there is nevertheless a possibility of judging, condemning, or praising someone else on the moral plane, then there is no escape. Because ordinary factual grounding doesn’t exist. Conventionality doesn’t provide it. So what remains? What remains is only, as I said, some kind of cognitive act. That is, some sort of conception that morality or the good is some kind of idea that exists in some sense outside us, that it has some sort of objective existence. It’s not merely a product of how we are built. I behave this way because this is how I’m built—no. I claim that I observe some idea of the good, of morality; I try to derive from it what a moral act is, and that is the concept of morally right or wrong. Because I said there’s a problem here that in analytic philosophy is often presented in terms of language. So how do they present the problem I’ve described so far in analytic philosophy, or in terms of semantics, that is, as a semantic problem? The claim is as follows: what does it mean, what is the meaning of saying that an ethical statement is true? Or correct? That’s really the question. Meaning, if I say that a certain factual statement is true, I know what true means. True means it corresponds to the state of affairs in the world. If I say that this table is white, I ask myself what it means for that statement to be true. True means that this table really is white, that the fact corresponds to what the statement describes. That comparison is the basis for determining whether the claim is true or not true. Now what does it mean that the statement “murder is forbidden” is true? True. True—what does true mean? What does it mean that it’s true—against what am I comparing it? If indeed everything is institutional, then there’s nothing substantive. I decided, I want—then there’s no such thing as true. At most you can say: that’s how I’m built. There’s no claim here that arises from a comparison between a statement or proposition and the reality it describes. That’s how we usually understand the validation of claims. Yes? Whether a claim is true or not true. But with an ethical statement we have no way to do that. Against what are we supposed to compare it? Once we have nothing to compare it against, there is no such thing as a true or false statement. This is just the semantic reflection of what I’ve been saying till now, right? It’s just a way of describing it in the language-context. Fine, but it’s really the same problem itself. Now in terms of the proposal I gave—or repeated now—I say no, there is a comparison, there is a place, that is, there is some comparison underlying the claim that a certain ethical statement is true. A comparison with actual reality. What is actual reality? Not physical reality, but some kind of factuality of a different type. Yes, it matches the way the value is built, the moral idea, or the value of values, the world of values, the good. Yes, so I make a claim, and now this is already a factual claim. I claim that the idea of morality says that murder is forbidden. That is a claim. Now again, you can ask how do you know? Fine, I don’t have an answer. But at least I understand the meaning of the statement that “murder is forbidden” is a true claim, a correct claim. All right? Or that “it is a commandment to murder” is a false claim, an incorrect claim. Okay? Now I can at least give meaning to the terms true and false with respect to ethical statements. Or in the earlier language I used at the beginning of the lecture, this is really the possibility of validating ethical claims. Meaning, saying that there is real morality and unreal morality; the possibility of criticizing someone, judging someone, or praising him, yes? Meaning, judging him for good or for bad. So the only possibility that really leaves us with ethical content is that there is, after all, some kind of factual sense to ethics. But these are facts of a different kind. They are not facts of the simple physical type. They are ideal facts. Plato’s world of ideas, for example, is a good metaphor for this. There are facts that pertain to the existence of ideas, not to the existence of physical objects or qualities we see with our eyes. These things we observe with the eyes of the intellect. By the way, in Maimonides this is in the first chapter of Guide for the Perplexed, the opening chapters of Guide for the Perplexed, where he speaks about this concept, the eyes of the intellect. And the concept “eyes of the intellect” is almost self-contradictory. Because eyes are an expression of cognition, right, interaction with the world, while intellect is the faculty—or not faculty, but the function in us—that expresses thought. Thought is not cognition. Thinking and cognition are two different things. Cognition is observation of the world. Thinking is something that happens inside me: I derive conclusions from premises; it has nothing to do with the world, I operate within myself. Now what are the eyes of the intellect? The eyes of the intellect mean that some of the things we relate to as thought are really not thought but cognition. One second—I observe ideas, and that observation is not done with the eyes or the ears, so Maimonides calls it by this metaphor, the eyes of the intellect. What he means to say is that some of our thought is not really thought, but cognition. And therefore many times things that we take to arise from within us, not from observation of the world, as products of thought, results of thought—that is not true. They are the result of observation, only not observation with the eyes. I would maybe even say this about the axioms of geometry. The axioms of geometry are not a product of the eyes. We do not observe that between two points there passes one straight line; you can’t observe that. What is that, a generalization from what we’ve seen? What generalization? Generalization is an act of thought. So therefore it is indeed a product of thinking. But on the other hand, if it is a product of thinking, then the criticism always arises: fine, but what does the world owe you? As Mark Twain says, it was here before you. Meaning, so what if you are built in such a way that your mind yields this insight—why assume at all that it corresponds in some sense to what is happening in the world itself? Why do you think that in the world itself too there really is one straight line between two points? The fact that you are built in a way that generates such generalizations—so what? Someone else isn’t built that way, so he’ll see it differently. And indeed there are those who want to say that this is some arbitrary thing, not some—exactly the parallel to Leibowitz—that is, something institutional. This is how we are built, so that’s why it happens this way, not because it is really true with respect to the world itself. And what I am claiming… here, that’s not true. It is true in the world itself. It is true in the world itself because it is not a product of how we are built. We see that between two points there passes one straight line, not with the eyes, but with the eyes of the intellect. Meaning, it is a certain kind of observational act, not thinking, even though it is performed with the intellect and not with the eyes, not with the senses. All right? Likewise, there is such a concept in Husserl’s philosophy, phenomenological philosophy, where he talks about eidetic seeing, yes? A kind of looking at ideas. Yes, not looking at objects, at physical objects, not seeing with the eyes, but looking at ideas. What he means is that through, as Plato describes it, the concrete horse, we see horseness. The concrete horse is kind of transparent; through it we understand—we call it understanding—but in fact it is a kind of observation. We understand the concept of horseness, we encounter the idea of horseness. Now, we have no way to see horseness with the eyes; with the eyes you see a horse, not horseness. How do we distill from the horses we see the concept of horseness, the abstract concept? So apparently that’s an act of thought. Aristotle indeed understood that this is an act of thought, and it has no validity; there is no idea of horseness. It’s a generalization, a convenient fiction. It’s convenient for us to gather all these objects we call horses into one group and call them all horses. Even though the fact that they are more similar to each other than the horse and this telephone—that’s our arbitrary decision. If someone else were built differently, he would group white horses with telephones and black horses with clouds, I don’t know, and those would be the groups, and he would call them by different names, and he would be no less right than we are. It’s only a question of how I am built, what seems to me connected to the same group or similar, and what does not seem so. So it’s only a product of how I’m built.

[Speaker G] So intuition is also a matter of intellect? Yes, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Intuition is also… exactly. Not also—this is it. He sees—exactly, this is it, not also, this is exactly it. What I called intuition earlier is Maimonides’ eyes of the intellect or Husserl’s seeing of ideas. Meaning, the claim is that in all these places—and you can go field by field—I think every field in philosophy, or the philosophy of something, of science, of law, of anything, the fundamental question is always this. Always this. How do we validate, at the base level, how can you say that something is true in that field? It’s not a product of observation, just as nothing interesting is a product of simple observation, because the interesting things are always the generalizations, the general laws. It’s not a product of simple observation. On the other hand, if it isn’t a product of observation, then maybe it’s merely a product of how I’m built? So who says there is anything genuinely true in it? And that is always the question. The problem—the dilemma between legislation and interpretation in the legal world—is exactly the same thing. Exactly the same problem. Judicial legislation, sorry, judicial legislation—that is exactly the same problem. Or like Kant’s problem of synthetic a priori judgments. These are all duplicates. It’s exactly the same problem; the logical structure is the same structure.

[Speaker C] Every statement you make, every claim you make, is ultimately based on premises that you have to ground.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly. And really the question is always called by a million names and attacked from a million directions. But at the base, the fundamental question is always this. Take, say, the legal world. In the legal world it’s accepted to think that a valid legal claim is one that can be derived from the laws. Right? The legislator is the primary infrastructure, the legislator determined something—leave precedents aside for the moment, let’s talk simply. I’ll take only statutory law, what they call enacted law, yes? Just the laws. So I say: a valid claim is what is derived from the laws. Now along comes the judge and does what is called judicial legislation. That is, he basically gives some kind of expansive interpretation, not a deductive interpretation, not an interpretation that simply derives the result from the law in a straightforward logical way, but something that is not really contained in the law in a straightforward logical way, but has some expansive dimension.

[Speaker C] But if intellect isn’t logic, how do you get it out of there? I don’t know. Why is logic not in the field—and if he derives it deductively, didn’t he see the next step? Isn’t that something he saw? Why not? Even when you know that if you take this and this then obviously it’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because logic—the essence of logical inference is that the conclusion is contained in the premises.

[Speaker C] How do you see that it’s in the premises?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. All human beings are mortal—

[Speaker C] Socrates is a human being, Socrates is mortal. Who said Socrates is mortal because of those two premises?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because if you—

[Speaker C] Say that all human beings are mortal, what does “all human beings” mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All human beings?

[Speaker C] All human beings means Socrates, Yaakov, Moshe, Yankeleh and Beraleh, right? So among them is also Socrates.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning that Socrates is mortal is inside one of the premises. You understood it from those premises. No, I didn’t understand it—it’s in the premises. No, I don’t see that it’s in the premises. If you don’t see it, then you’re blind. No, but about the rule itself I can also say… no, you can say… in the end it too is cognitive. Anyone can say—whether he can say it or not is not the point. The argument is that it’s true. Because by the same token that… logic itself is something that you… no. No, logic itself is simply true, period. It isn’t the result of a complex, it isn’t the result of anything. I don’t think it’s true; it is the very concept of truth. The concept—it is true. What is true? True means in accordance with the rules of logic; that is what true means. How do you know that? That’s why the great medieval authorities (Rishonim) also said that even the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to the laws of logic, because the laws of logic are not the result of observation or of a structure of—there’s nothing to talk about at all—

[Speaker C] Meaning, so they’re not really laws at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The concept of laws with respect to logic—by the way, we talked about this. The concept of laws with respect to logic is very confusing. They are not laws in the same sense that laws of nature are laws; everybody accepts that. It’s not that “a triangle is not round” is the result of an inference, that I observe and see or something like that. A triangle in its very essence is not—if it’s a circle it’s not a triangle. Meaning, by definition. An analytic statement.

[Speaker C] The fact that it’s obvious to you, the fact that logic is obvious, doesn’t make it—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Make it—no, it doesn’t make it, it’s an indication of it. Not everything that is obvious is of that kind, but this is obvious because it is of that kind. There are things that are obvious to me, and true, and yet you can still attack them. Here it’s obvious to me because of that—not that because it’s obvious to me I decide that it’s necessary. No, that’s not the same thing. There are things obvious to me on their own—for instance that what I see here also exists. That’s not the kind of obviousness I’m talking about, because that can be challenged. Maybe, fine, maybe I’m having an illusion. There is meaning to the statement “maybe the opposite.” Maybe I won’t accept the opposite statement, but it has meaning. You can say that what I see here is an illusion, that there isn’t a white wall here. There is no meaning at all to a statement that contradicts logic. It is a meaningless statement, not just an untrue one.

[Speaker C] No, because logic is a statement that is itself, itself based on logic.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Every statement is. But there are no statements not based on logic. There simply aren’t. So what are we talking about? There are no statements.

[Speaker C] Can’t logic be subjective? No. My logic won’t be the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can call things that way. Very often people metaphorically call a mode of thinking “logic.” Fine. But that’s not logic in the accepted sense. Logic as the definition of a discipline—who determines the logic? No, that’s a different discussion. I’m saying, what is called logic in the traditional sense? Logic is that type of necessary arguments like I described before. That’s the type of thing called logic. Very often when I say “your logic is like this and my logic is like that,” that’s a borrowed expression. It’s not the concept of logic.

[Speaker F] When they teach Introduction to Logic they don’t use it metaphorically. That’s logic. Yes, obviously.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is the concept of logic. The disciplinary concept of logic is that. In everyday language, “logic” is a translation of thinking.

[Speaker C] You have one kind of thinking, someone else has another. Is logic part of reality?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I claim not. No, it’s not part of reality; it has no connection to it whatsoever. That’s why a logical law is not a law at all in the same sense that a physical law is a law. A logical law isn’t really a law at all; it’s just the way things are. There’s no law that a triangle isn’t round. “Law” means there could be a world in which the law is different. Here the law is this way, but there could be some hypothetical world where the law is different. There is no world in which a triangle could be round, because by its very essence a triangle is not round. But that’s true in all worlds. No, the fact that it’s true in all worlds is a result; it’s not that because it’s true in all worlds therefore it isn’t a law. I’m saying the opposite: I know it’s true in all worlds because I understand what it is here. And what it is here is that when I know a triangle is not round, that isn’t the result of observation or of some claim I’ve become convinced is true. It’s simply obvious, because the concept “triangle” contradicts the concept “round.” There can’t be another world in which the triangle is round.

[Speaker C] What, just from the fact that you say one thing contradicts another, then that statement—that reliance on the fact that if something contradicts something else it can’t be—that very conception is itself something that exists; the reality in which everything exists that way, that’s something that exists.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I disagree, I disagree. It doesn’t express a fact, it doesn’t express a synthetic proposition, in Kant’s language. No. It’s an analytic proposition. An analytic proposition says nothing; an analytic proposition just repeats the same thing in different words. Two plus three equals five—in conception, Kant thinks otherwise, but never mind. But two plus three equals five isn’t an equality; it’s an identity. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s not—there is no world in which two plus three won’t equal five; two plus three is essentially five. It’s simply saying the same thing in different words. That isn’t a claim. If you make claims like scientific statements, scientific statements are claims. There could be another world where a body with mass floats in the air and isn’t pulled downward, because there wouldn’t be a law of gravity there. Why? Because it is not true that the meaning of “having mass” is “being attracted.” No—that’s a claim that things with mass are attracted. That claim could be false in another world.

[Speaker D] By definition, five is three plus two.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. That’s basically equivalent to the definition that two plus three equals five. It’s repeating the same thing in different words, so there’s no—it isn’t a claim that could be false in some other world. Therefore here it isn’t a law in the same sense. A law can be violated. It’s forbidden to violate it, but possible. A logical law can’t be violated. It’s not a matter of it not being forbidden. That’s why even the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to logical laws.

[Speaker C] Why is the only law, the foundation of everything, reality—which is maybe the foundation of all the other things?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And to call that “reality” is just words, so if you call it reality—

[Speaker C] Call it reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t see it; you see expressions of it. Obviously. But the pattern, the pattern that stands behind it—you see, say, that two oranges plus three oranges equals five oranges. That you can see. That’s an experiment you can do. But to distill from that the claim, the idea of logic—exactly—that two plus three equals five, that abstract statement which is true for oranges, for trees, and for wave functions—two plus three equals five—that, that thing, you don’t see. That’s some idea, some kind of pattern of—no, you don’t see it. You simply live it. And that’s just how it is. It’s not a matter of seeing. Here it’s much stronger than seeing generalizations like that all horses have four legs, whatever, and things like that. Okay, I don’t know how to explain it any better than that. Okay, so basically the claim is that in order to use ethical concepts without emptying them of content, we have to pay the price of adopting some kind of mysticism like this. Meaning, some idea of the Good that we observe, and through that we understand what is right and what is not right. Without that, the only path open to us is the conventionalist path, or simply to say there’s no such thing, it’s nonsense, do whatever you want—which is the same thing, not two different paths. Because the conventionalist path is basically saying exactly that; it isn’t saying anything else. There’s no escape. Meaning, I don’t know how to prove that the second option is wrong. I’m only saying that if someone thinks morality has meaning, then he necessarily assumes this picture. If not, then not; then he thinks otherwise. Okay? What I just said was not an argument in favor of the picture you mentioned, but simply setting out the only two options there are. Now each person has to decide which of the two he believes in: either the option that there is no such thing as morality, everything is facts, conventions, facts, whatever; or that there is such a thing as morality, but then there is also an idea of the Good and observation with the eyes of the intellect and all the metaphysical baggage that comes with that. Okay, those are the two… I don’t think there’s a third alternative.

[Speaker C] And what happens when there’s a contradiction between the two, between what convention tells you and what that idea tells you?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: if you’re a conventionalist, then there is no such contradiction. What do you mean? If you have some feeling—everyone has feelings, even the conventionalist admits he has moral feelings. I say, it depends. If you’re a conventionalist, then true, you have feelings that when you kill murderers of Jews you’re not okay. After all, over there too there were all those stories that they drank wine before the SS men shot Jews, and so on. Meaning, they too had those feelings. But if you’re a real conventionalist—and I have no idea what they were, that doesn’t matter right now—but if you’re a real conventionalist, then you say, fine, I’ll take a pill. It’s not a real dilemma, because what determines things is the law. If the law legislated that they have to be killed, then that’s what is right to do here. If you’re an essentialist, then you basically say, what are you talking about? What does that have to do with the law? There is something that is right. I look at the idea of the Good, and I say such a thing cannot possibly be permitted; it is forbidden. But the law said so. Here there can be a dilemma, because after all I also want to obey the law. Exactly. And then the black flag—in extreme cases I say: a black flag. Exactly, that’s the point. And that’s the result of the Nuremberg Trials. The result of the Nuremberg Trials is the understanding of where the institutional conception can lead. That’s really the claim. Now fine, whoever wants to go with that all the way—right, that’s where it can lead, but that’s the truth. What do you want? Right, that’s really where it leads. But suddenly everyone stood in a very tangible way before the results, and everyone suddenly understood: I’m not there. Meaning, it cannot be that this is right. But I’m saying: people didn’t define this for themselves. I hardly know—don’t know anyone who formulated it the way I did here. In my opinion there is no other way out. Everyone talks in slogans and principles and a black flag and higher principles and all sorts of things like that. But go back to the philosophical question: what is it based on? Why is it right? At some point you have to arrive at this metaphysics I described earlier. Without it, you can’t; there’s no—you fall back into convention. Meaning, there is no other way out. So now a person has to decide. Either he’s a conventionalist—fine, that’s consistent. Meaning, he can continue and say there’s no morality and that’s it; do what the law says or not what the law says, whatever he feels like, it doesn’t matter. Or be non-conventionalist, an essentialist—but then that’s the philosophical price. Meaning, you have to adopt some picture that maybe at first glance looks a bit speculative. Meaning, this sort of metaphysics with ideas and observation of ideas and inspirations and all that. Now, in that context I said that this is the concept of conscience. The concept of conscience is often understood as something that belongs to the world of emotion. My conscience hurts—yes, my feeling. Pangs of conscience. Pangs of conscience means my insides are tormented, yes? Meaning, I feel stomach pains in a certain sense, and that expresses… That is basically an institutional conception—or not exactly institutional, rather the institution is me, not the legislator or society, that doesn’t matter, but it’s still the same principle. It’s a fact. Morality is a fact; it’s not what one ought to do. It’s just how I feel, so that’s how I behave, and that’s it. The alternative is to see conscience as some kind of non-sensory means of observation. Meaning, my claim is that conscience is an ability to see what the correct ethics is.

[Speaker D] It’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Conscience, it’s not an emotion. Exactly, a compass. Ah, you can play here with the words observation and compass, I don’t know, maybe, I have no idea whether that… And there is a psychological component that really is like that… Fine, but I’m saying: if it were all psychology, then we’re back to where we were before. If—I’m not saying there aren’t things that get mixed in there, of course there are. After all, this is something so blurry and so not—no one can know to what extent it’s really what you truly see, or whether all kinds of distortions and influences and so on are getting mixed in. Right, right, I agree. And therefore it’s really very easy to arrive at Leibowitz’s conclusion that basically it’s all emotion or convention or things of that sort. I’m only saying that the price of that and the consequences of that need to be clear. Meaning, the only alternative is this alternative.

[Speaker C] And is this shared by all people?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shared to a large extent.

[Speaker C] It has to be, in some sense, yes, for the general public.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you understand that it’s shared—no, shared to a large extent. You have to understand that the picture one sees—that already we learned from Kant—the picture one sees is not only a function of reality itself, but also of the system that observes reality. Meaning, if I put on red cellophane, I’ll see this table as red; you’ll put on green, you’ll see it as green. But it’s the same table; we’re seeing the same table. What does that mean? That ultimately the final conclusion is a function of what exists in the world itself plus the means through which I observe the world. Now that can create disputes. Since we are built differently, we perceive the idea of the Good sometimes—again, it’s mostly at the margins; the central things are largely shared.

[Speaker C] In order to judge, you have to assume equality… no, no, no, I’m not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Assuming; I’m claiming that he is mistaken. Now it could be that he would be exempt as someone under compulsion if he… with different cellophane. But I can still judge his act as an act of error.

[Speaker C] But when you judge him, you say he’s not okay, so you assume—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I said: if truly I—I assume that he too understands it’s not okay, then I judge him as well. But even if not, I can still judge the act. I can say, look, he was under compulsion, he didn’t see it, so he’s exempt, he’s not guilty. But the act still—there is truth and falsehood regarding the moral act even without that. Okay? That’s—

[Speaker C] If one robot kills people, I don’t judge the robot’s act. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you say it’s a bad act; it’s just that robots aren’t guilty.

[Speaker C] No, also the act is not an act—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, that’s already just words, fine.

[Speaker C] There’s no guilt, that’s what I’m saying; it’s either to judge the person—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no. I claim that this act is an act that is not okay. Will the person bear responsibility for it… What makes the act not okay?

[Speaker C] Someone desecrated the Sabbath because of… no, no, no, a mistake.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If someone chooses and does something, what makes it not okay? Only if he chose something bad. Yes, of course—but how do you define it as bad? If you say that the bad is only a result of the fact that he chose, then what defines it as bad as opposed to good?

[Speaker C] No, I agree that there is something bad and something good, but if he didn’t do it because… then he’s not guilty. So he’s not guilty, fine, but it’s bad.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So why is the act not—this is just words. I—bottom line, the act is bad. Do we agree? That’s what I mean; leave the words aside.

[Speaker C] But you don’t choose that a raven does it. No, the act is bad, period.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is, if he didn’t do it by choice, then he’s not guilty, but the act is bad. That’s exactly the point. The concepts of bad and good precede choice, because if they didn’t precede it—if they were a result of choice—then it wouldn’t be bad and good. I chose this just like I chose that. Perforce there is some criterion outside the choice that tells you this is bad and this is good. True, you don’t blame someone if he didn’t do bad by choice, fine, that’s the guilt of the person, not of the act.

[Speaker C] But you don’t say it’s bad only because it’s a person choosing who does bad. That’s what I said—a robot, not a robot that kills people… it’s a bad act that certainly—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That certainly it isn’t guilty, certainly. But no—but not bad? If a person—

[Speaker I] You can examine whether it’s good or bad—

[Speaker C] Right, right. I understand. There’s this robot—one can’t always determine whether it’s good or bad—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. The ability to choose is not connected to the question of whether there is right and wrong here. I can’t always reach a conclusion about what is right and what is wrong—I agree, okay? I didn’t claim you can always reach a conclusion. What I said is that the conclusion has meaning; meaning, when you say the conclusion is correct, that isn’t meaningless. There is such a thing as right and wrong. No, it isn’t subjective. I’m only claiming that you can’t always get there, okay?

[Speaker E] There’s a difficulty, there’s a Talmudic passage—let’s not go to the extreme case of the robot… an avalanche…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying, I’m only dealing with what is agreed on by most of the world. At the margins there are arguments, that’s true. In those arguments it’s harder. But look, think about eyesight. When you look at the stars or at something far away, it could be that you say that thing over there is red and I say it’s green. Now it’s terribly far away; we’ll never get there, we have no way to check who is right. So does that mean I can’t prove to you that I’m right and you can’t prove to me that you’re right? Yes. Does that mean there is no right and wrong here? Of course not. It’s either green or red. The fact that we can’t prove it to each other doesn’t mean there’s no truth and falsehood here. So there are limits; even in sensory perception there are marginal cases where we won’t be able to convince each other, even though there it’s obvious to us that there is right and wrong in the simple sense.

[Speaker I] Why is it not obvious that there is right and wrong?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because either that object is red or it isn’t red. And obviously if I got there I would see either that it is red or that it isn’t red—what do you mean?

[Speaker I] No, I’m talking about very, very clear things.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s what I’m talking about; I said I’m talking about that. I’m trying to show you through this example that when we have a problem convincing each other, or proving to each other that something is right or not right, that isn’t necessarily an indication that there is no right and wrong here or that it’s subjective. It only means that it lies on a boundary where it’s hard to reach an unequivocal decision. Right, in the world of morality too there is such a thing.

[Speaker H] A person collecting charity at a traffic light, okay, some will say it’s justified, and some will say no, you shouldn’t give here; we see, we’re there, we do this.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that means it could be that on this matter we won’t be able to convince each other. So I said, I don’t know, maybe we won’t manage to convince each other. Does the fact that we can’t convince each other lead to the conclusion that there is no such thing as right and wrong? No, I don’t agree, I don’t agree. It doesn’t mean that. There may be cases where there is right and wrong; you can’t derive from the fact that we can’t convince each other, because the fact that we can’t—

[Speaker H] convince each—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the other can also stem from the fact that we simply don’t have easy access here to what is right and wrong, but that doesn’t mean there is no right and wrong. Who in this world can say? I have no idea. Nobody. What difference does it make?

[Speaker H] But still there is right and wrong here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The red and the green—someone will get there… nobody will get there, it’s far away, it’s on the moon, doesn’t matter. There is truth here, we just can’t reach it, that’s all. That’s the claim. Okay, so in the end, if you remember, Yeshayahu Leibowitz brought—

[Speaker C] But maybe in the case of his question about the beggar at the traffic light—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s—

[Speaker H] a matter of aesthetics, not morality.

[Speaker C] No—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he claims there may be room to say that maybe he’s endangering himself or others—

[Speaker H] and from me they don’t get, from you they do.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s an unnecessary argument, because it’s an example—

[Speaker H] aesthetics can also bother you—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But even if this example isn’t—

[Speaker H] good, even—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] if this example isn’t good, it doesn’t matter—what difference does it make? Even if this example isn’t good, there are other examples over which there will be a moral argument. Okay? The dilemma of Sartre’s student that I brought up, who was torn between going to enlist in the Free French army to fight the Nazis or staying to help his elderly sick mother in occupied Paris—that is certainly a moral dilemma. I don’t know whether there is a simple resolution. I can hear one person saying one thing, another saying the opposite, and they won’t manage to convince each other. Does that necessarily mean there is no correct answer? No. Maybe there really isn’t, but it doesn’t mean that. Meaning, you can’t derive from the fact that there is an irresolvable dispute that there is no truth. And therefore my claim is that the fact that there are moral disputes—which people always wave around in order to say, you see, there is no moral truth because there are disputes—there are disputes in the realm of facts too. It proves nothing.

[Speaker D] Like halakhic truth.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, whatever suits you. But I’m saying, even regarding facts there are disputes.

[Speaker D] Even about Iron Dome there’s disagreement. Yes.

[Speaker H] The story now going around on Facebook about the Nahal soldier, whether he committed an act—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, there nobody simply knows the facts. I don’t know what any of it is. Clearly what’s there is only an expression of frustration; it has nothing to do with what we think about the case. About the case nobody knows what happened there. Who among all those soldiers knows what actually happened there? The soldiers are expressing their frustration over the situations they find themselves in—no, they’re not talking about the Nahal soldier; it has nothing to do with the Nahal soldier. Nobody knows what happened there. How can anyone express identification or non-identification with it? It’s just nonsense. There too you can make everything… What? Fine, okay, you can make everything, but it’s just… Okay. So Yeshayahu Leibowitz brought, in the midst of his remarks, if you remember, a quotation from Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed and from Pascal, where in both places he argued that morality, or good and evil, belong to what he called—and what Maimonides calls—the commonly accepted notions, while truth and falsehood belong to the intelligibles. And there I already said briefly—later we’ll read it inside—that the commonly accepted notions, which many tend to interpret as Leibowitz did, meaning something conventional, I’m not sure that’s correct. “Commonly accepted notions” means what everyone understands because he sees it. Meaning, no, I have no intellectual argument that can persuade someone, but I simply see. The commonly accepted thing is that murder is forbidden. What, because it’s conventional? Not because it’s conventional, but because everyone understands that murder is forbidden. I don’t have logical arguments, arguments that can persuade someone who thinks otherwise. But it is still obvious, it is commonly accepted, and it is true. “Commonly accepted notions” does not necessarily express conventionalism or institutionalism. That’s what I wanted to argue. The truth is that when you read the Guide for the Perplexed you see that it isn’t connected to that at all, but we’ll read it now. It’s interesting, because many people understand the Guide that way. I always thought so too, and now I read it this way in preparation for our study and it’s simply not that at all, not at all, so we’ll soon see. “A wise man posed to me many years ago a great question. One must reflect on the question and on our answer in resolving it. And before I mention the question and its resolution, I will say that every Hebrew speaker already knows that the term God is shared by God, by angels, and by the judges who govern states.” There are several meanings to the term Elohim, or God, really: God, angels—“the sons of God saw the daughters of man” there in Genesis, so one interpretation is angelic beings—and judges who govern states, meaning important people. Okay? Judges who govern states means important people, as we know that judges are derived in tractate Sanhedrin, at the beginning of Sanhedrin: there must be three on a religious court because “Elohim” is written three times in the passage.

[Speaker J] “The slave shall be brought to God.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “The case of them both shall come before God.” Yes, exactly. Right. It means judges, or important people. Judges who govern states is a term of importance. So the term has several meanings. “And Onkelos the convert, peace be upon him, already explained this, and what he explained is indeed true.” Meaning, what he explains is really correct. “For when it says, ‘and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil,’ it intends the last meaning.” It means the last interpretation among the three. Earlier we saw three interpretations of the term Elohim: one is God, the second is angels, the third is judges who govern states. “And you shall be like God, knowing good and evil,” said there, does not refer to the Holy One, blessed be He. Elohim means you will be like important people who know good and evil, that is, like wise people, judges, yes, who know good and evil, insofar as judges are wise people. He said, “and you shall be like nobles,” yes, you shall be like great people. That is Onkelos’s translation, which basically expresses the fact that the interpretation is the third interpretation. “And after setting forth the equivocality of this term”—that’s very interesting; the equivocality of the term here is of course double meaning. Right? Because the name of God is shared here with other entities, and it’s really sharing in the theological sense as well. “Let us begin by recalling the question. The questioner said”—yes, that same wise man who said he had a question—“it seems from the plain sense of Scripture that man’s original intention was to be like the other animals, having no intellect and no thought, and not distinguishing between good and evil. And when he rebelled”—yes, when he ate from the Tree of Knowledge—“that rebellion brought him this great perfection unique to man, namely that he would have this faculty present in us of distinguishing between good and evil, which is the noblest of the faculties present in us and through which we are elevated.” What does “through which we are elevated” mean? Either “we become greater,” or “this is our very essence.” Meaning, man’s essence is the ability to distinguish between good and evil. Okay? “And this is astonishing: that the punishment for his rebellion should be to give him a perfection he did not have, namely intellect.” How can it be that a person sins and the punishment for the sin is to receive a higher level, to receive some insight or ability that he didn’t have before, to become a greater person? Yes, “namely intellect. This would be just like someone saying that a man rebelled and did an injustice and therefore his creation was changed for the better.” And as a reaction they improved him—how can that be? “And he was made into a star in the heavens.” They turned him into a star in the heavens. I don’t know whether anyone dreams of being a star in the heavens, not clear to me, but never mind, let’s use that as a metaphor. Obviously the stars are alive, yes, obviously.

[Speaker D] Who would settle for being a star here?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That was—also that I’m not sure I’d want—that was the intent of the question and its content, even if it wasn’t stated in these exact words. Never mind, that’s the substance. “And hear the substance of our answer.” Up to here, that’s the wording of the question. “And hear the substance of our answer. We said: You, the man who examines matters at the beginning of his thoughts and reflections, and whoever thinks he can understand a book which is the guidance of earlier and later generations”—yes, the book of the Torah, the book of Genesis, is the guidance of earlier and later generations, meaning its role is to guide all human beings, meaning this is supposed to be the book of morality, not something you can read in a… Rashi’s first comment on the Torah, yes, where he says: Rabbi Yitzhak said, Scripture should have begun with ‘This month shall be for you,’ so why did it begin with Genesis? In order to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the earth and gave it to whomever was upright in His eyes. Yes, so that if the nations of the world say to Israel, ‘You are robbers,’ and so on. So the question that obviously arises there is: okay, you explained the chapters of creation, two chapters let’s say, or something like that, just to understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world—but what about the rest of a book and a third until the portion of Bo, ‘This month shall be for you the first of months’? Yes—what’s the answer for that? So Rashi says—and I think this is precise in his wording—that He created the world and gave it to whomever was upright in His eyes. There is a key word here. The book of Genesis is the Book of the Upright. And it has to define why indeed the patriarchs, or the people of Israel, are upright in His eyes. Therefore Genesis, which is the Book of the Upright, has that role throughout, not only in the two chapters of creation. The two chapters of creation say: I am the owner of the house, I created it, I can give it to whomever I want. Second—and by the way, suddenly now I think this’s connected to our discussion—fine, the Holy One, blessed be He, says this is what I want, this is what I do. No—what He does has to be justified, and it isn’t arbitrary; there is something right here as well, and I want to explain to you why these are the people who were upright in My eyes. So He describes that in the Book of the Upright. Okay, therefore Genesis is called the Book of the Upright. “Which is the guidance of earlier and later generations—if one passes over it in a little spare time between drinking and sexual relations as one passes over one of the books of chronicles or a poem among poems, and then sits and reflects, for the matter is not as you thought at first glance.” Yes, don’t think that by simple study, simple reading, during your free time, you can understand this. True, the simple reading looks like what you described, he says to the questioner, yes, to the one who asked the question—but the matter is not as you thought at first. It must be interpreted אחרת. “As will become clear upon reflection on this matter and that. For the intellect that the Creator bestowed upon man, which is his ultimate perfection, reached man before his rebellion.” Yes, before he rebelled he already had intellect. It’s not that intellect was inserted into him after the rebellion; he had it before. “And because of it it was said of him that he was in the image of God and after His likeness.” After all it says, “And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him.” What is the image? So we discussed this at the beginning when we studied The Perplexities of the Generation, where Maimonides says that image means intellect, and Rabbi Kook says that image means will, the ability to choose. So that’s not the same thing. Two different models, and we saw there that this continues rather consistently in those two books. But according to Maimonides, the image of God is the intellect that we have. Okay, so it can’t be that if the Holy One, blessed be He, created man in His image, then he was without intellect until the sin and only after the sin intellect entered him. Clearly he had intellect from the moment he was created, even before his rebellion, yes, before he committed the sin. “And because of it God spoke to him and commanded him,” because otherwise what sense would there be in commanding him, like the beasts of the field? “As it says, ‘And the Lord God commanded’—and command does not apply to animals nor to one who has no intellect. And by means of the intellect man distinguishes truth from falsehood”—yes, logic—“and this was present in him in full perfection and completeness.” Meaning, this ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, the intellect, was fully present in man before the sin. “But the ugly and the beautiful belong to commonly accepted notions, not to intelligibles.” Here is the key sentence. Up to now he spoke about truth and falsehood; truth and falsehood are intelligibles. But the ugly and the beautiful, yes, good and evil, belong to commonly accepted notions, not to intelligibles. “For one does not say, ‘the heavens are spherical’ is beautiful.” Maimonides thought the heavens were spherical, so when we say the heavens are spherical, there may be truth in that, but we would not say it is beautiful; we say it is true. Okay? “Nor does one say, ‘the earth is flat’ is ugly.” That’s also an interesting point—he means that the earth is not flat. Right? That’s false. This appears elsewhere in Maimonides too. Maimonides thought the earth was spherical. Hm?

[Speaker D] Wasn’t that known?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not that it was known—there was a Greek conception like that, they didn’t invent it three hundred years—it wasn’t—

[Speaker D] No, no, I mean there was a period, there was a Greek conception like that, obviously, long ago, but that wasn’t the prevalent conception in the world, people didn’t think—what do you mean, in the world?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Important people maybe not, but scholars of the sciences didn’t think that—

[Speaker D] Ordinary people, no, no, no, no—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was a view—I don’t remember who proposed it—there were views that the world is a sphere; not everyone agreed with that, absolutely not.

[Speaker D] It seems to me I heard from someone who did research on antiquity—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Antiquity—that’s what I know too, but fine, you can check it. It doesn’t matter; Maimonides held that it’s a sphere. But one says true and false, not ugly and beautiful. Those are not ugly and beautiful but true and false, because these are factual judgments. About factual judgments we don’t say ugly and beautiful but true and false. “And likewise in our language, truth and falsehood are said of the true and the null.” I don’t quite understand what is gained from that. “True and null” means true and false. That’s a translation. No, fine. “And of the beautiful and the ugly, good and evil.” Okay? Beautiful and ugly are good and evil. “And by means of the intellect man knows truth from falsehood”—he can distinguish, yes, between truth and falsehood—“and this applies to all intelligible matters.” Meaning, intelligible matters are measured in terms of truth or falsehood. And the human faculty that deals with this is the intellect. Therefore they are called intelligibles. “And when he was in the perfection and completeness of his state, together with his thought and his intelligibles, concerning which it was said, ‘You have made him little lower than God’”—that was man before the sin—“he had no faculty for dealing with commonly accepted notions in any way, nor for apprehending them.” Apparently, on the face of it, he did not yet know good and evil; he knew only truth and falsehood. He did not yet know the commonly accepted notions. They were not yet “common knowledge,” so to speak. “So much so that even the most obvious among the commonly accepted things considered shameful, namely the exposure of nakedness”—exposure of nakedness here doesn’t mean forbidden relations; it means that nakedness is out in the open, uncovered, yes—“was not shameful in his eyes, and he did not apprehend its shamefulness. And when he rebelled”—yes, he committed the sin—“and inclined toward his imaginary desires and the pleasures of his bodily senses, as it says, ‘for the tree was good for food and a delight to the eyes,’ he was punished by being deprived of that intellectual apprehension. And therefore he rebelled against the commandment that, because of his intellect, he had been commanded concerning, and he attained the apprehension of commonly accepted notions and became immersed in judgments of shame and beauty.” This is really a decline, he says, contrary to the questioner’s view, who understood that to distinguish between good and evil is an ascent, becoming like a star in heaven, yes? He says: what are you talking about? Good and evil are commonly accepted notions, mere conventions, agreements. So now you suddenly begin dealing with conventions instead of dealing with truth and falsehood—that’s a degeneration. Therefore there is no problem: indeed, as a result of the sin man declined; man did not rise. That’s the questioner’s mistake. “Then he knew the measure of what he had lost and what had been stripped from him, and in what state he had come to be. Therefore it says, ‘and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil.’ It does not say, ‘knowing falsehood and truth,’ or ‘apprehending falsehood and truth.’” Because falsehood and truth are intellectual apprehension. But good and evil are conventions, commonly accepted notions. “And there is nothing necessary at all in good and evil, but there is in falsehood and truth.” Meaning, good and evil are not something true or false; there is no necessity or non-necessity here, it’s conventions, let’s say for now. “And consider what he says”—yes, look at what Scripture says—“‘And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.’ It does not say, ‘and the eyes of both were opened and they saw’; it says ‘and they knew,’ not ‘and they saw,’ yes? For what they saw before was what they saw afterward. The seeing was there before and remained afterward.” Seeing, of course—remember, in these chapters he also deals with the eyes of the intellect. Seeing is used in several senses. It’s sensory seeing, but also the eyes of the intellect. Okay?

[Speaker K] What is “the factual”?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not only—I’m not sure it’s only that.

[Speaker K] “And they knew”—knew is more than—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, “and they knew” is something different. “They knew” refers to good and evil, which are commonly accepted notions; that’s something else entirely. We’ll soon see. “For there was no blindness there that was removed, but rather some new matter came about in him, in which he considered shameful what he had not considered shameful before.” Meaning, man became more shame-oriented, not less and more exalted. “And know that this term, namely ‘opened’”—or “opening,” sorry—“never applies except to the unveiling of some knowledge, not to a new sensory sight. ‘And God opened her eyes’; ‘then the eyes of the blind shall be opened’; ‘open ears and he does not hear’—as in, ‘they have eyes to see and did not see.’ But when it says of Adam, ‘He changes his face and You send him away’”—that verse is in Job, and Maimonides interprets it as—it’s probably a rabbinic midrash, I think—that the moment man changed his face, committed the sin, “and You send him away,” he is sent from the Garden of Eden. So that describes Adam’s first sin. “Its explanation is: when he changed the direction of his face, he was sent away. For face derives from turning or direction, because by his face a man turns toward that thing toward which he wishes to direct himself. And he said: when he changed his orientation and directed himself toward that to which he had previously been commanded not to direct himself”—yes, he sinned, did something forbidden—“he was sent from the Garden of Eden. And this is a punishment corresponding to the rebellion, measure for measure. At first he had been permitted to eat pleasant things and enjoy ease and security. But when his desire grew great and he pursued his pleasures and imaginings, as we said, and ate what he had been warned not to eat, everything was withheld from him. Measure for measure. And he was obligated to eat the lowest of foods.” And that is “by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread,” because wheat etc., which had not previously been his food. “And even this only after labor and toil, as it says, ‘thorns and thistles shall it bring forth for you,’ and so on, ‘by the sweat of your brow,’ and so on. And he explained and said, ‘And the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.’ And He made him like the beasts in his food and in most of his affairs.” He basically became more beast-like. That is the decline after the sin, yes? It’s a continuation of what he said before. “As it says, ‘and you shall eat the herb of the field,’ and he says to clarify this matter, ‘Man in honor does not abide; he is likened to the beasts and becomes like them.’ Blessed be the Master of will, whose purpose and wisdom cannot be fully grasped,” and so on. So basically the claim he wants to make is that man declined after the sin and did not rise after the sin. What is the meaning of that decline? The intellect that distinguishes truth from falsehood he had before. What he then became was one “knowing good and evil.” But good and evil are the ugly and the beautiful, commonly accepted notions; this isn’t really intellect. Therefore, according to the common interpretation—what Leibowitz, for example, interpreted—it means conventions. Man suddenly began behaving according to conventions. So behaving according to conventions is a decline, not an elevation. Before, he behaved according to what is true; now conventions are also beginning to influence him. How did he behave according to what is true?

[Speaker D] He had only—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] this connection, this mental link, of truth and falsehood. He didn’t have at all the apprehension of commonly accepted notions.

[Speaker D] And in that sense you can behave simply according to—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the intellect: what to do and what not to do. So he was naked, because from the standpoint of the intellect there’s nothing wrong with being naked. That’s only a question of ugly and beautiful, or of commonly accepted notions of good and evil. Why should he care? If the intellect says that’s fine, then that’s what he did.

[Speaker D] Wait, is Maimonides so absolutely against conventions?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. After the sin there are conventions, and conventions retain their proper honor. But the whole situation is a bediavad situation; we’re already here. Once we’re already here, then yes, it is right to preserve the conventions. There is even the prohibition of “do not make yourselves disgusting,” which in a certain sense is the obligation to preserve rules of etiquette. Not to do repulsive things—not repulsive in a moral sense, but humanly repulsive, meaning impolite or off-putting, yes? That prohibition is really the prohibition against deviating from conventions, from rules of etiquette, Babylonian custom, yes, that’s the—

[Speaker C] He saw nothing evaluative there, nothing judgmental? He had no—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, I’m getting to that already.

[Speaker C] So what did he do? Meaning, what—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He judged by intellect, not by conventions.

[Speaker C] He didn’t judge. Suppose he had desire, he had choice. Let’s say he had desire and some kind of choice—toward what did he choose and desire? Meaning, what… What was right. Right in what sense? Ethically right or factually right in the physical world? What should be done correctly, or what is evaluative? What to do… That’s an excellent question. Now, secondly, it says here that “he attained the apprehension of commonly accepted notions.” It really doesn’t sound like he now just started doing what people are accustomed to do. He attained them—he managed to apprehend some kind of commonly accepted insights.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Maimonides calls it decline. “Apprehension” means that he suddenly began to apprehend the commonly accepted notions. But apprehending the commonly accepted notions isn’t apprehension in the sense of elevation. It means decline. So what is it?

[Speaker D] A different kind of apprehension.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because you understand that it’s just not done, as they say, right? You don’t do things like that. It’s a kind of apprehension. There are people who don’t have that sense; today they call it emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a decline. Meaning, you understand that there are things you just don’t do. That is, a person just doesn’t do them. In some way that’s actually close to this idea. It’s a kind of apprehension. In other words, there are people who don’t—who don’t have a good grasp of these things, right? So Maimonides says yes, but that grasp is a decline, not an elevation.

[Speaker L] But this good and evil is the evil inclination. What do you mean, now it’s the evil inclination? A person knew that what existed was precious and good; he just always chose the good.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s already Nefesh HaChayim; that’s here. The other side of the page.

[Speaker L] Now the evil inclination is inside him and it’s constantly fighting within him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s already your addition—that’s not Maimonides anymore, that’s already Nefesh HaChayim.

[Speaker C] But then there’s no difference between good and evil and truth and falsehood. So what does that mean then? No, according to this interpretation… yes. So what if there really is no such thing as good and evil, only truth and falsehood?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that interpretation when we discuss it; that’s Nefesh HaChayim, on the other side of the page. We’ll get to it. But in Maimonides, that’s not it yet. Meaning, for now Maimonides apparently seems to say that good and evil are basically this “you-don’t-do-that,” these socially accepted notions. Meaning, you don’t do it; convention says you don’t do it. And that’s a kind of decline. But it seems to me there really are a few questions here. One of them is exactly your question. In what sense did Adam have the ability to choose between truth and falsehood? There’s nothing to choose. There is truth and there is falsehood. Choosing is always choosing between good and evil. But if good and evil belong entirely to the world of accepted conventions, then what does it mean, for example, to sin in such a state? What does it mean to sin? To do something incorrect?

[Speaker M] So he didn’t really sin?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He really didn’t sin? Adam sinned—what do you mean?

[Speaker M] He ate something he wasn’t supposed to eat—isn’t that a sin?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but when he ate, when he ate, that was a sin created by the person he was before the sin. So what is sin?

[Speaker N] When he chose falsehood. What does it mean that he chose falsehood?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He chose his desire and not what he was asked to do.

[Speaker N] So that’s falsehood.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or is it evil?

[Speaker N] I’m saying falsehood.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, so you’re saying it’s falsehood and not evil. Meaning that fulfilling the commandments is truth—which is not a fact; these are values. Maimonides calls it truth and falsehood, not good and evil. And if you look here at the examples—what examples does he give when he speaks about what is disgraceful and pleasant? Walking around naked. Walking around naked is not something immoral. Walking around naked means it’s impolite; you don’t do that in human society. That’s what Maimonides calls accepted notions. Why, is walking around so people see you naked something immoral? No. There’s nothing immoral here; it’s human coarseness. It’s not immoral—you’re not harming anyone, it’s not something that goes against moral truth. It’s inhuman; it’s a kind of human baseness. It’s the “don’t be disgusting” that I mentioned earlier. Don’t be disgusting—you don’t do things like that, it’s not polite, you don’t do things like that. But it really is a matter of agreement, yes? Among nudists there’s no problem at all; everyone walks around like that. And people go at the beach, for example, in swimsuits. In a world where people weren’t accustomed to doing that, they would see it as terribly problematic in terms of modesty. In Jewish law there’s no problem—you can recite Grace after Meals there like that. Without anything. Usually you need to be somewhat dressed, somewhat covered. You say Grace after Meals. At the beach there’s no problem at all; that’s considered being covered. It’s not even clear that you need to wear a kippah there. You certainly don’t need to wear a hat there. There are people who wear a hat there, you know, sure—but no, maybe not. Because really, if in that context it’s perceived as something acceptable, there’s no problem with it, then it’s fine. That’s what people always say: modesty, at least large parts of it, is a conventional matter. Meaning, if in these particular circumstances this is a reasonable act, then there’s no basis to criticize it on some objective platform of rules of modesty. It depends on what norms are accepted in that society. That’s it. It’s all convention. But it’s obvious that a convention to murder, Maimonides would not call that accepted notions—or to steal. For Maimonides that’s truth and falsehood. And what he calls here good and evil means good and evil of manners, good and evil of human repulsiveness. Therefore you don’t need to get to what I said last time, that accepted notions doesn’t mean conventions—although I think that is a possible interpretation—but you don’t need to get there. Rather, it means what everyone understands. But here Maimonides is not speaking to our issue at all; Maimonides isn’t talking about morality at all. By the way, after thinking about it, in many places in Maimonides, this doesn’t even get off the ground. By the way, in Leibowitz’s article there, there isn’t a single paragraph without a mistake. It’s unbelievable. The Talmudic passages, everything is mistaken. That article is simply a collection of errors from beginning to end, except for the basic point itself, which is correct—but the entire article is full of mistakes. It’s unbelievable. And he says it with such confidence and authority, as if he’s some ultimate oracle. He contradicts Talmudic passages about the law of the pursuer in the case of a minor, that a minor transgresses—that they kill him in order to save the mother—and says it’s because of the law of the pursuer. You’re not allowed to kill him without that. The Talmud explicitly says that’s not true. The Talmud says because of the law of the pursuer—then it rejects it. Never mind, all kinds of things, there are lots of them there. I don’t know—on a second reading it’s really very problematic. In any case, this Maimonides has nothing to do with morality at all. He’s not dealing with morality at all. He’s dealing with manners and conduct, and that is accepted notions. In manners and conduct, that’s a decline. Now, when I say decline, I don’t mean that one shouldn’t be polite, because now, once this already exists and we are already structured in this post-sin way, then now you have to behave like this; there’s nothing to be done. In such situations there are sometimes after-the-fact rules that are indeed what should be done, because we are in an after-the-fact situation. But it really is a decline. But value-laden good and evil are certainly matters of intellect. In many places, when Maimonides talks about a person, he calls a person wise—a moral person. That is a wise person. Maimonides in Laws of Character, chapter 6, law 1, and in Laws of Repentance, chapter 10, law 1, speaks about sages who behave properly or correctly, morally or halakhically—it doesn’t matter; Jewish law too is a norm and not a fact, yes?—and, by contrast, the non-wise are those who do not behave correctly, morally. In many places he relates to this as wisdom, not as accepted notions but as intelligibles. And therefore it’s clear that what he’s talking about here is not…

[Speaker F] Not a psychometric test.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. He’s not only a psychometric test. There is intellectual wisdom and there is moral wisdom and there is wisdom—and this is not emotional intelligence; it’s moral intelligence, meaning a developed conscience. Let’s call it that. Emotional intelligence is that lower sort of thing. So this whole chapter, then, has nothing to do with us at all. It’s a mistake to bring it in; it’s simply irrelevant. Moral good and evil—the disconnection from devices that Leibowitz discusses there—has nothing to do at all with the accepted notions here. The value of human life is clearly an intelligible for Maimonides. Now the question is: how is it an intelligible? After all, you can’t ground it in facts. That’s the same question we asked at the beginning. There’s no escape except to say: these are intelligibles. I behold with the eyes of my intellect—the next chapter in Guide for the Perplexed speaks about the eyes of the intellect. It’s the next chapter in the Guide, immediately afterward, I think one or two chapters later. So I behold with the eyes of the intellect the idea of morality or of the good, and I discover by intellectual, cognitive means what is right and what is not right. These are intelligibles; they are not accepted notions. Therefore, by the way, many commentators on Maimonides—including me myself until now—were sure that here he is speaking about morality, but that’s not correct. He’s not speaking about morality at all. It has nothing to do with it. This whole Maimonides passage has nothing to do with the issue at all. Okay. It’s related in the opposite way.

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