Ethics, Faith, and Jewish Law – Lesson 1 – Rabbi Michael Avraham
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Defining morality versus disputes over definition
- Democracy, “Who is a Jew,” and semantic separation
- Conventionalism versus essentialism in concepts
- Leibniz, object and its properties, and Kant
- The example of the “self,” maps, and the Ship of Theseus
- Practical implications: changing definitions and disputes over definitions
- Morality as objective and David Enoch’s spinach test
- Moral disagreement versus descriptive pluralism
- A philosophical difficulty: “Murder is forbidden” as truth without observation
- Changing moral positions as progress rather than convention
- The framework for moral action: domain, interest, choice, and cost
- Satisfaction, empathy, and forgiveness: morality is in the head, not the heart
- Pleasure in Torah study as a parable: Aglei Tal
- Heart versus intellect in the current generation and public examples
Summary
Overview
The text presents debates about morality as substantive debates and not as semantic confusion over words, and argues that concepts like morality, democracy, and Jewish identity are not merely social conventions but represent objective content about which one can be mistaken or accurate. It draws a distinction between conventionalism and essentialism, uses Leibniz, Kant, Plato, and Saul Kripke to show that a concept is not merely a bundle of features, and brings David Enoch’s “spinach test” to diagnose that morality is perceived as objective. It then sketches conditions for moral action: belonging to a moral domain, absence of self-interest, and free choice, and adds that the price a person pays affects the value of the act. It argues that morality is in the head and not in the heart, that emotions and empathy are at most important input but are not the source of moral value, and parallels this to the words of Aglei Tal about pleasure in Torah study.
Defining morality versus disputes over definition
The text presents different approaches to defining morality such as utilitarianism, striving for an optimal state, and deontological morality, which places at the center the good will and motivation rather than the result. It asks whether such disagreements are real arguments about one thing or merely the use of the same word to describe different concepts. It suggests that the attempt to “solve” disagreements about morality by replacing words is misleading and diverts the discussion from the question of what ought to be done.
Democracy, “Who is a Jew,” and semantic separation
The text describes how in public debates people claim that “democracy requires” a certain position, while in fact they begin from the position they want and then attach the word democracy to it. It argues that if democracy is only an empty term that we fill however we like, then there is no real debate here but two different dictionaries, and therefore the addition “democracy requires” adds no content. It applies the same analysis to the question “Who is a Jew,” and demonstrates a gap between a halakhic criterion and a civic-cultural criterion, arguing that changing the names of the concepts to “Jew” and “Israeli” does not solve the dispute when the sides feel that they are struggling over authenticity and continuity, including each side’s claim that it is “the authentic continuation of Abraham our forefather” in this generation.
Conventionalism versus essentialism in concepts
The text formulates two ways of relating to concepts: conventionalism, in which a concept is the product of social agreement and an agreed definition, and essentialism, in which the concept represents something objective whose characteristics can be described. It uses a Platonic image of ideas to explain that a concept can be understood as a “thing” that has characteristics, and not merely as a collection of characteristics. It cites Saul Kripke and the idea of “baptism” as an illustration that conventionalism turns the concept into a label determined by linguistic agreement.
Leibniz, object and its properties, and Kant
The text presents Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles, according to which there cannot be two things with the same set of properties, and brings Leibniz’s proof through the property “A is not B.” It rejects the proof on the grounds that being “not B” is not a property but a statement about the thing itself, and parallels this to the claim “the thing exists,” which is also not a property. It distinguishes between the object as possessor of properties and the bundle of properties, and uses Kant to distinguish between “the thing in itself” and the way it appears to us through characteristics, including the claim that colors are a product of cognition and not a property “in the world itself” but rather a translation of wavelengths.
The example of the “self,” maps, and the Ship of Theseus
The text brings an article by Aharon Rabinowitz and rejects the question “Where is the self located on the psychoanalytic map” as a category mistake, because the map is a map of the self and not a place in which the self is located. It illustrates this by comparison to “Where is Asia on the map of Asia” and argues that the map describes Asia and does not contain Asia as an additional object. It links this to the Ship of Theseus and the question whether an object remains the same object after all its parts have been replaced, and adds a halakhic connection through a dispute between Tosafot and the Ritva about a woman who vowed not to go to her father’s house when the house collapsed and was rebuilt.
Practical implications: changing definitions and disputes over definitions
The text states that two central practical implications of the assumption that concepts have an “essence” are the possibility of speaking about a change in the definition of a concept over time, and the possibility of conducting a real argument about the definition of a concept. It argues that if a concept is only a definition, then “changing a definition” means creating a different concept, whereas if there is something persistent in the concept one can say that the characteristics change but it is still the same concept. It argues that disputes about democracy or Jewish identity do not have to be “two different concepts” but can be a debate about the characteristics of the same concept, similar to a debate over the properties of a distant star.
Morality as objective and David Enoch’s spinach test
The text presents David Enoch’s “spinach test,” in which a funny claim like “How good that I don’t like spinach, because if I liked it I’d eat it, and spinach is yuck” reveals that the judgment is subjective. It compares this to the statement “How good that I live today and not in the 18th century, because then I wouldn’t know quantum theory and relativity,” which is not funny because these are objective factual claims that are true even without our knowing them. It applies the test to moral claims such as “How good that I don’t live in the 18th century, because I would have enslaved Blacks and discriminated against women,” and argues that when this is not perceived as funny, that indicates that morality is perceived as objective and not as a personal taste like spinach.
Moral disagreement versus descriptive pluralism
The text argues that the very existence of moral disagreement does not prove that there is no moral truth, as people try to infer, because there are disagreements in physics too. It distinguishes between descriptive pluralism, meaning a plurality of opinions in practice, and substantive pluralism, meaning a plurality of truths, and argues that a plurality of opinions may indicate that only some of the sides are right. It adds that the fact that people get angry, struggle, and feel that the conflict is real indicates that they assume there is moral truth relative to which one can be mistaken.
A philosophical difficulty: “Murder is forbidden” as truth without observation
The text explains that factual claims are tested by comparing the content of the claim to a state of affairs in the world through observation, whereas a normative claim like “Murder is forbidden” cannot be directly verified observationally. It presents the Aristotelian distinction between sentences judged as true or false and questions and commands, and presents a position according to which the difficulty of verifying norms leads people to see morality as subjective, similar to an expression of disgust or preference. It argues that the way to resolve the dissonance between the objective experience of morality and the epistemic difficulty is moral realism, that is, seeing morality as a kind of fact grasped by means other than sight.
Changing moral positions as progress rather than convention
The text presents an example of changing attitudes toward LGBT people and argues that the change can be interpreted as an improvement in moral understanding, similar to improvement in the sciences, and not merely as a replacement of conventions. It argues that homosexuality is, in his view, a halakhic transgression but not a moral problem, and formulates essentialism as the position that says that in the past we were morally mistaken and now we understand better. Opposed to this, it places conventionalism, which claims that the change is arbitrary, conventional, and mood-dependent.
The framework for moral action: domain, interest, choice, and cost
The text argues that not every action belongs to morality, and gives the example of investing in the stock market as an amoral action that is outside the moral domain. It says that even an action that seems beneficial, like helping the needy, is not necessarily “moral” in the sense of deserving moral credit if it is done merely as a job or out of self-interest. It adds that a moral act requires choice and decision, and therefore an action imposed by hypnosis or determinism lacks moral value. It further adds that the price a person pays changes the value of the act, and therefore a ten-shekel donation from a rich person is different from a ten-shekel donation from a poor person.
Satisfaction, empathy, and forgiveness: morality is in the head, not the heart
The text argues that doing good out of personal satisfaction is an interest just like economic or social interest, and therefore does not in itself give the act moral value. It describes an incident in which students refused to accept a “cold” apology without pangs of conscience, and he argues the opposite: that this is a purer request for forgiveness, because it is not meant to calm the one asking but is done because of the recognition that the act was not okay. It states that morality is in the head and not in the heart, that the heart and empathy can provide important input but are not the source of value, and that value belongs only to what a person decides to do and not to what “happens to him” emotionally.
Pleasure in Torah study as a parable: Aglei Tal
The text quotes Aglei Tal, which defines joy and pleasure in study as part of the essence of the commandment of Torah study, and brings proof from “make the words of Your Torah pleasant in our mouths.” It emphasizes Aglei Tal’s distinction between studying for the sake of the commandment while taking pleasure in it, and studying for the sake of pleasure alone, and uses this as a parable for the distinction between emotion that accompanies a moral act and emotion as a motive that replaces decision. It argues that emotions do not need to be suppressed, but they do need to be subordinate to the intellect, so that the decision is rational even if emotion is present.
Heart versus intellect in the current generation and public examples
The text portrays the world as becoming more and more emotional and identifies an ideology of “the heart decides” as a response to despair over reason. It brings a joke by Dov Sadan about descending from the head to the heart to the belly and below the belt, and argues that it reflects a serious claim about cultural change. It gives an example from the program The Voice, in which “the heart” is perceived as decisive even against rational considerations, and presents the debate over a hostage deal as an example of contrasting arguments of the heart with arguments of the intellect, including criticism of the argument “What would happen if it were your son.” It concludes that emotion helps us understand suffering and feeds the intellect, but decisions must pass rational scrutiny so as not to reach the point of “showing mercy to the cruel.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so basically we’re dealing once again, as I said, with Jewish law, morality, faith, and Jewish law. The relationship between morality and faith and Jewish law. First of all I want to try to define a bit the concept of morality, and afterward see its connection to faith and its complex relationship with Jewish law. So I’ll start a little with the definition of the concept of morality. Yes, a bit also methodologically—in the classes on Torah and Torah study, the class from yesterday, I think it was, there too I gave some methodological introductions about definitions and so on. Here I won’t do that, but I still want to open with a definition. When we think about morality, all kinds of disagreements immediately pop up. Yes, there are those who understand morality in a utilitarian way, meaning that the moral act is the act that brings the maximum benefit. You can discuss maximum benefit for whom—for me? for the world? for my community? for the universe? for humanity? all kinds of forms like that. There is a morality that talks about bringing about the optimal state, not maximum benefit, or deontological morality, which talks about the good will. Basically the emphasis in morality is not the result but your motivations—what you want when you perform that action, and so on. In short, I’m not going to go into all those discussions here. I’m bringing them up, mentioning them here, in order to ask why, in general, why do we even treat these as discussions about a shared topic, the topic of morality? Are they all talking about the same thing and there’s just a dispute over how to define it? Or are they actually talking about different concepts? Yes, think about it—this is something I talked about a bit in yesterday’s class, I think—think about the concept of democracy. There’s an argument over whether it’s worthwhile, I don’t know, to carry out the judicial reform. Fine? The eternal arguments of the last three years. Usually in this debate we hear claims like, look, democracy requires not doing such-and-such, or yes doing such-and-such. Meaning that basically there are different conceptions here of how a democracy should operate. One says that, I don’t know, the selection of judges should be done through a political route, and others say no, through some independent committee, or combinations, it doesn’t matter—say, for example, the Judicial Selection Committee. Okay? So here there are two conceptions of what ought to be, but the claims are always, in a democracy you don’t do it this way, or democracy requires such-and-such. Is that a real claim? No, he defines for himself what—
[Speaker B] No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —and then he declares that to be democracy. Meaning, basically, you’re not really checking what democracy says and from that inferring your position about the way judges should be selected. You start with what you want regarding the way judges should be selected, and then you declare that this is what democracy says. Okay? So basically what we have here is some kind of illusion, I would say, throwing sand in the eyes of the discussants. What you’re really saying is: I want it to be done this way. That’s what you’re saying. Not that democracy requires that it be done this way. No, democracy doesn’t require anything, because there is no such thing at all. Meaning, you define democracy in the way you define it, and he defines democracy in the way he defines it. So these are just two definitions. Why use the same word? Define it—you call it Reuven and he’ll call it Shimon, and that’s it. So Reuven requires that the Judicial Selection Committee be this way, and Shimon requires that it be some other way. That’s all. Now I don’t know what to do with that. But this addition—that democracy requires, or democracy forbids, something—adds nothing to the discussion. But it adds nothing to the discussion because behind it stands some assumption that the concept of democracy, in and of itself, has no meaning in and of itself. Meaning, whatever I pour into it—that is the concept of democracy for me. We’re not arguing, for example—suppose we argued whether this table is brown or whether this table is yellow. Okay? We’re both arguing. We’re arguing about the color of the table; we’re not talking about two different tables. We’re talking about the same table. I say it’s brown and you say it’s yellow. That’s an argument. Because either this table is brown or it’s yellow; it can’t be both. Okay? In that sense I want to argue, or ask, whether the argument about democracy is the same kind of thing. We’re arguing whether democracy requires selecting judges in this way or in that way—is that like arguing whether this table is brown or yellow? So as I presented it earlier, I said no. Because there is no such thing as democracy, as opposed to a table. This table exists, it’s real. One can argue about its properties, okay? But the truth is only one—that is, it has a certain property, a certain color. It may be that one of us is mistaken or doesn’t see well or I don’t know exactly what, but the color of the table is only one. Therefore we have a real argument here. Okay? In contrast, when we argue about democracy in the kind of argument I described earlier, we’re not really arguing about anything real. Each of us defines the concept and uses it according to his definition, but then it’s just a recipe for confusion. We’re both using the same word but with different meanings, so what’s the point? Let’s use two different words and everything will be fine. You can say the same thing about the question of who is a Jew. The debate over who is a Jew. One says it’s someone born to a Jewish mother or who converted according to Jewish law, yes, the halakhic criterion. Someone else says a Jew is someone who pays taxes, serves in the army, speaks Hebrew, and reads Amos Oz. Okay? That’s his criterion for a Jew; quite a few people think that way, that that’s what’s called a Jew. Fine, independently of the question of who is right, I just want to ask whether there’s any argument here at all. You’re talking about one concept, he’s talking about another concept. The fact that both of you use the same term—a term is always a word in a language, yes?—to describe two different concepts. Concepts are the things themselves, yes? The term is the word that describes the concept. A term is a linguistic matter, yes? So you use the same term to describe two different concepts. Why? It’s not an argument, it’s just a different dictionary. You’re just getting confused by this. Define it, divide up the words among yourselves. One will be Jew and the other will be Israeli, and that’s all. You’ll speak about a Jew and I’ll speak about an Israeli. For all the practical implications—for example, the Law of Return: should the Law of Return allow every Jew to come, or every Israeli to come, to the country? Fine, about that one can argue. That’s a substantive question; we have different positions and one can argue about it. But why use the term Jew? I say a Jew is this and you say a Jew is that, and therefore the Law of Return, which allows every Jew to come—now the question is what is a Jew? But you’re not really arguing about what a Jew is. You’re arguing about what you want the Law of Return to say. So argue about that. Why are you using the same word in two different senses? It just creates confusion, and it doesn’t help in any way.
You registered here? Okay. So just as a preface—what’s your name? Netanel what? Pinchasov? I also said earlier, this course is not on tractate Makkot. It’s on morality, Jewish law, and faith, okay? There was simply a mistake in the system and there’s no way to change it. Tractate Makkot will be given next semester on Thursday. Okay, so in any case, if you want to withdraw or join or whatever, that’s up to you, of course, do what you think is right. Anyway, the claim is that the moment we argue about the meaning of a word, that’s not an argument. Let’s define two words, assign one word to each of the meanings, and part as friends. Okay? So therefore, when I return now and ask about morality—there are disputes about what morality is. Is that an argument, or are these just different definitions of the word, the term? Are we arguing about a concept or about a term? A term is a linguistic thing, yes? as I said. Okay? Are we talking about the same thing? An argument is always when we’re talking about the same thing and each person expresses a different position regarding that thing, right? Are we talking about the same thing? Seemingly, we’re not talking about the same thing. Yes, the Eskimos say to take the elderly out into the snow so that they die there peacefully, okay? In the West that’s less accepted, and they put them in assisted living, in a nursing home, I don’t know exactly what. I’m not all that far off anymore, so I’m not even laughing. So apparently there’s a dispute here, right? But is it really a dispute? Meaning, one person says it’s not moral to take them out into the snow, the other says it is moral to take them out into the snow—this way they die in the most efficient, comfortable, and quick way. Okay? Is that a real argument or not? That’s a real argument, right? But now I’ll formulate the same dispute differently. Morality says that one should take the elderly out into the snow; morality forbids taking the elderly out into the snow. Is that a real argument? Here already one might say: we’re just arguing about the meaning of the word morality, so call it morality and call the other thing porality—what difference does it make? Why use the same term to describe two different concepts? It sounds like the same argument as before, but not necessarily. That is, it may be that all we’re doing here is creating some terminological confusion, confusion in naming, okay? And the debate should be conducted about what is proper to do and not about what morality says—just like what democracy says. Okay? These concepts are seemingly mediating concepts; they don’t help. So why bring them in when we’re in the middle of a debate? Okay, that’s basically the claim. So I want to explain why that’s not correct. And there is a real dispute here. And in order to explain that, I’ll make the following claim. There are two ways of relating to concepts. One can see concepts as agreed-upon conventions. The community agrees to define a concept in a certain way. And one can see concepts in a substantive, essential way—that’s called essentialism. Essence means essence. Meaning that the concept is not the product of social agreement, it is not a convention, but rather it represents something objective, real, in some sense. I don’t want to commit myself to saying that it literally exists, but something objective. There is something outside us, outside our social agreement, which is basically the concept.
I’ll give you an argument raised by Leibniz. Maybe this will also come up in our Tuesday class; I touched on this there from a somewhat different angle. Leibniz argued that there cannot be two things that have the same set of properties. If they have the same set of properties, then they’re not two things, they’re one thing. He called this the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. Meaning, if there are two objects that are indiscernible, all their properties are identical, then they’re not two objects, they’re one. It’s not the same claim—that all the properties are identical and that they’re not two objects but one. One might have said that there are two different objects even though all their properties are identical, but they are not different in the sense that they differ from one another—rather, one is not the other. Fine? There’s no difference between them in terms of properties, but they’re still two things. Two identical tables, fine? Two identical tables are two tables, not one, even though it could be that they are completely identical, all their properties exactly the same. But they’re still two tables. Leibniz argued that there’s no such thing, it’s impossible. That’s the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. Meaning, if there are two things that are indiscernible, then they are also identical; they are not two, they are one. And he has a proof. What is the proof? His argument goes like this—he has a proof. The argument goes like this: let’s assume the opposite and reach a contradiction. It’s a proof by negation. Assume there are two objects that are two.
[Speaker C] What are you talking about now? Morality? I’m now giving some…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I… at the beginning, before you came in, I asked how we define the concept of morality—there are disagreements and so on—whether it’s a real argument or we’re simply using the word in different ways. So I’m now bringing examples to show that—I want to argue that it is a real argument. So he said this: let’s assume there are two objects that are two, they are not one, and they have the same set of properties. Okay? So object A and object B have the same set of properties. Now object A has the property that it is not B. And B does not have that property. So they do not have the same set of properties, which contradicts the assumption. Meaning, this assumption led us to a contradiction, the assumption that there are two objects with the same set of properties. And therefore it’s not correct; therefore there cannot be two objects with the same set of properties—it’s the same object. That’s his claim. Okay? Where is he mistaken? Obviously he is mistaken.
[Speaker D] It’s not a property. Being not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not-B is not a property. Not-B is not a property? So what is it then? How would you define it?
[Speaker D] It’s not something that belongs to it in itself, it’s more…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, it’s a negative property. Fine, it’s still a property. Look, I’ll tell you where, it seems to me, the sting of this argument is—or really the basis of the mistake in this argument. When we look at a certain concept, that concept has characteristics. We talked about democracy, because that’s also what I talked about yesterday. Democracy has all kinds of characteristics. Okay? The question is whether the concept is the collection of characteristics. What is democracy? It’s a place that has—it’s a regime in which there is separation of powers, civil rights, elections every so often… something like that. Okay? That’s democracy. Meaning, this bundle of characteristics is the concept democracy. One could say no. A Platonic way of looking at it says no. The concept is that thing of which these are the characteristics. The concept is not the bundle of characteristics. The concept is the possessor of the characteristics. The characteristics characterize it. There is the concept democracy and it has all kinds of characteristics. You understand that this is really the question whether the concept is a convention? If the concept is merely a bundle of characteristics, then you can bundle together whatever bundle you want, so it’s a convention. Right? Meaning, if the group decided that this bundle of characteristics will be called a democratic state, then that’s a democratic state. Fine, because that’s how we decided in our language. We’re basically just building a dictionary here. Okay? This is what he calls baptism—what’s the name of that American philosopher… Saul Kripke. He’s a religious American philosopher. So he calls it baptism. You baptize the concept. It’s basically a kind of agreement. In contrast, if I say that there is—this concept is something that exists, exists or doesn’t… something objective that has a bundle of characteristics. The characteristics are its characteristics, not that it is the bundle of characteristics, but rather they are its characteristics, okay? Then that means we are not dealing here with a convention. This concept in some sense exists—Plato would have said, fine, it exists in the Platonic world of ideas. And now I ask what its characteristics are. That is an observational question in principle. Yes? It’s simply asking what the characteristics of this concept are, yes, of this idea. So here it has nothing to do with conventions; it’s not a matter of agreement among a community of people. Here there is truth and falsehood—it already connects to things I talked about yesterday. Yes? There is truth and falsehood here. So that is basically the root of the dispute between conventionalism and essentialism. Conventionalism basically says: I can gather a bundle of characteristics and place over them some heading. That heading will be a concept or a term in a language. Okay? And that’s how agreement created the concept. That is conventionalism. Convention means agreed custom. Okay? One can say no—I… there is a concept, I observe it in some sense, see its characteristics, see its characteristics—it was on Sunday, not Tuesday I think—and that’s how I find what the characteristics of that concept are. It’s not a question of convention. Meaning, if you came up with different characteristics, then apparently you made a mistake, or I made a mistake and you’re right, but it’s not… it’s not something we are necessarily supposed to arrive at through agreement; it does not derive from agreement between us. There is some objective truth here. Just as the color of the table does not derive from agreement between us. Tell me, let’s look at objects before we move to concepts. Is the table the bundle of characteristics of being made of wood, with two legs, with a metal bar underneath, brown in color, used for writing—is that the table? No. Those are properties of the table, right? The table is the object that possesses the properties. The properties are its properties, but the table is not the bundle of properties. Right? The table is the possessor of the properties. Okay? So basically if I now return to concepts, I want to argue the same thing there too. A concept too is not a bundle of properties. A concept is a thing, like a table. It has properties, just as a table has properties.
[Speaker E] Is it a physical thing that stands on its own?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I want to claim that it isn’t. The concept is an entity, even though it isn’t physical. Obviously it isn’t. Yes. I do claim that it stands on its own. In a moment I’ll explain. I claim that it stands on its own, like the table. In a moment. And then what I basically want to say is this: when I talk about a certain thing, almost everything I say about it relates to its properties. I say this table is brown, it’s made of wood, it’s this, it’s that—that’s all properties. But there is, for example, a statement like “the table exists,” or “there exists a table.” That statement is not a property of the table. To exist is not a property. That is a statement about the table itself, not about its properties. About the possessor of the properties. I’m saying there is such an object here, and that object has properties, but when I say that it is there, that it exists, existence is not a property. Existence is a statement about the thing itself. Kant distinguished between the thing in itself and the ways in which it appears to us, the bundle of its properties. What I grasp of it. Okay? When I say that the table exists, that is a statement about the thing in itself, unrelated to how I perceive it. When I say that it is brown, I am speaking about how it appears to my eyes. It appears to my eyes as brown. We also know that the color brown exists only in our consciousness. There is no brown in the world. There are no colors at all—in fact brown doesn’t exist at all, physics knows there is no brown—but even color in the sense that physics speaks of, exists only in our consciousness. There is no color in the world. In the world itself there are wavelengths and things like that. The translation we make of that in our consciousness is a translation into colors. Red, yellow, green, and so on. That’s all in us. In the world itself there is no red, no green, and no yellow. So basically, almost everything we say about things concerns their characteristics. But to say that this table exists—that does not speak about its characteristic, it speaks about it itself. Meaning, objects are not a bundle of properties. Objects have properties, but the object is not the bundle of properties; the properties are properties of the object, not that the object is the properties. Okay?
Once I saw an article by Aharon Rabinowitz, some psychologist here at Bar-Ilan, maybe still, I don’t know, and he wrote some article trying to locate on the psychoanalytic map of human beings where the self is located. In which part of the psyche it is found. And when I read it, I thought to myself that there is really a category mistake already in the wording of the question. The self is not located on the psychoanalytic map; the psychoanalytic map is a map of the self. The self is the possessor of the map. A person has all kinds of properties and parts of the psyche that can be described through a psychoanalytic map. But who is the person? The person is that one whom the map describes. It is the possessor of the properties expressed in that map. There is no point in looking for the person on the map. It’s like looking for where Asia is on a map of Asia. The map describes Asia. In Asia there are different countries, okay? The countries are in Asia—but where is Asia on the map? Asia is not on the map; the map is a map of Asia. Okay? Good, I hope the idea is clear. So I return to Leibniz. Where is Leibniz mistaken? Leibniz assumes that an object is the bundle of its properties. So of course two objects with the same bundle of properties are not two; they are the same object itself. But if I disagree with him, then basically what is at the root of the disagreement? In my view, an object is not a bundle of properties. An object is the possessor of the properties—not that the bundle of properties is the object. And now notice: if you assume my assumption, then Leibniz’s argument proving his thesis collapses. His proof is no good; it begs the question. Why? Because basically what did he say? If there are two objects A and B with the same set of properties, then A has the property that it is not B. In my view, being not B is not a property of A. It is a statement about A itself, about the object, not about its properties. Like the statement that it exists. The statement that it exists and the statement that it is not that thing—both refer to the same thing: they refer to the thing itself, not to any property of it. The thing has properties. I say it is brown, kindhearted, tall, short, this, that—those are its properties. But to say that it exists is to speak about it itself. To say that it is not that other object is also to speak about the thing itself; that is not a property. Once I understand that in an object there is something beyond the set of properties, that the object is the possessor of the properties, then Leibniz’s argument falls. Because Leibniz assumes that being not-B is a property, because in fact there is nothing except properties. Meaning, the whole object is nothing but the bundle of its properties. Okay? So obviously everything I can say about the object refers to a property. He cannot say that something about the object is not a property, because in fact there is nothing there except properties. But if I understand that the object is the possessor of the properties, that there is something here beyond the properties, okay? then there may be certain claims that I will make and say that they do not concern the properties of the object but the object itself. Okay, so did you want to comment?
[Speaker B] It seems to me this is a bit connected to the Ship of Theseus. To the Ship of Theseus, yes, it’s connected?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It talks about parts, not properties.
[Speaker B] Yes, but you can relate to parts.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That could be a parable for what I’m saying now, though it’s not exactly the same thing. The Ship of Theseus is a parable, right? Theseus was the king of Athens, an Athenian commander, who sailed in a ship. He had naval battles and storms and so on. And every time the storms broke something on the ship, he went to dry dock, they fixed it, replaced that plank, replaced this deck, replaced everything. After many years they had already replaced it all; nothing remained, not a single piece of wood from the original ship remained, everything had been replaced. Is that still the Ship of Theseus? By the way, this is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) in Jewish law. In Jewish law there’s a dispute between Tosafot and the Ritva about someone who forbids benefit—about a woman who takes upon herself a vow not to go to her father’s house. Now her father’s house collapsed. Then they rebuilt it. Is that still her father’s house? Is she still forbidden to enter it? So there’s at least some connection to the Ship of Theseus. In any case, again, the Ship of Theseus speaks about parts of the object, meaning the pieces of wood that make it up. I’m talking about its characteristics, not its parts. But the logic or the idea is similar. Okay? So what I want to say, briefly, is that where does the practical difference show up in saying that terms also have identity, they have an essence and not only properties? There are two main practical differences here. One practical difference is regarding change. Someone says, look, the concept “Jew” used to be defined this way, and today we need to change the definition. Now if a concept is nothing but a definition, then what does it mean to change the definition of a concept? If you want to define a different concept, fine, be my guest. You can’t change the definition of a concept. The moment you changed the definition, it’s no longer the same concept; you’re talking about a different concept. When you propose changing a definition, you’re basically saying there is something persistent in this concept, something that remains the same both in the previous definition and in the new definition. The definition needs to change. So if you changed the definition, what remains? In what sense is it still the same concept? The answer is: it’s the same concept whose characteristics changed, like a person who grows up. He has a different height, his cells have already been replaced, everything has changed. And it’s still the same person. Why? Like the Ship of Theseus, right? Why? Because there’s something that persists despite all the changes. None of the characteristics does. Rather, it’s the same concept, only its characteristics can change over time. But it’s still the same concept. So one practical difference of saying that a concept has an essence is the possibility of changing the definition of concepts. Otherwise you can’t change it; you can define a different concept if you want, but there’s no such thing as changing the definition of a concept. The second practical difference is a debate over the definition of a concept. And here I come to the point where I began. We have a debate over the definition—what is democracy? Okay? I say there should be a committee for selecting judges, and you say the politicians should choose the judges. Okay. But that’s just, as I said earlier, just using the same word in two different senses. You call it Reuven and he’ll call it Shimon. Reuven is a committee for selecting judges, and Shimon is politicians choosing the judges. That’s all. We’re not talking about the same concept, so why argue? The answer is: no, that’s not true, we are talking about the same concept. We’re talking about the concept of democracy. True, we can argue over its definition, just like if you look at a star in the sky. One person claims its radius is, I don’t know, five thousand kilometers, and someone else says its radius is ten thousand kilometers. So are they talking about a different star? No, they’re talking about the same star. They have a disagreement about what its characteristics are, because they can’t see well, because it’s far away, because they aren’t estimating correctly, for all kinds of reasons. But we’re arguing about the same star, and therefore this is a real argument. My claim is that there is a concept called democracy, and there can be disputes about the characteristics of that concept. Why is this an argument and not just, let’s synchronize the words? He says one thing—we have a real disagreement. Now you’ll say: where is this democracy located, this concept? The table is here, like you asked earlier. What is this? In what sense does it exist? So you can use Platonic formulations: the idea of democracy exists somewhere in the world of ideas. The Holy One, blessed be He, created it. Fine? And when we look at what it is—yes, I’m using this metaphorically, never mind—when we try to define for ourselves what democracy is, we contemplate that idea and try to describe it. And that is a definition of the concept democracy. Okay? And someone else contemplates that idea and arrives at a different definition. So we have a disagreement like the disagreement about the table. Okay? But of course, if you think that this concept is a conventional concept, a convention, then truly there’s nothing to argue about. These arguments are all unnecessary. And that’s why I told you earlier that I don’t agree with what you said. Because the fact that when people argue over who is a Jew, or argue over what democracy is, you can say they’re all idiots. What are you arguing about—a word? Just define another word and everything will be fine. But if they argue, and they’re full of emotion, and they fight, and they get angry and everything—why? Because they probably both feel that there’s a real disagreement here. They both understand that each one is claiming: I am the authentic continuation of Abraham our father. I claim that if I was born to a Jewish mother or converted according to Jewish law, and I observe Jewish law, then I am the authentic continuation of Abraham our father. And he claims no—if I read Amos Oz, pay taxes, serve in the army, and speak Hebrew, then I am the authentic continuation for this generation. He’s not claiming that Abraham our father did that. He’s claiming that this is the authentic continuation of Abraham our father in this generation. Okay? So you understand that there is a real argument here over who is a Jew. The use of the word only represents the argument, but there’s no room here for semantic separation. So okay, you’ll call it “Jew,” I’ll call it “Israeli,” we’ll shake hands and part as friends. It won’t help. We have a real disagreement; it won’t help to establish two different words here. We have an argument over who is the continuation of Abraham our father, who really is, who the real Jew is today. Okay? In other words, many times we have some feeling that we can end arguments by semantic separation. Come on, let’s define two words: I’ll use this word, you’ll use that word, everything’s fine, and there won’t be confusion because we have two different words. No—you’ll miss the whole point, because we have a real disagreement, and it has to be argued through. If you use different words, you’re hiding the fact that there’s an argument here. Okay, I’m saying all this—now let’s return to the question of morality. I’m saying all this because I want to ask whether arguments about morality are arguments about a word, or whether they are substantive arguments. Someone who says we should send the elderly out into the snow, or someone who says we should put them in a nursing home—do they have an argument between them? Obviously they do, right? What does that mean? It means that the word morality is a term that represents a concept. It has content. And we have an argument about what that content says regarding our treatment of the elderly. Okay? Or in many other things too, we’ll generally agree, that’s how it is. Okay? But there are certain issues on which we disagree. So what shall we do? So you’ll call it morality and he’ll call it “forality,” and we’ll part as friends? No, that doesn’t help. We have an argument, and the argument has to be conducted. Semantic separation doesn’t solve real disagreements. A great many people get confused when they think that basically we’re just arguing over the meaning of a term, of a concept, okay? But no, that’s not true. Or not always true. Sometimes an argument over the meaning of a term expresses or represents a real argument, an argument about a concept that the term describes. And when we argue, it’s not that we’re talking about different concepts. We’re talking about the very same concept, and we have a disagreement over what its properties are, or what it says, how it is applied in certain circumstances—just like the argument about the color of the table, whether it’s yellow and so on. Okay? Are you registering for the course? Okay, I’m just writing down who wants credit. So that is, basically what I want to claim is that when we have arguments about morality—about what morality says, about what morality is in general, and so on—semantic separation is not an option. This is a real disagreement; it has to be argued through. And the argument says one thing: the concept morality says one thing. If I’m right, you’re wrong, and if you’re right, I’m wrong. And therefore that’s the first point I wanted to put on the table: when we argue about morality, it’s not an argument about the meaning of a word. It’s an argument over the question of what ought to be done, how one ought to behave. Okay? Even the word “ought”—it’s not a debate over a concept. You can of course translate it into a name too. No—we have a real disagreement. I think you’re wrong, and you think I’m wrong. It’s not a dictionary. We can’t adopt another word in the dictionary and part and settle the whole conflict or disagreement. No, there’s a real dispute here. We’ll have to decide, or maybe we won’t succeed in resolving it, but the dispute will remain a dispute. When we—there is, I’ll come back to this later, but there’s a very interesting test by David Enoch, a philosophy lecturer at the Hebrew University. He calls it the spinach test. We once had some debate with him. In preparation for that debate I read some of his articles, and in one of them he defines the spinach test. What is the spinach test? Suppose there’s a child who says to you, “How good that I don’t like spinach, because if I liked spinach I’d eat it, and spinach is disgusting.” So that’s funny. Why is it funny? What’s wrong with that argument? If he liked spinach, what would be the problem if he ate it? He’s checking the alternative reality through his current lenses, right? Through his lenses as someone who doesn’t like spinach, he’s judging how he would assess his behavior if he did like it. That has no meaning. If you liked spinach, then spinach wouldn’t be disgusting. When you determine that spinach is disgusting, you determine that through your current lenses. Okay? Meaning the root of the matter—why people laugh when they see such a thing—is because the claim that spinach is disgusting is a subjective claim. There’s no objective truth here. If you like spinach, good for you; if he doesn’t like spinach, good for him too. Okay? That’s good for mental health, that’s good for physical health, doesn’t matter, but both are “good for you.” Now I’ll give you another example with the same test. “How good that I live today and not in the eighteenth century, because I wouldn’t know quantum theory and relativity if I had lived in the eighteenth century.” Is that also funny? Maybe depends on your sense of humor, but it’s not funny to me. Maybe you’re not interested in physics, fine, so you don’t care. But if someone tells you, “I am interested in physics,” then it won’t be funny when he says such a thing, right? I’m very glad I live today and know things that people didn’t know in the eighteenth century. Maybe if I live another 200 years I’ll know even more things—even better—but at least compared to the eighteenth century I’m in good shape. Okay? So it’s not funny. Why isn’t it funny? How is that different from the spinach test regarding “spinach is disgusting”? Because relativity and quantum theory are factual claims; they were true even in the eighteenth century. It’s just that in the eighteenth century I didn’t know them, or we didn’t know them. But they were true then too. And quantum theory and relativity, assuming they’re true—again, for the sake of the discussion I’m assuming they’re true—then that is an objective factual claim. And therefore there definitely is room to adopt my lenses today in order to judge what would happen in an alternative reality in the eighteenth century, when I didn’t know quantum theory and relativity, but today from my lenses I know that they’re true, and I know that they were true then too, only then I wouldn’t have known it. Okay? So that claim is not funny at all. I really want to know more, so I’m glad I live today and not in the eighteenth century. In other words, the difference between “spinach is disgusting” and quantum theory and relativity is that “spinach is disgusting” is a matter of point of view, a subjective matter, whereas quantum theory and relativity are objective factual claims. So that means that the spinach test is basically a test that can help me determine whether a claim is subjective or objective. I’ll apply the spinach test to it and see whether it comes out funny or not. So now let’s try to apply this to moral claims. “How good that I live today and not in the eighteenth century, because otherwise I would enslave Blacks, discriminate against women,” I don’t know, all sorts of things like that. Is that funny? Is it more like spinach or like relativity? Tell me, what do you think? So then you would have been
[Speaker E] happy to enslave?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, also then I wouldn’t know relativity either—that’s no great wisdom. I’m not asking what would happen then. In relativity too, if I had lived in the eighteenth century I wouldn’t know relativity. That’s why I’m saying, do the double spinach test—meaning, look at that reality through your lenses today. Today. And ask yourself whether it comes out funny. Do you understand what I’m saying? And through my lenses today, it is an injustice to discriminate against Blacks and women and the like, okay? Now in the eighteenth century I probably would have done it like everyone else, fine? But I’m looking through my lenses today at what would have happened there, and I say, wow, how good that I didn’t live then, because I would have behaved immorally. Is that funny? To each his own—I’m asking you what your taste is. Is it funny? Not to me at all. What? Not okay? No, no, I’m asking—leave your moral patterns aside for a second, we’ll derive them. Right now I’m first asking you intuitively, straight out, is it funny or not? From that I’ll tell you what your moral view is. You understand? I’m going at this backward. This is diagnostics now. Obviously it depends on your moral view, and that’s why I’m asking the question. So I’m saying: if it’s not funny to you—it’s not funny to me—if it’s not funny to you, what does that mean? That morality is objective like relativity; it isn’t subjective like “spinach is disgusting,” right? That’s what the spinach test says, obviously. If it’s not funny to you—if there’s someone to whom it is funny, then for him it’s like spinach. Okay?
[Speaker G] Spinach—a person can imagine for himself that he could like spinach, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the same token I can imagine myself blind, or completely indifferent to the enslavement of Blacks—they look to me like cats—so it doesn’t bother me that—
[Speaker G] that’s not something a person wants suddenly to imagine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so take an anti-nausea pill; there’s no problem imagining it. A person—how does it go? “Restricted in his intellect and free in his imagination,” something like that, there’s some saying, I don’t remember by whom. Imagination is free; the intellect imposes limits, but imagination is free. So why did I bring this test? We’ll come back to it, but why did I bring it? To show that when we have a disagreement about morality, it’s a disagreement. When we have a disagreement about spinach—you like spinach and I don’t like spinach—that’s not a disagreement. You like spinach and I don’t; that’s simply a report about a mental structure or a physiological one, whatever, mine. I report that I like spinach, you report that you don’t like spinach, good for you—there’s no disagreement here. You’re reporting what goes on in you, and I’m reporting what goes on in me, right? When I argue in the moral sphere, over a moral question—whether to send the elderly out into the snow or put them in assisted living or a nursing home, okay? Is that like spinach? No. The spinach test shows—if it’s not funny to you—then the spinach test shows you that no, it’s not like spinach. It’s a real disagreement, and if you think the elderly should be sent out into the snow then in my moral view you are mistaken, and in your view I am mistaken, okay? You also have to notice that very often people bring the fact that there are different views regarding morality in order to show that in morality there isn’t one truth, because after all different people think in different ways, or different groups, and all of them disagree with one another on moral questions. Of course that proves nothing; there can be disagreements in physics too. So descriptive pluralism—that is, the fact that there are many views—does not mean substantive pluralism, meaning that there are many truths and no single truth. There are many views means that one is right and the others are wrong. The fact that there are many views doesn’t mean there isn’t one truth; it means not everyone knows the one truth that perhaps exists, or maybe indeed there isn’t one truth—but the fact that there are many views does not prove that there isn’t one truth, okay? So here too, I’m saying there can be a moral disagreement between two people, but as the spinach test shows, suppose we have a disagreement—let’s say, I don’t know, whether we should stop the war and make a hostage deal, whatever. Should there be a hostage deal or shouldn’t there be a hostage deal? Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that we have a moral disagreement, okay? Now why should I get angry with you? You feel that it’s good to make a hostage deal, and he feels it isn’t—what, do people go out into the streets and pelt one another with citrons? What’s the point of that? What’s the issue? You understand that the moment people do this, they’re expressing some intuition within themselves that there’s a real disagreement here? It’s not—we can’t—it’s not a feeling like “spinach is disgusting.” There’s a real disagreement here. In my view you are morally not okay, and in your view I am morally not okay; in other words, there’s a disagreement here. The claim I want to make is that from every angle you look at it, morality is like facts. We see it like facts—without committing ourselves to Plato or Platonic ideas—but we treat it like facts. That’s obvious. In other words, I think everyone—I don’t believe those who tell me otherwise, those who say otherwise are… Let’s talk about facts. Suppose you say, for example, this shtender is brown. Fine? That’s a factual claim. How do I know whether it’s true or not? I observe, and the observation tells me whether the state of affairs in the world corresponds to the content of my claim, and if there’s a fit between them, then it’s a true claim. And if not, then not. Determining that a certain claim is true or false is the result of an act of comparison. I compare the content of the claim with the state of affairs it describes. If it matches, the claim is true. And if not, then not. Now the question is: when I say “It is forbidden to murder.” Is that a true claim? Against what am I supposed to compare it in order to determine whether that claim is true or not true? What observation am I supposed to make? There isn’t one. If I look in the law book, then what I’ll get is that Israeli law forbids murder. But the claim “It is forbidden to murder” is a normative claim; it’s not a descriptive claim. The claim that the law book forbids murder is a descriptive claim, a factual claim. Look in the law book and you’ll see—written there is that murder is forbidden. In fact it doesn’t say that, but it says that the murderer’s punishment is such-and-such. It doesn’t say “It is forbidden to murder.” But the claim “It is forbidden to murder” as such—not in the law book, but the substantive claim “It is forbidden to murder”—that is a claim I have nothing to compare against in order to verify whether it is correct or not. And if someone says “It is permitted to murder,” and now I want to do an experiment that will prove to him that he’s wrong, or recommend to him what to observe in order to realize he’s wrong—I don’t have it. I have nothing. In order to determine that this claim, “It is forbidden to murder,” is true or false, I would have had to compare it to something. It should match something if it’s true, and fail to match if it’s false. What should it match? Nothing. So therefore people say, okay, if that’s so, then indeed the claim “It is forbidden to murder” isn’t a claim. Aristotle already said that a claim is something judged in terms of true or false. When I ask you, “What time is it?” that is not a true sentence or a false sentence; it’s a question. It’s not a claim. Or an imperative—a command is also not a claim. “Do such-and-such.” That’s not true or false. It’s a sentence, but it’s not a claim. Sentences like that, which can be judged in terms of truth or falsity, are called claims. Now the question is whether “It is forbidden to murder” is a claim. Seemingly not. There’s no way to determine whether it is true or false, because I have nothing to compare it to, nothing to observe. The comparison does not exist. And therefore there are philosophers who wanted to argue, and there are people who want to argue because of this intellectual distress—they say, okay, so if that’s so, then indeed it’s probably like spinach. It’s a subjective matter. Meaning, when I say “It is forbidden to murder,” I’m expressing some revulsion I feel inside in the face of an event of murder, in the face of the act of murder. So it’s just like reporting “spinach—yuck.” It’s the same thing; it’s subjective. Because there’s no—only physical claims about the world are objective claims. That is basically—the positivists take this very far—but that’s what lies behind the matter. And therefore a great many people, if you ask them—until you show them what the implications are, but before that, if you ask them directly—they’ll say yes, morality is a subjective matter, obviously. It’s what I feel. I have no way to verify it, to establish it, to convince you of it. It’s what I feel. But then tell him, yes, but let’s do the spinach test. And tell me whether you laugh when I say that in the eighteenth century I would have enslaved or discriminated against Blacks, women, and so on. And usually he won’t laugh. But then he’s in distress, because on the one hand it seems objective, but on the other hand what am I supposed to compare it to in order to determine whether it’s true or false? There’s nothing to compare it to. It’s not like a claim in physics or in some science or whatever—some observational claim.
[Speaker F] The philosophy of Sinai—that’s true because it really is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now when I show a person the spinach test—and I’ve personally encountered quite a few such cases; I’ve done this more than once—when I show them the spinach test or other arguments, it doesn’t matter, arguments about moral relativism. That is, forget the spinach test. How do you relate to it if I say, “It is permitted to murder so-and-so because I don’t like him”? Then he says, “Disgusting.” Fine, disgusting—take a pill. I don’t feel disgust; as far as I’m concerned it’s fine to murder him. He won’t accept that. That’s on one side. On the other hand he says yes, but it’s subjective. This is a dissonance that many people live with, and they don’t know how to solve it, and therefore intellectually they are forced to retreat to the subjective interpretation of morality. They say it’s subjective—I don’t know, so I feel like murdering you. Even if you murder him—meaning, even that is only a feeling. The condemnation I feel toward you is also basically subjective. I feel condemnation toward you, but that too is just my feeling; it doesn’t really express some objective relation. Okay? The only alternative that can resolve this dissonance and explain to a person what he really feels, without turning it into some illusion or some merely artificial construct, is to tell him that there is such a thing as moral realism. That morality too is a kind of fact. You don’t see it with your eyes. You see it through other means. But it is a kind of fact. We observe those facts and arrive at a conclusion as to what morality requires, or forbids. Whether this must
[Speaker E] work on rules, or whether you have to apply it to—say, “It is forbidden to murder,” do I have to relate to that as some concretization of “It is forbidden to take life”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you can talk about a general thing too—what’s the problem?
[Speaker E] Here’s an example you say—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I were a Nazi, then I’d think there’s no problem murdering in general, not concretely. Is that funny? If someone
[Speaker E] takes a life because he actually doesn’t know—someone else came to take another person’s life—suddenly I won’t feel that sense of revulsion
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] anymore. Okay?
[Speaker E] I didn’t understand. If you tell me, “It is forbidden to murder,” okay? You’re basically tossing that off from your point of view—you’re basically saying that it has to be projected onto some specific case that happened, because otherwise I can say that “It is forbidden to murder” can also apply to a case where I won’t feel revulsion, like—that is, to killing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I say that murder—I don’t know, the feeling of revulsion—if I say “It is forbidden to murder,” then if murder is forbidden, then in particular it is forbidden to murder this person and that person. Why does the concretization change anything here? No,
[Speaker E] you then…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Are you saying that the feeling of revulsion will arise less if I’m not standing before a concrete situation? Fine, I’m speaking right now about the intellectual prohibition on murder. Here, I’m applying the test to a non-concrete situation. If I had been German in the 1940s, then I would have murdered Jews. How good that I didn’t live then.
[Speaker E] No, but wait—if you meet a person who tells you, “I’m facing a person who kills a Nazi who’s about to murder a Jew”—do you feel revulsion? No, I think that’s morally okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? Because I think that’s morally okay—what does that mean? Not every killing of a person is murder. Murder and killing are not the same thing. The prohibition of taking life on the Sabbath is every taking of life, whether it is murder or killing. But murder is a concept with a connotation. So killing a pursuer is not murder; it is killing, but not murder. My revulsion is toward murder, not toward killing. Okay? Moral revulsion. Psychological revulsion—I don’t know, everyone feels whatever he feels. So what I basically want to say is that there is such a thing as morality; there is such a domain as morality. And when we argue about it, or when values change—I also said changes and disagreements, that’s the practical difference of essentialism—so when we argue about it, or when changes are proposed concerning attitudes toward LGBT people, which once was perceived as a terrible moral offense and today people see it as something in which there is no moral problem whatsoever—religious people may see it differently, but in my view they too are mistaken. Meaning, it’s a transgression in Jewish law; there is no moral problem in it whatsoever. In other words, it’s a halakhic prohibition. What is the moral problem in it? In any case—so what does this change in perception mean? Does it mean there is no such thing as morality, that each time the convention changes and the convention is what determines? Or no. It means that just as we study physics and improve in our understanding of the physical world, we also improve in our understanding of the moral world. And once we were mistaken and thought there was a moral problem in it—assuming you agree with me, I think so as a religious person, okay? Once we were mistaken and thought there was a moral problem in it, and now we’ve improved, we’ve become wiser. And now we understand that there is no moral problem in it. We simply improve, exactly as in physics.
[Speaker C] Why have we improved? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I think—that I improved. You can disagree with me. You can tell me, no, here people didn’t improve; it’s just arbitrary, convention. That’s the conventionalist view. I’m defining it here; I’m not claiming it’s correct. I’m defining here the essentialist view. The essentialist view says no, it’s like physics. If I come to different conclusions, then I improved; it’s not simply that the atmosphere changed, and so the convention changed as well.
[Speaker G] Because I think, maybe—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Actually not. If I think now that this is correct, then it can’t be that—I’m speaking from my own standpoint. I improved; I’m talking about myself. Someone else will say, what are you talking about, you deteriorated. Fine. Someone who says I deteriorated is of course also an essentialist and not a conventionalist, yes? That’s obvious. Only postmodernism. It comes out against both modernism and anti-modernism, yes? Postmodernism says there is no standard. Usually people contrast it with modernism. Modernism says the world is progressing. But equally, yes, classicism, which says the world is only deteriorating—say in art. A view that says classical art was the peak and the world has only deteriorated since then, yes? So classicism also contradicts postmodernism, because it too says there is a standard—who is better than whom—only in this case it goes down rather than up. But that’s… Okay. So the claim is basically that disagreements about morality do not prove that there is no morality; on the contrary. They are an indication that there is objective morality. In other words, contrary to what I said people think—that the moment there are disagreements, it probably means there is no moral truth—the opposite is entirely the case. Not only is that not necessary; the reverse is necessary. In other words, if there are disagreements, that means there is objective morality, because otherwise there would be no point in conducting an argument. Unless you say the argument is illusory, fine. But if both sides agree that the argument is a real argument, and they are both really arguing, then perforce both sides agree that there is objective morality, and therefore they are arguing over what it says. If there were no objective morality, what would they be arguing about? In other words, the existence of disagreements proves the existence of objective morality; it doesn’t refute it. It doesn’t prove that there is no objective morality; it proves that there is. Okay? You have to notice that point, because a lot of people miss it here. Okay, so now let’s try to move forward a bit and understand what this thing is. Even before I enter the question of what the moral act is and what is not moral, I want to understand what the moral framework is. Before I pour content into it. Okay? So let’s start first of all—suppose Reuven wants to make money, and he decides to invest in some security on the stock exchange. Okay? Is that a moral act? Anti-moral? Amoral, right? Meaning, you can invest, you can choose not to invest—that’s your consideration. Meaning there is a certain kind of act that, regardless of motivations, simply doesn’t belong to the moral domain. Okay? It’s not the semantic field of morality; it’s another semantic field. Okay? Economic actions, or whatever, something like that. Okay? So that’s an initial indication that morality deals with a certain kind of activity, a certain kind of actions. Okay? Actions in other areas simply do not belong to the field of morality. What happens now if Reuven devotes all his energy to helping the needy? No, that’s not Reuven, Reuven invested the money. Shimon devoted all his energy to helping the needy. That is generally perceived as a moral activity, right? But if he does it because that’s his job, they pay him for it, meaning, that’s his salary, he gets a salary for that—is it still a moral action? Moral not in the sense that it’s not anti-moral. Moral in the sense that it belongs to this world of morality? Why? How is he different from someone who gets money to play soccer?
[Speaker H] In the end he does
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] something good. What? He does something useful. “Good”—you’re already assuming that it’s a moral act, but he does something useful, fine. But in my opinion, no. In my opinion, once again, if you chose this in order to get money for it and not get money for something else because this is the act you want to focus on, then yes. Fine? But if you had no other option for work, that was the only job they offered you, and you have no skills to do anything else, fine? To help the needy you don’t need many skills. So you help the needy because that’s the job you found. In other words, that’s it. You might just as well have filled out forms about other things, right? In that respect I don’t see that as a moral activity. It’s neutral, it’s fine, it’s totally permitted to do it, there’s no problem, it’s permitted to work in order to make money. But you don’t deserve moral credit for what you’re doing. What does that basically mean? That it’s not enough to define the domain in order to define morality. It’s not enough to define what kinds of actions belong to that domain. It’s a necessary condition, but not sufficient. Motivations also play a role. In other words, why are you doing this action? Meaning, it has to be an action of this kind, A; B, the motivation for why you’re doing it also plays a role. If you’re doing it in order to fulfill some interest you have, then it’s not a moral action, even though the action in another context could have been considered moral. If someone did it voluntarily, then it would be moral. But if you do it because this is your job and you earn money from it, then it’s not a moral action. Meaning that now we have another characteristic of a moral action. A, it is a certain domain of actions, say benefiting others or something like that. B, it has to come not in order to satisfy an interest. Okay? Now, a third question, okay? Suppose I hypnotized the person and said to him under hypnosis to dedicate his life to helping the needy. Levi—we’ve reached Levi, right? Levi was hypnotized, and the hypnotist implanted in him that from now on he has to dedicate his life to helping the needy. And now that’s what he does from then on. Is that a moral action? What’s missing? Choice, right? Meaning, A, it has to be a certain kind of action. B, it’s not for the sake of an interest—but an action done for an interest is still the result of a choice. Meaning, so maybe it’s not supposed to be done for an interest. C, it has to be the result of my decision, my choice. Okay? And therefore in my opinion, in a deterministic world, someone who holds a deterministic worldview has no morality in his world. Even though many people deny that too, but it’s nonsense. There is no morality. Yes, Protestants live in a contradiction entirely, because on the one hand everything is predetermined, and on the other hand you have to make an effort to be righteous in the eyes of the Holy One, blessed be He. But nothing depends on your effort, so what?
[Speaker E] Someone who does something, say, because his father told him to do it that way? Suppose he does proper deeds because of his father…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m Jewish because I was born Jewish, because that’s how a Jew should behave.
[Speaker E] You have no intention regarding the act, but still you do it because of the command of someone that you…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is whether there is value in obeying his command. If your father were a pagan, and commanded you to be a pagan, is there value in obeying him?
[Speaker E] Is the person moral by nature?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, the pagan is moral, but he’s a pagan. Is there value in obeying his command if he tells you to be a pagan too?
[Speaker E] Maybe he’s doing a correct act.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not because the act is incorrect—that’s what I’m saying.
[Speaker E] Because of the negative. I’m saying, you do the commandments—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying if the value is to obey my father, then it’s a moral act. But if there is no value in obeying my father, only by chance my father commanded me to do the good act, and I do it because I’m obligated to obey my father, then it’s not a moral act.
[Speaker E] Would that be at the same level of morality?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Completely valueless. When I hear people saying, “because that’s how we were educated,” that means they’re not religious. If you do it because that’s how you were educated, so what? That one was educated to be a pagan and that one was educated to be something else. There is no value whatsoever. By the way, people don’t always mean that. When they say “that’s how we were educated,” what they really mean is “that’s what I believe.” But I’m saying if I take it literally, simply, he does it because that’s how he was educated. Then someone programmed him to do it—it’s like hypnosis. Someone programmed him to do it. Or alternatively, even if it’s not hypnosis, he assigns value to behaving the way he was educated. Now by chance he was educated in the right direction, in what I think is the right direction. So what? Meaning, if the value is to behave as you were educated, then behaving as a pagan because that’s how you were educated should also be something of value. Okay? And if that’s not of value, that means that behaving as you were educated is not a value. So if that’s not a value, and you do the correct act because you were educated that way, then it’s valueless. Okay? That’s why I kept bringing up the pagan. So therefore hypnosis also really reveals something more to us. So the act has to belong to the right domain, it has to be done not out of interest, and it has to be done out of choice. Okay? And not for some other reason. Now, if we’ve gotten to Yehuda—that was Levi, now we’ve gotten to Yehuda. Fine? Now Yehuda is a tycoon, a great rich man, and he donates a little money to charity. Okay? Does that have moral value? On the face of it, yes, right? Of course one could say that if he donates that money for a good name, then that belongs to one of the previous categories, meaning he’s doing it for an interest. But if he does it for altruistic reasons, then it has moral value, but reduced. Because the price he pays for that behavior is small—he has a lot of money, he gave ten shekels. A donation of ten shekels from him is not like a donation of ten shekels from a poor person who gives ten shekels to charity, right? And here it already enters only into quantitative questions—meaning, how much room is there to value such an act. It belongs to the moral category, but the price that you pay is also a factor in defining, or in the level of, the morality of the act. Now let’s move to something a little trickier.
[Speaker I] If he’s rich and nevertheless that rich person is really suffering from the suffering of the poor, I don’t think—again? You just said that he gives them money; if he’s really aware of their situation and he’s aware of what…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know whether he’s aware or not; he gives money.
[Speaker I] But that’s the point—if he’s really aware of their situation and he’s trying to help them on his own initiative, it seems to me that gives it added value; it seems to me that turns it into maybe an act…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll talk about that in another moment—I don’t agree with you, but I’ll get to that in a second. What happens with someone now—we got to Judah, Issachar, Zebulun—Issachar does an act of kindness, gives charity to the poor, because it gives him satisfaction. No—he gets pleasure from doing good. He gets satisfaction from doing good. What do you say about that? So that’s not something with moral value. Agreed? I agree. It’s an interest like any other interest. That feeling of satisfaction is a kind of pleasure—or I don’t know what to call it, happiness—it’s something people pay for. Meaning, one person gets pleasure from watching a basketball game and another gets pleasure from doing kindness for the poor. If you do it because of that pleasure, for the sake of producing that pleasure, then it’s no different from any other interest. Okay?
Let me give an example, which also happened to me personally. Once, when I was teaching in Yeroḥam in the yeshiva there, a friend of mine—I had a friend who ran the regional high school in Sde Boker. He wasn’t religious. Today he’s gotten a little closer, but he definitely wasn’t religious at all. He lived there in Sde Boker, a very good high school, with good students, good teachers, a quality crowd. And he asked me to come during the Ten Days of Repentance and speak with them there about matters of the day—atonement, forgiveness, things like that—but without religious matters. Not to deal with religious issues. It was an interesting challenge, so I opened the talk like this:
Suppose I hurt someone, and I don’t feel the slightest pang of conscience. I go home cheerful and happy. Okay? I get home and say to myself, wow, I wasn’t okay. Nothing hurts inside me; I’m disconnected. That lobe that’s responsible for those stomach pains—mine is disconnected, okay? But I make a cold intellectual calculation that says I wasn’t okay, I hurt him, so I should go and appease him. I go and ask his forgiveness, ask him to forgive me, to make peace with him. And suppose Elijah the Prophet comes—the secular prophet, no religious business—and tells you that I did this without any pangs of conscience. I didn’t feel any problem with what I did. It was completely cold intellectually. I didn’t do it for the achievement, not so that later he’d do me a favor or I’d gain something. I did it from a cold calculation: I reached the conclusion that I was in the wrong. No emotion about it, no feeling, no guilt, and I went to ask forgiveness, to appease the person I wronged. Would you accept that apology? That’s what I asked them.
There was wall-to-wall consensus there that no. That it’s hypocritical. You don’t feel anything inside, no sense of the wrong you did—so what are you doing asking forgiveness outwardly? I told them that in my eyes, this is the purest apology I can imagine. Because if I come to you because I have pangs of conscience, then I’m really coming to you in order to support my own stomach pains. Right? I need to deal with my own stomach pains, so how do I do that? I ask you for forgiveness in order to calm my rumbling gut. So I’m doing it for me. But if I come to you even though I have no stomach pains at all—only because I reached the conclusion that I wasn’t okay. A completely intellectual conclusion, completely cold. Without any guilt, any emotion, any experience, nothing. Totally cold. Why is that hypocrisy? That’s the purest thing there is. I understand that I was in the wrong, and I come to appease you. I ask forgiveness.
Their feeling is that morality is connected to empathy, to emotional identification with the injured person or the sufferer or whatever it may be, and responding to those feelings is what’s called morality. And if you don’t have those feelings, then you’re a robot. It’s like AI going to ask forgiveness. Okay? And I disagree with that completely. In my view—and I come back to the feeling of satisfaction—doing a moral act in order to gain a feeling of satisfaction is no different from doing a moral act because I’m being paid for it, or in order to gain a good name, or I don’t know, to gain anything else. That too is gain. How is it different from any other gain?
Therefore, a moral act is always an act done not for any gain—not emotional gain, experiential gain, economic gain, status, honor, none of that. So then why do it? Why do you do it if none of those motives exist? Then why? Because it’s right. I do it because it’s right. Morality is in the head, not in the heart.
This is the joke I like to use in these contexts, about Dov Sadan, who was a literature professor at the Hebrew University, and he said that the next person who will make a revolution in the world will be a Jewish orthopedist. Now why Jewish? Because mainly Jews make revolutions in the world. And why an orthopedist? He said: because the first Jew who made a revolution in the world was Abraham our forefather—Moses our teacher—“Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these,” use your head. The second Jew who made a revolution in the world was Jesus—“the Merciful One wants the heart,” everything is in the heart. We started with the head and went down to the heart. The third Jew who made a revolution in the world, Marx, said everything is in the stomach—capital, interest, needs, okay? Everything is in the stomach. The fourth Jew who made a revolution in the world, Freud, everything is below the belt. Right? So we have head, heart, stomach, below the belt—the next Jew will probably be an orthopedist, because what’s left? Where else can you go down?
I think behind this joke there’s a serious claim. And that claim basically says that the world becomes much more emotional as the generations go by. Identifying morality with emotion and emotional behavior always existed, obviously. Emotions always mixed people up. But in our generation, or in recent generations, it has become an ideology. It’s not a failure—okay, I acted according to emotion and not according to reason, I slipped. No! You acted according to emotion—excellent, that’s the ideal behavior. Meaning, this behavior is an ideology, as a result of despair over reason. Despair over reason basically says: then the heart will guide us. That’s the claim.
And one consequence of that is that morality is perceived as that feeling of empathy or identification with the sufferer, or the pangs of conscience I have after hurting someone. But emotions have no value in themselves. They arise inside me because they arise, because that’s how I’m built. Why should I assign value to something that was produced spontaneously? Value belongs to things I decide to do. Not to things that happen to me. Things that happen to me have no value. Value belongs to things I decide to do. Okay?
So my claim is that if you do it because of your guilty conscience or because of feelings of one kind or another, then that empties the act of moral content, because that too is a benefit like any other benefit. There’s economic benefit, there’s emotional benefit—what difference does it make? You’re doing it for a certain result, for a certain interest. Emotional benefits are no less significant than any other benefit—it doesn’t matter.
Now, of course, that doesn’t mean that if so, then whoever feels guilty is an immoral person. That’s jumping too far. Okay? Obviously there’s nothing wrong with someone who feels pangs of conscience—on the contrary. A normal person should feel pangs of conscience if he did something wrong. The important point is that he should not act out of those pangs of conscience. The fact that you have pangs of conscience is not a problem—excellent. But when you do the act, you need to do it because you decided to do it, not because you feel guilty. If it goes straight from the conscience to the legs and the mouth—that is, you do the act because of the conscience—then that’s not an act you decided to do. It’s just an act that happens to you. Okay? It has no value. An act that has value is only an act you decided, resolved, to do.
You can of course also take your guilty conscience into account, no problem. Sometimes it also gives you some kind of hint in the right direction. Pay attention—you weren’t okay; the proof is your conscience is bothering you. Okay? So that’s an indication that you were in the wrong. And then you do your soul-searching, reach the conclusion that you were in the wrong, and you go and appease him. Excellent, no problem.
This is a bit reminiscent of what the Avnei Nezer writes in the introduction. The Avnei Nezer in the introduction says—yes, these are famous words—I have it here: “And while speaking of it I recall what I heard from some people…” Actually, I won’t read the whole thing. They “stray from the path of reason regarding the study of our holy Torah, and said: one who studies and develops novel insights and rejoices and delights in his study—this is not studying Torah so much for its own sake, as compared to one who studies simply, deriving no pleasure from the learning, but only for the sake of the commandment. But one who studies and delights in his learning—his personal pleasure is mixed into the learning.” Right, it’s study not for its own sake if you enjoy it. You’re not allowed to enjoy. It’s too good to be kosher, as they say.
So the Avnei Nezer says: “And truly this is a famous mistake. On the contrary, the essence of the commandment of Torah study is that one should rejoice and be glad and delight in his learning, and then the words of Torah are absorbed into his blood; and since he enjoys the words of Torah he becomes attached to Torah.” And he brings all sorts of proofs there from the holy Zohar and so on. The truth is, the simplest proof is the blessings over Torah in the morning. We say: “Please make the words of Your Torah sweet in our mouths.” We ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to let us enjoy it. If enjoyment turned study into study not for its own sake, then why would we pray for it? Okay? So clearly that’s not true. Those are the famous words of the Avnei Nezer.
What’s less well known is what he writes a few sentences later: “And I admit that one who studies not for the sake of the commandment of study, but only because he has pleasure in his learning—this is called study not for its own sake, just as one who eats matzah not for the sake of the commandment, but only for the pleasure of eating. And regarding this they said: a person should always engage even not for its own sake, because from not for its own sake one comes to for its own sake. But one who studies for the sake of the commandment and delights in his study—this is study for its own sake and entirely holy, for even the pleasure is a commandment.”
What is he saying? He says: of course you may delight in it—indeed it’s even desirable to delight in it. But if you study for the sake of the pleasure, or because of the pleasure, then that truly is study not for its own sake. Okay? I’m using this as a parable for our issue. Meaning: clearly there’s no idea of extinguishing the guilty conscience I feel, or my identification with a suffering person, or the pangs of conscience if I hurt someone, or something like that—the empathy. Empathy is something healthy and good. What you do need to be careful about is not letting empathy run you. Empathy can give you a hint: pay attention, maybe there’s something morally wrong here, or maybe there’s a moral obligation here. And then you need to use your head and decide what to do.
Yes? Someone once asked me—again, in Yeroḥam a student once asked me—I’m in the chapter of “A man betroths,” right? Matchmaking. So there’s a girl he’s dating, and the question is whether to follow the heart or the head. The heart says yes and the head says no, or vice versa, it doesn’t matter. The question is whether to follow the heart or the head. I told him: only the head. But the heart gives you input, and you should take that into account too. If there’s chemistry, if you love her and so on, that’s very important input—take it into account too. But in the final analysis, the decision is made here, not here. Decisions are made in the head, not in the gut. Okay? Therefore sometimes, despite the chemistry, it’s still not advisable. Your head will tell you it’s not advisable, for other reasons, whatever.
Yes, this reminds me of some music reality show once. The one with the rotating chairs—not Kokhav Nolad, the other one… I don’t remember. What? The Voice. Right. So one of the judges there was Shlomi Shabbat. A known grandpa. And there was some guy singing, and then Shlomi Shabbat the judge—right, the judges say what they think of the performance—so he says: “Look. There were these problems and those problems and it wasn’t perfect for such-and-such a reason, but the heart, the heart, the heart,” something like that. And the whole audience bursts into tremendous applause, whistles, standing on their feet, on their heads, on their hands, all sorts of things like that. Then they move to the next judge.
Now I was sitting there with some of my children, watching it, and I asked: wait a second—so what did he decide? My kids were rolling on the floor laughing. Meaning, he said he had rational reasons why not, let’s say, and the heart says yes. Now to everyone it was obvious what the bottom line was, because if the heart says yes, then the answer is yes, right? Obviously. Why is that obvious? If the head says no and the heart says yes, okay, you’ve got dissonance here—tell me what you decided. He doesn’t even bother saying what he decided. Why not? Because it’s obvious that if the head says one thing and the heart says another, the heart decides, right? That was clear to all the listeners, clear to everybody. This isn’t about Shlomi Shabbat—it’s this generation. It’s not one particular person.
For me that was a wonderful situation, such a great example of that joke—of this descent from the head to the heart. And again, it’s not that people are becoming more stupid. People today are not more stupid than they were in the past—maybe the opposite. But people have less trust in reason. There’s a kind of despair about making decisions on the basis of reason. And therefore they hang correct moral decisions on the heart, on the feeling of the heart.
By the way, this is flying around us from every direction—with the hostages and the war and all those things, you can see it very clearly. And again, without getting into the question of who is right at the moment. There’s a very, very clear division, and anyone who ignores that is simply ignoring reality. Whoever opposes the hostage deal is working with the head, and whoever supports the hostage deal is working with the heart. And that doesn’t mean it isn’t right to make a hostage deal—it may be that there are good rational reasons, from the head, to do it; I’m not getting into that right now. But clearly the arguments being raised are arguments of the heart. “What would happen if it were your son?” I haven’t heard such a stupid argument. If it were my son, I would need to recuse myself and not participate in that decision, right? That’s what I should do. But no, they say the opposite: the one who should make the decision is specifically the one whose son is there, because he’ll make the best decision. Have you ever heard such nonsense?
Again, it may be that in the final analysis there are good rational considerations in favor of the deal. I’m not getting into what the correct decision is. I’m only pointing out modes of conduct. Here there is unequivocally heart against reason—maybe crooked reason and maybe upright heart, but it’s heart against reason very clearly. And by the way, the correlation is very interesting: on the side of reason you find religious people, and on the side of the heart you find secular people, or liberal religious people—which in this sense is like secular. I’m also liberal in my worldview, but I hope I’m not one of the liberal religious. Because they are secular in their mode of relating. Again, I’m not judging—it’s not that their commandment-observance is invalid—but their form of relating is that they adopt the secular attitude too sweepingly. Therefore liberal religious people often go with the left. Not always, but often there’s a correlation, okay?
There’s something here of heart versus reason, and I think this is a very important point, because morality is in the head, not in the heart. The heart can provide input. It can say: I won’t feel that the person is suffering if I have no empathy, because after all I’m not going through what he’s going through. So if I don’t have some ability to activate empathy, then I won’t experience the problematic situation he’s in. Consequently, my head won’t make correct moral decisions, because if I don’t understand how much suffering he’s going through, then I won’t understand that I need to help him, okay? So that’s important. Empathy is very important. Emotions are important in order to provide input. But in the end, the decision has to be made in the head, not in the heart. Okay?
Therefore here too—in the moral context, in the context of Torah, in the context of enjoying learning—there’s a duality of planes, and you don’t need to suppress either of them, but each one has to do what it is meant to do. Decisions are made in the head. And learning has to be done for the sake of the commandment, while enjoying it—it’s allowed to enjoy and desirable to enjoy—but not to do it for the sake of the enjoyment, because then it is study not for its own sake.
When I have two motivations—for example, if someone does it for the sake of enjoyment—that also does not necessarily invalidate it. Suppose I’m learning now simply because I feel like learning; I enjoy it very much. The test would be: what would happen if I didn’t enjoy it? If I would still learn even without enjoying it, then there is no problem with the fact that I’m learning even for the enjoyment—not only learning and enjoying. Because okay, right now I feel like learning—but I would also learn even if I didn’t feel like it; I would learn because it’s important. That too is completely for its own sake.
It’s like someone who gives charity to a poor person. Very often he does it because he has compassion for the poor person, yes, obviously. Right? Even someone who observes commandments, a religious person, gives charity to a poor person because he has compassion for him. Does that automatically mean the commandment is not for its own sake? No. Since he would give him the charity even if he did not have compassion for him. He would give the charity because there is a commandment to give charity. So that’s perfectly fine. Even if he does it because of compassion, it’s a commandment. That’s okay.
This cold rational act can be a hypothetical state: if hypothetically you would also do it in a cold way, then even when you did it warmly, that’s perfectly fine. You do not need to suppress your emotions in order to be a moral person. Okay? What you do need to do is place reason over them and pass them under the supervision of reason. Because emotions do not always lead you to the right place. “One who is compassionate to the cruel,” and so on—that’s an example. A person is compassionate; it’s a good trait to be compassionate. But if you are compassionate to the cruel, that means compassion is leading you, not just giving input. Because otherwise you would feel compassion for the cruel, but then you would use your head and say: yes, but I’m not going to act that way, because the head has to make the decisions. It doesn’t go from the heart straight to the limbs. Does the heart run the limbs? No. It has to pass through the head. The head gives the orders to the limbs. Okay? Good. Let’s stop here.