Ethics and Halakha 3
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
- [0:00] Introduction to questions of morality and ethics
- [1:17] Inner feeling as a source of morality and the difficulty with it
- [2:48] The concept of the sovereign, self-legislating human being (Kant)
- [5:45] The eyes of the intellect – an intellectual perception of moral reality
- [25:27] One truth and monism in perception
- [27:18] Differences in perception and moral implications
- [29:37] The dispute over who is a Jew
- [36:41] Colonialism and moral differences across cultures
- [44:28] Asking forgiveness without emotion – an example
- [47:49] Emotion versus reason in moral judgment
- [49:01] A chapter in Tanya – moral principles
Summary
General Overview
The text presents the fundamental problem of morality as caught between two problematic poles: grounding it in facts falls into the “naturalistic fallacy,” while grounding it in emotion makes morality subjective and lacking binding force for judgment, condemnation, and praise. A third path is proposed, one that preserves the objective validity of morality through a different kind of observation, not sensory but through the “eyes of the intellect,” similar to “auditory logic” in Rabbi HaNazir and “eidetic intuition” in Husserl, so that the intellect functions as a means of cognition. Moral disagreements do not prove relativism but the opposite: they testify to a shared assumption that there is one binding truth under dispute, and this parallels limitations of perception like the disagreement over the colors of “the dress.” The example of asking forgiveness without emotion is presented as a morally elevated act because it stems from recognition rather than self-relief. Later, the author of the Tanya maps the struggle not as good inclination versus evil inclination, but as a cognitive divine soul versus an instinctive animal soul, where the question is which one is the “locomotive” driving the person. In the end, Maimonides is said to distinguish between “conventions” of etiquette and culture and prohibitions like murder, which belong to the intellect.
The Naturalistic Fallacy and the Difficulty of Grounding Morality
The text argues that morality cannot arise from facts alone, because moving from “it causes pain” to “it is forbidden” is a move from fact to a normative claim that does not logically follow from the fact. The text defines this as “naturalistic ethics” and the “naturalistic fallacy,” and explains that if morality were a fact like in science, there would be “moral scientists” discovering moral facts. The text adds that appealing to emotion as the basis for normativity solves the problem of facts but collapses morality into subjectivity, which gives no validity to obligation or criticism of someone who behaves differently, just as an inner urge toward gossip does not make gossip right.
Autonomy, Kant, and the Limits of the Idea that “Man Legislates for Himself”
The text describes how people bypass the problem through the idea of autonomy, and connects this to Kant as the father of the modern attempt to ground an autonomous theory of morality and to the view of the human being as sovereign and legislator. The text cites Ari Elon’s concepts, “the rabbinic person and the sovereign person,” and emphasizes that Kant also turns the human being into a value toward whom moral obligations exist, distinguishing him from plants and animals. The text argues that even if a person “legislates for himself,” the question of binding validity still remains, because self-legislation looks like just another formulation of emotion or private decision that does not explain why it obligates others, or even the person himself.
“The Eyes of the Intellect” as Non-Sensory Objective Observation
The text argues that the only way to preserve objective validity for morality is to recognize that there are “moral facts” that are not physical and are not perceived through the five senses, but are perceived through an intellectual means of cognition. Maimonides is cited at the beginning of Guide for the Perplexed with the phrase “the eyes of the intellect,” and the text argues that this is not a metaphor but an exact description of a fusion of cognition and reason, in which the intellect serves as a means of observation. Rabbi HaNazir is cited with the phrase “auditory logic,” and Husserl with the idea of “eidetic intuition,” in which one sees the idea, like “horseness,” and not only horses. The text unites these examples into the claim that there must be a shared domain between thought and cognition in which one recognizes objective things outside oneself not through the senses but through the intellect.
The Practical Difference Between Grounding Morality in Facts and in Principles
The text argues that grounding morality in facts like another’s pain can sometimes cause one to stop at the factual stage without weighing competing principles and complex situations in which pain alone is not decisive. It illustrates this with political discourse between left and right, where highlighting the suffering of the other is not enough to determine policy, because one must weigh contexts such as threat, justice, and practical alternatives. The text gives the example of harm to innocents in a targeted killing to show that morality does not derive directly from the fact that someone suffers or is killed, but requires an additional principle such as “it is forbidden to cause pain,” and that principle must be known in a way that is not factual-sensory.
Two Levels of the Question: The Source of Validity Versus Disputes About Content
The text distinguishes between the “meta” question of what basis allows a moral obligation to be binding, and the question of “content” — what exactly the moral imperative demands in different situations. The text argues that on the first level, if morality has validity, it must be the result of observation in an objective dimension and not of emotion or hallucination, even if it is not a scientific fact. On the second level, the text argues, there can be disputes because the “eyes of the intellect” are not as sharp as sensory sight, and so people can see differently while still speaking of perception rather than absolute subjectivity.
Moral Disagreement as Evidence Against Relativism
The text argues that the fact that people argue morally is not evidence for relativism but the opposite, because the argument assumes that each side sees its position as binding on the other as well, not as a private taste. The text compares this to the argument over the colors of “the dress,” where limits of perception do not cancel the existence of an external world, but show that perception is not always unequivocal. The text brings the example of debates over Eskimo practices toward the elderly, and argues that the very fact of argument presupposes that there is one moral truth about which people are arguing.
“Who Is a Jew” as a Dispute Over a Real Concept, Not Just a Word
The text brings up the dispute over “who is a Jew” and expresses puzzlement as to why people do not simply replace terms and end what would then be a semantic argument. The text argues that the fact that the debate is not resolved by inventing a new word shows that both sides believe they are struggling over the same concept itself and over the correct continuation of Abraham our forefather and Moses our teacher, not merely over a linguistic label. The text uses this to strengthen the claim that deep disputes point to the assumption of one binding truth, not to relativism in which every group invents its own language and morality with no possibility of error.
The Spread of Western Morality: Persuasion and Not Only Power
The text argues that in encounters between different cultures there is a tendency for Western moral norms to become dominant, and it rejects an explanation that attributes this only to colonialism, technology, communication, and power. The text suggests that this happens because there is movement toward moral truth and because defective moral perception can be corrected through persuasion and recognition. The text argues that today even people who act violently tend to justify their actions rather than simply claim “I’m the king,” and presents this as a sign that there is a broader principled agreement about moral principles, even if actual practice is full of impulses and interests.
The Nuremberg Trials, a “Black Flag,” and Principles Above the Law
The text brings the Nuremberg Trials as an example of a moral claim against people who obeyed the law, and emphasizes that this assumes principles above written law. The text mentions the concept of a “black flag” as a later formulation, and presents the understanding that obeying a murderous order does not justify the act. The text uses this to show that moral judgment operates as a binding demand that does not depend on local culture or law, but on principles regarded as objective.
Asking Forgiveness Without Emotion as a Model of Cognitive Morality
The text tells of a conversation at the environmental high school in Sde Boker about atonement, pardon, and forgiveness during the Ten Days of Repentance “without religious stuff,” and presents the dilemma of asking forgiveness without emotional remorse and without inner pain. The text describes how the students called this “hypocrisy,” but argues that this is the most beautiful kind of asking forgiveness because it is done because “it is the right thing,” not in order to calm one’s guilty conscience. From this the text concludes that emotional awakening is not the basis of moral judgment, and that morality can be seen as a matter of perception and recognition even when emotion is not participating.
Emotion as Ideology in an Emotional Generation and the Confusion with Morality
The text argues that the current generation attributes decisive authority to emotion because of “despair of reason” and the feeling that reason can justify anything and its opposite. The text describes how emotion has become an ideology in which “someone who has no emotion is no longer a moral person,” and challenges this by arguing that a defect in the amygdala is not a moral defect, and that moral judgment depends on understanding and action that stems from understanding. The text adds that the binding pathos remains even among those who declare morality to be emotional, because they still condemn others as if it were a binding truth and not merely an emotional difference.
The Author of Tanya, Chapter 9: The Animal Soul and the Divine Soul and a Reversal of the Axes
The text quotes the author of Tanya, chapter 9, on the dwelling place of the animal soul in the heart, in the left cavity, “which is full of blood,” and its rising to the brain “to think and contemplate,” and opposite that, on the dwelling place of the divine soul in the “brains in the head” and its descent to the heart in the right cavity. The text interprets the struggle not as one between the “good inclination” and the “evil inclination,” but between an instinctive-animal dimension and a cognitive-divine dimension, with the animal soul including both good and evil because it means acting according to what is ingrained in the person. The text emphasizes that the animal soul is not a synonym for evil or stupidity, and that the decisive question is whether intelligence functions as the “locomotive” that leads, or as a train car that supplies justifications for what the heart already wanted, while the divine soul means acting out of decision and understanding of “this is right” even when there is no supporting emotional impulse.
“The Locomotive and the Cars” and Its Implications for Public Discourse
The text formulates the distinction as “who is the locomotive”: whether the intellect leads and emotion is harnessed to it, or whether emotion leads and the intellect later produces a theory that gives rational form to feelings. The text gives a cultural description in which many responses to art, lectures, and experiences are measured by “it was moving” and “it spoke to my heart,” and presents this as a problem that explains distortions in moral and political decision-making. The text argues that identification with the suffering of another is important, but it is not the same as determining what it is right to do, and presents this as a continuation of the claim that morality is a matter of cognition rather than emotion.
Maimonides at the Beginning of Guide for the Perplexed: “Conventions” as Etiquette Rather Than Morality
The text concludes with Maimonides’ distinction at the beginning of Guide for the Perplexed regarding the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, in which man moved from “intelligibles” to the “conventions” of “the disgraceful and the praiseworthy.” The text argues that a common mistake is to think Maimonides is speaking there about prohibitions such as murder, but in fact he is speaking about matters of convention like walking around naked, which are closer to etiquette and cultural conduct than to morality. The text states that for Maimonides, “it is forbidden to murder,” “it is forbidden to steal,” and “it is forbidden to harm another person” belong to the realm of intellect, and fit the picture of the divine soul that acts because “it is not right to murder” and not because of emotion or “conventions.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, I apologize — I overslept this morning. We’re basically in the topic of morality. We still haven’t gotten to questions of Jewish law and morality, but first of all to clarify what morality is, its relation to faith and morality. We talked about that a bit, and now I’m focusing a little on what morality is. So we saw that morality can’t be based on facts on the one hand — that’s what’s called naturalistic ethics, right, ethics based on facts. I’ll remind you: I said that someone can’t come along and say, since a certain action causes pain to someone else, therefore it is forbidden to do it. That argument is not valid, not sufficient, because the fact that it causes pain to someone else is a fact. The claim that it is forbidden to do it is a normative statement, in that sense a moral one. And a normative statement cannot derive from a fact — that’s the naturalistic fallacy. So facts aren’t enough to make a moral claim. So what does? The immediate intuition that suggests itself is: okay, then apparently it’s some kind of inner feeling. If it’s not observation of something outside, then the basis for a moral norm is emotion, something subjective, something internal to us. But that raises the problem from the other side, because if it’s only emotion, then what validity does it have? In other words, the fact that I was born with some desire to speak gossip — does that mean it’s right to speak gossip? So why would the fact that I have an inner feeling that it’s forbidden to harm another person mean that it really is forbidden to harm another person? It can give me an explanation — we talked about evolutionary explanations — it can explain why people do this. People do this because that’s how they’re built. But it can’t explain why they should do it, or why someone who doesn’t do it deserves criticism, meaning condemnation. He’s built differently from you — what do you want? You’re built that way, so you behave morally; he’s built differently. Okay? So there’s something here that basically falls between two stools. It isn’t based on observation, it has no objective dimension that obligates, say, like some factual statement; and on the other hand, if it’s subjective, then again there’s nothing that obligates me or enables me to criticize, condemn, or praise someone who does or doesn’t behave that way. So the question is how to relate to this.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Usually people somehow get around this and explain that a person legislates for himself, and that’s what I spoke about — the rabbinic person and the sovereign person. Right, Kant is often quoted; he’s the father of modern autonomous morality, moral theory — not morality itself, people behaved morally before him too — but the attempt to define and ground morality is usually attributed to him. And Kant, beyond his moral view — or not beyond, but alongside his moral view — also spoke of man as sovereign, as legislator, as something… yes, he turned man into a value not only in the sense that he is obligated by morality, but also in the sense that there are moral obligations toward him. In other words, only such a being is one toward whom moral obligations exist, unlike plants, animals, or various other things. But the question is what it means to be a legislator. We talked about Ari Elon, right, with the rabbinic person and the sovereign person. So if you legislate for yourself, then again, what is that if not emotion? In the end it means that’s how you’re built, or that’s how you decided — it actually doesn’t matter. But why does that obligate me? How does that make it valid? In other words, how does that make it something binding? Okay? Even for me myself, certainly for other people. So there’s a certain problem in the area of morality that takes us in one of two directions: either toward emotion, and then it’s subjective, or toward the objective, but then you have the naturalistic fallacy — it can’t be based on facts, because this is judgment, not a factual statement. If it were a fact, then there would be no difference between morality and science. There would be moral scientists who would have to discover the moral facts. We don’t relate to it that way; in other words, it’s not a scientific field, it’s not a field that describes reality outside of us. So I want to expand a bit on this point, because it’s important for what follows, and it also completes what we did last time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It seems to me that the only way out one can propose in order to establish a moral view with validity — objective validity, not in the sense that everyone thinks the same thing in moral contexts, there are moral disputes — but in the sense that it has validity, meaning that by virtue of my views… in other words, perhaps I even mentioned this already, I don’t remember. Meaning that when I say that a certain act is moral or another act is immoral, I’m expressing some perception that has an objective basis outside of me. I observe it — not with my eyes. Clearly it’s not a fact in the scientific sense, it’s not a fact grasped by the ordinary senses, by the five senses. But it has to be, if we want to say it has objective validity, we have to say there is some objective dimension here, some kind of fact that is not a physical fact, not a fact you see with your eyes. Maimonides, at the beginning of Guide for the Perplexed, speaks about the eyes of the intellect. He’s talking there about beholding, seeing, what the difference is, and he says that you can see with the eyes, and you can see with the eyes of the intellect. What is that? What does it mean to see with the eyes of the intellect? A lot of times people take it as a metaphor, but it’s not a metaphor. It’s a very, very precise expression. It’s a precise expression that a few other people over the generations repeated here and there. And notice what this expression contains. The expression “the eyes of the intellect” contains on the one hand a cognitive component — eyes — and on the other hand a thinking component — intellect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now usually we’re used to cognition and thinking being two totally distinct things, with a very sharp distinction between them. Cognition is my interaction with the environment. I look, I hear, I touch. It’s gathering information that exists outside me and bringing it inward through the senses. And thinking is something that takes place inside me. I think about things. Two completely different things. Thinking does not take place through interaction with something outside. I can take information I gathered from outside and think about it, but the thought process itself takes place entirely inside. And the cognitive process is responsible for the interaction with what’s happening outside. Okay? Now when we speak about the eyes of the intellect, there’s some combination here between a cognitive expression — eyes — and a thinking expression — intellect. So what is the meaning of the hyphen there? What is the connection in “the eyes of the intellect”? What does that expression mean? Maybe another example of a similar expression: Rabbi HaNazir, much later of course, a student of Rabbi Kook, speaks about auditory logic. Same thing there: logic belongs to the realm of thought, hearing belongs to the realm of sensation — if you like, perception. So again, how can there be some kind of connection of that sort?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s also Husserl, Edmund Husserl, a phenomenological philosopher, who speaks about eidetic intuition. We see the ideas, Platonic ideas. We don’t just see the horse, we see horseness. We don’t see horseness with our eyes — with our eyes we see horses. Horseness is not in our world; the idea of horseness. Plato thinks it exists, but it exists in the world of ideas, not here. You can’t see it with your eyes. When we talk about eidetic intuition we mean the same thing. And I think all of these mean — and there are a few more, not many, but there are a few more who talk about this — and I think people haven’t paid enough attention to this important philosophical point, which solves not only the problem of morality but many other things as well: if we want to preserve the validity of our insights, there has to be some shared segment between thinking and cognition. Some domain where there isn’t a sharp distinction. Where I actually know objective things outside of me, but not through the senses — rather through the intellect. And the intellect, in some sense, functions as a means of observation. It sees something; it doesn’t think about something. It creates, as it were, some interaction from the outside. In philosophy of science too, in my opinion, one has to arrive at this claim. But I think in our context, the context of morality, there is no other way out. In other words, there must be some ability we have to know moral facts, but of course these facts are not known through the five senses, through the eyes, ears, and so on, but through the eyes of the intellect, or auditory logic, or whatever you want.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Another example — all our morality. Everything that you… Why is it forbidden to murder? Forbidden to steal, I don’t know, forbidden to hit another person. Why? Because it hurts him. I said before: okay, so what? It’s a fact that it hurts him — I agree. Okay. You still need another principle telling you that causing pain is forbidden. Exactly — that causing pain is forbidden. Now where do you know that from, that causing pain is forbidden, that principle? Where does it come from? That’s the point. Why do people ground morality in facts? Why do they fall into what’s called the naturalistic fallacy? Because they don’t see. If I saw something — I see that my friend is in pain — that’s solid. I know that my friend is in pain; that’s a fact. Okay? So the feeling is that okay, we found something here on which we can hang the moral obligation. But it doesn’t work, as I said before; logic requires another premise.
[Speaker C] But you ruled out the emotive approach and its subjectivity. Why can’t I claim the same thing about intellect — that intellect is also subjective? Someone else’s intellect isn’t my intellect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, I’m just getting to that in a second, okay?
[Speaker C] Go on.
[Speaker D] In the same direction — you replaced emotion with thinking, but you didn’t solve the problem.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no — not with thinking. With cognitive thinking. If it were just thinking, I wouldn’t be saying anything. I haven’t said that. Cognitive thinking. Let me come back now to answer your question. When I see, okay? There too you can say: you see — so what obligates me? Usually you don’t ask that kind of question; most people don’t ask that kind of question. Why? Because once I observe something, the assumption is yes, fine, if I saw something, those are the facts. Right? So it’s objective. Even if you’re somewhere else and don’t see what I see, if I tell you that I see it, you’ll probably believe me — unless you think I’m a liar — but you won’t doubt what exists here. So what if he sees? He sees. You have to remember that sight too ultimately happens through me. In the end the image is formed in my cognition. But you understand that if this is the extraction of information from outside, then at least it can be believed, unless you think the person is confused, lying, or something else. But at least it allows belief, do you understand? Now. What practical difference does this make?
[Speaker E] What? What difference does it make whether it’s because it hurts him or because I think so? How does this shift show itself in practice — between whether it’s because it hurts him or whether it’s because it bothers him? Where does it matter?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In principle there’s no practical difference. It’s simply the correct explanation of what morality is. A practical difference in betrothing a woman, as Rabbi Chaim says. But I think there are practical differences too, because where you ground morality in facts, the tendency — again, it doesn’t have to be, the practical difference isn’t absolute, but as a correlation it exists — then you’ll usually recoil from causing pain to another. In other words, that will be your supreme criterion. Whereas others, even though they see that there is pain to another person, will still weigh whether it is right or not right to do it. You have to check in what context. And sometimes there’s no choice but to cause pain. Now a person who grounds his morality in facts, I think, often stops at the level of facts. I’ll bring a few examples of this. He stops at the level of facts, and once it harms someone else, then you can’t do anything. Wait — the fact that it harms someone else still isn’t enough. Now we have to examine it. Okay, it harms someone else, and there’s a principle that says it’s forbidden to harm another person, but that prohibition can stand against other principles — for example, that this other person is threatening me or someone else, or I don’t know, in some other way. Then I start weighing. Where it’s tied to facts, you don’t weigh — that’s the fact, it hurts him, finished, immoral. Now, I’ll give examples of this.
[Speaker E] The other side is also a fact. What? The other side is also a fact — that he’s going to harm me, that he’s going to hurt me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, fine, that’s why I’m saying: when he’s going to hurt me, it’s simpler. But I’m talking about places where it is justified to harm him despite the fact that it hurts him, in more complex situations. So I’m saying: someone who grounds it in facts won’t weigh the second stage because the facts are already there. Someone who understands that the facts still don’t decide, that you have to examine further — that person will. Just as an example, left-right arguments in current affairs, right? So a lot of the left-wing discourse that tries to appeal to the right or persuade the right — usually it’s of course an internal discourse, just as on the right it’s only internal discourse — tries to show the pain of the other. And there is such pain. In other words, Palestinians in many contexts, certainly in the territories but even in Israel, often suffer from improper treatment, okay? And it shouldn’t be like that, and people do harm them, and all that is true. The question is: so what does that mean? Does that mean that now I need to stop everything, reach an agreement, and give up everything I’m asked to give up? Or does it mean I should try to minimize the pain but, I don’t know, sometimes maybe it is justified to cause pain? What about harming innocents, for example, in a targeted killing? Now I’m saying this isn’t sharp-cut. Someone can also come and say: fine, I ground everything in facts, but the facts are broader than just that some innocent person was killed — there are other facts too. I think usually that doesn’t happen. That’s why I said it’s not a sharp practical difference. But the main practical difference is that this is the right way to understand morality, and that is not the right way to understand morality.
[Speaker F] Are there definitions of what morality is? What are the definitions of morality? Is morality like that of the Chafetz Chaim or of Rabbi Kook? I mean, what is this concept of morality that the left or the right is talking about?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that in a moment, but I’m still at an earlier stage, and it’s important to me to make this clear. I’m not talking about the… The question is whether the contents of morality are objective. And that is seemingly an objection to what I’m saying now, but that’s not what I’m talking about. What is morality? Wait — no, not what morality is, but what morality says. Not what morality is. I’m talking about what morality is. You asked what the content of morality is — what it says, meaning whether one should act this way. I’m not there yet. First I’m talking about the question: assuming I have my moral principles — I don’t know whether they’re the same as yours — mine. Now I ask: according to those principles, can I judge you? From my own standpoint. Is it justified, from my perspective, that you disagree with what I think? That’s the question I’m dealing with. And then I say: from my perspective, these principles are not the result of hallucinations, feelings, or subjective things, but rather I understand them as something objective. I see them. I see them with the eyes of the intellect. And from my point of view that obligates you too, and everyone else. Now that doesn’t mean that you’ll see it the same way. And therefore when we get to the second question, the question of what the moral imperative actually says, or when it’s right to act and when not, how it is right to act and how it is not right to act — here there can be disagreements. By the way, they aren’t all that large; overall I think there’s a lot of agreement about what is right and wrong to do. But yes, here and there there are disagreements. Why is that? Because the eyes of the intellect, unlike our ordinary eyes, are less sharp. At least that’s how I try to explain it.
[Speaker D] I still don’t understand the difference between “that’s how we’re built” and “the eyes of the intellect.” You replaced words, but in the end you’re saying that’s how we’re built.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. So what’s the difference between that and when I see the wall?
[Speaker H] In other words, you feel… before you said “I feel in my heart,” now you’re saying “I feel in my eyes.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. No — now I’m asking: then why not say that when I see the wall, I feel with my eyes? It’s the same thing, no? In the end what I see is an image that exists in my cognition.
[Speaker H] Even on the theoretical level, usually, as you said, there isn’t generally disagreement about facts.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That — that’s the second stage I already started talking about.
[Speaker H] Okay, now on the issue of subjectivity that they asked you about before — so let’s even take the example of causing pain to another person. I think that even someone who bases himself on facts will say that a doctor doing surgery causes pain, and yes, it hurts, and that’s moral.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, that’s true.
[Speaker H] Circumcision — circumcision, even today in Israeli public discourse, there’s a big argument whether it is moral to cause pain to an eight-day-old child who doesn’t know his right from his left.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To one whose hands are innocent, yes.
[Speaker H] So is that moral? And I think that’s very subjective.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But again, you’re going back again to the question of the content of morality — why there are arguments about morality. I said, I’m still speaking at an earlier stage.
[Speaker H] Not about the content, like, but on what basis do I determine for myself now?
[Speaker E] What does the one who says it isn’t moral to do this to the child say? Meaning, how can he say it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why do you, who say it is moral, say it, and why does he, who says it isn’t moral, say it?
[Speaker H] The one who says it isn’t moral says it too. Even if I see with the eyes of the intellect that it is immoral to cause pain to another, by what right do I obligate…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to explain something. There is a connection between the questions, and they are different, and it’s important to make that clear. And I’ll talk about both, but it’s important to make this clear, because otherwise this discussion comes out vague. One question is what?
[Speaker C] You’re talking about the meta-level. Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m asking the question now: leave aside the fact that others think differently from me. I think X, Y, Z; I have certain moral principles. Fine? As far as I myself am concerned, what justification do I have to judge others and demand things of others? I’m not yet talking about the question that if they think differently, then what do they owe me. That’s another question. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the question of why I’m obligated even to myself. Why does this obligate at all?
[Speaker D] I still haven’t grasped that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said: for me it’s like seeing a wall. I claim that this is seeing, not thinking; not something subjective, and certainly not emotion, but observation of something. Now I’ll say — let me finish — it’s outside of me. It’s external. Yes. Like the wall. Like the wall. I see — there is an object, let’s call it the idea of morality, horseness — there are ideal objects, okay? I see it, and from my perspective that means it is forbidden to murder. Or forbidden… yes, it’s not necessity. Yes, I am simply observing something outside of me. Let me explain again: without this there is no morality. In other words, maybe… I can’t convince you that this is right. I can only tell you one thing: if you feel, as I do, that morality has validity, this is what stands behind your conception, whether you like it or not. This is what stands behind your conception; there is nothing else. So I say: there are two options. You can remain with the idea that, okay, these are hallucinations, that I’m basically giving myself false reports about emotions, that really this is emotion. Okay, then fine — and then we go back to subjectivity. But there is no third option. Either that, or morality has validity, but then it is the result of observation. Now what is the usefulness?
[Speaker I] What? If I hurt him, he’ll hurt me — what about that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those are considerations of utility. And if he doesn’t make those calculations, then he’s not okay? I’m asking: if he doesn’t make those calculations, then he’s not okay? He doesn’t want to make the calculation, he wants to lose. Why should I care? Or he doesn’t care. You don’t… that’s exactly the point with all these attempts — try them and you’ll see. They won’t succeed in really explaining morality. Many times they’ll explain behaviors that are… Why is there morality outside of me, whether I know it or not? There is a truth of morality just as there is a truth of scientific laws, whether I know them or not. No — the question is: where do I get the audacity to attack others or judge others over something?
[Speaker D] It’s like gravity, whether I think it’s there or whether I don’t…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, but gravity is not binding. Gravity is just there. But I’m asking: I come to a person who murdered, right, a Nazi who killed Jews. I say to him: what do you mean? You should have refused, gone to prison, or taken the death penalty, I don’t know exactly. On what basis are you making claims against him? Neither you nor he sees this absolute thing. By the way, I also don’t know how you know it exists if you don’t see it. But let’s say you know it exists and don’t see it. So by virtue of what are you making claims against him?
[Speaker D] Good, okay, so you’re trying to solve the problem of how a person can arrive at…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, how is it binding? How is morality binding from your point of view? You understand? It won’t help me to say that it exists somewhere out there. More than that — if I can’t reach it, then how do you know it exists? After all, you know it exists because you understand that there is such a thing. I… one second. Okay.
[Speaker J] I’m trying to understand why you can’t just see that everything really is subjective. Now, what we learn is supposedly based on how we were raised, how we think, and all that. It seems to me that if there’s also something moral, I can understand that my morality here is different from the morality of someone else who grew up in…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if he grew up like you and has a different morality, then what would you say?
[Speaker J] Well, there are different inputs and all that…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem. But do you criticize him?
[Speaker J] Do you criticize him? Do you think he’s not okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about a murderer. I’m not talking about someone who gives ten shekels to charity instead of eighty-two shekels.
[Speaker J] I… what’s the point of judging him, as it were? You want utility? I don’t measure that in terms of utility either. There are cannibals.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Cannibals, fine — so the cannibals, should I judge them negatively?
[Speaker J] I’m only saying that they do something bad, but I really think, okay, from my perspective, the way I’m structured, it’s bad…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right — that’s what I’m asking. Basically I’m not judging him. Again, you have to understand that there are such things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you need to distinguish between those two things, understand?
[Speaker J] Now I’m saying again, what is being presented now is that everything really is subjective.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I don’t agree — again. The point is that when you judge a cannibal, you can say he is coerced, because that’s how he grew up. If I had grown up there, I might have done the same thing. Could be. But that doesn’t mean I’m not judging him. In my eyes, what he did is not okay. The fact that I have justifications — fine. In our courts too, when a murderer comes in and they conclude that it was an irresistible impulse, yes, that he couldn’t stop it, or that he grew up in conditions that, I don’t know, explain what he did — those are arguments for reducing the punishment, no problem. But that doesn’t mean what he did is okay. It doesn’t mean that I see this as a moral disagreement in which what he says is one thing and what I say is another and we have a disagreement, but there is no one right and no one wrong. It’s not that. So it’s important to separate these two things and not mix them together, understand? Now again, I’m saying: I have no way of convincing you that this is so. All I’m trying to argue is only that there are two options and no third. Now choose which of the two options you’re in. That much I do claim.
[Speaker C] But does the option he gives me provide an objective basis?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean by objective?
[Speaker C] Meaning, is morality now something objective?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Objective in the sense that it has validity. In a moment we’ll see with regard to the content. I’m not managing to get to the second stage; I’ll skip ahead, I’ll move on.
[Speaker B] Even in vision, if I’m talking not about morality but about color — yes — there’s no way I can convince someone…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and still, when I say this is blue…
[Speaker B] He says no, I see yellow.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And still, if you tell someone that something is blue, he’ll believe you, right? He won’t doubt it.
[Speaker B] No, he answers — no, he doesn’t answer.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If he’s outside the room and you tell him, he believes you, right? He doesn’t say, wait, maybe you got confused. Why not? Because you see something. I’m not getting into vision now — I know, with vision, philosophers call this the problem of how you know that others see the same color. And it’s not only about color, also about music and about… yes, exactly. There’s no way — so what? There’s no way to convince, but everyone understands that if you see blue, then there is blue there. Nobody doubts that. Unless, of course, it turns out you’re color-blind or something. But people treat it as perception. Why? Because you see it as something from outside. You’re receiving information from outside. And that people do not doubt.
[Speaker K] You’re asking by what validity I have, or by what right I judge another person at all, when in his own subjective eyes morality is different. That’s the question you’re asking here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—not that in his eyes, subjectively, morality is different. There is no morality. “Morality is different” is my next question, which I haven’t gotten to yet. I’m asking: maybe there is no morality at all. So what if that’s what I think? Not that there is a morality but it’s different—there is no morality at all.
[Speaker K] He doesn’t want morality, it’s just not where his head is. I have my morality—that’s my truth. I recognize the fact… wait, wait, I recognize the fact that others see things differently, but this is the way of seeing…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not “a different way of seeing.” I’m not talking on that plane; that’s the second plane I keep wanting to get to. I’m not talking about that. The question comes even before others think differently from me. They think like me, okay? But they don’t act that way. Can I judge them? According to my own view, can I judge them? Of course. Why?
[Speaker K] Because I have the power to do that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Power is something else; that’s not judgment. Power means applying force, shooting him. I’m talking about justification—why is this valid?
[Speaker K] Because it’s true for me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that mean, “true for me”? There’s no such thing. “True for me” means I’m built in a certain way; that’s not truth. I’m also built in such a way as to speak slander. So is it therefore right to speak slander?
[Speaker K] You spoke about monism—you described it exactly, that everything has one truth. The fact that each person… again, but monism is just a slogan.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m asking: how do you know there is ethical monism? That’s the question. So I’m saying there are two possibilities—there isn’t a third. Now, I don’t know how to convince you which of the two is correct. What I will try to argue is that I think almost everyone has the same intuition I do, namely, that moral demands have validity. Many times people conclude that morality has no validity because of this problem, and then they say: okay, true, our intuition is that the moral claim has validity, but when we try to understand why, we can’t find it, and therefore they retreat to the emotional, subjective plane, and so on. I want to argue: there’s no need to retreat. There is an option. There is an option to stay where you are. If that’s your intuition, I’ll offer you an explanation. Do you understand? I’m not trying to convince someone who has no such intuition. I’m trying to convince someone who does have such an intuition that he doesn’t have to retreat from it. This can be a kind of fact—and it’s a different kind of fact.
Now I’m moving to the second plane, which basically everyone here—almost everyone—has referred to. So as for walls, usually there are no arguments, except in cases like the dress, where sometimes there are disputes about perception, but usually there’s no argument about what one sees. Here, by contrast, there are arguments. That is, there are people who think differently about moral questions. Now the question enters: okay, I see one thing, he sees something else. First: does that even mean that we are seeing anything? Maybe we aren’t seeing, and we’re just fooling ourselves—because the fact is, he sees something different from what I see. So maybe when I tell myself that I see something here, and am not merely thinking or feeling it, I’m deceiving myself? That’s one question. And second: fine, I see it this way and he sees it differently—how can I judge him? Do you understand? That’s already a second-order question. And therefore sometimes it can project back onto the first order, because once two people see differently, then maybe it’s not really seeing at all, and then we’re back to the first order. But I’m saying: for me, this is a different question, and only afterward do we need to discuss the relation between them.
Now here I want to make the following claim. Like the dress: when we look at the dress and each person sees a different color, okay? Does that mean that everything we see is subjective and that there’s nothing out there? No. It only means that our sense of sight has limitations, right? It can confuse us. In other words, there are circumstances in which sight does not work one hundred percent, not for everybody in the same way. Fine, true. There are places where there won’t be any question at all. I show you this here, everyone will say that I’m holding a book. No one will doubt it for a moment. What does that mean? That the fact that there are cases in which we argue about what we see does not mean that everything else, about which there is no argument, is not really seeing but an illusion. No one makes such a claim about vision. So I’m saying that with regard to morality too, there is no need to make such a claim.
More than that: I’ll tell you—and here I return to the same confusions that kept coming up here all the time. When there is a dispute between people or different groups about what the moral act is, people usually take that as evidence for relativism. I claim it is evidence for the opposite. Evidence—not only is it not a refutation of the monistic view, it is evidence for the monistic view. Why? Because if people argue whether it is right to take an old elderly person and put him out in the snow to die of the cold, as the Eskimos do… a moral dispute about what it is right to do, for the sake of discussion. Does that dispute show that really it’s all a cultural construct depending on the society you were born into, and so on? I think not—exactly. I think not for two reasons. First, the fact that we are conducting an argument means that, from my point of view, I understand what I think as obligating you as well. You disagree with me, so we argue, and you understand the same thing. So both of us agree on one thing: that what we think is not a subjective hallucination, but that there is something objective that obligates all human beings. Now we have an argument over what that thing is, what it says.
[Speaker I] That there is such a thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly—that there is such a thing. But we have a dispute over what it says. Like with the dress. Fine, so now we need to discuss what it says, and argue, and maybe we won’t come to agreement. But on the contrary: the very fact that we are having an argument means that somewhere we agree that this thing… that’s the shared conclusion—it obligates. I demand that you not act this way.
I’ll give you another example: the argument over who is a Jew. I was always very puzzled—already as a child, an adolescent, in my youth. Tell me, what is everyone arguing about? I didn’t understand. Call it “Jew,” call it “Israeli,” and that’s it. Call it “komforken,” and that’s it. What difference does it make? Are they arguing over a word? So what difference does it make? I’m willing to give up the word “Jew.” Let’s call it “the Israeli man,” like Rabbi Kook—even that I’ll accept. The Zionist Jew. So I’ll call “the Israeli man” someone who serves in the army, pays taxes, speaks Hebrew, and reads Amos Oz. And I’ll call “Jew” someone who converted according to Jewish law, or who was born to a Jewish mother and is obligated in the commandments—I don’t know, all kinds of definitions like that. So what are we arguing about—a word’s meaning? There are people—many people I asked this question; I ran experiments. Many of them, under the pressure of the argument, retreated into a corner: yes, we’re only arguing about sentiments attached to a word. I don’t buy that. We’re arguing about what a Jew is. There are those who think we’re arguing about the same concept itself, because otherwise we wouldn’t be arguing; we would separate on a semantic basis. You take “Israeli,” I’ll take “Jew,” we’ll shake hands and everything will be fine. You call yours “Jew,” I’ll call mine “Israeli,” and that’s it.
[Speaker K] But there are a sea of operational implications here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the operational implications can be fixed. So let him be “Jew” and “Israeli” for the purposes of the Law of Return. It changes nothing. You can change everything. What is the argument about? Amend the law. Amend it so that both “Jew” and “Israeli” are included in the Law of Return. What’s the problem?
[Speaker H] Then the argument would be about the Law of Return?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? No, but why? That’s what I’m asking—why?
[Speaker H] Because in the end, if you…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now if you want to add “Israeli” to the Law of Return, of course there will be an argument. But why will there be an argument?
[Speaker H] Because the argument is about what a Jew is—that’s where the argument begins.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everyone agrees that the Law of Return is talking about Jews. The argument is philosophical. Clearly. But at the base, where does it come from? Everyone agrees… to erase the word “Jew”—whoever says erase the word “Jew,” right, that is an argument on the level of what Judaism is at all. Exactly—that’s what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about the ethnic argument; I’m talking about the cultural argument. Okay? So whoever would be willing to erase the word “Jew” from the Law of Return—that’s another argument. I’m talking about the question, about a dispute between interpretations of the Law of Return. When there’s a dispute between interpretations of the Law of Return, that is seemingly total nonsense. What do you mean? That citizenship should also be given to someone who speaks Hebrew even if his mother isn’t Jewish? So say that. Why call him a Jew? Call him Israeli, and give him citizenship too. The argument doesn’t take place there. Because this—you have to understand well, people don’t always notice this—the people making this claim say: this is the proper continuation of Abraham our patriarch. They are talking about the same concept of “Jew” that I am talking about. And they claim that the continuation I propose for the concept “Jew” from Abraham our patriarch and Moses our teacher is not the correct continuation, or at least not the only one. There is another continuation too, and it is also legitimate—and that is “Jew” in the same sense I’m talking about. It’s not that we can separate semantically. You call it “Jew” and I’ll call it “Israeli,” because they genuinely want to know: there is such a thing as a Jew. There is such a thing—it’s not our invention. It’s some kind of idea that exists out there, and we are trying to argue about what that thing is. Because otherwise there would be no argument; we would separate, like the Eskimos and morality. When there is an argument, it means that each side understands that there is something here, that there is one truth—or if you prefer, even two options but still a single truth, fine—and he argues about it. And what you say about it is not correct. Otherwise what’s the problem? I feel one way, you feel another way, no problem—let’s separate. You take one word, I’ll take another word. That’s all. But we don’t separate like that. We don’t separate like that because such an argument is proof against relativism, against relativity. Because if there were relativity, we wouldn’t argue; we would simply invent another word in the language. That’s all.
[Speaker H] There’s one more example of this phenomenon: someone from one culture wants to impose his moral norms on a second culture. Say we’re talking about certain cultures where their morality regarding women is either right or not right. We come along—it’s not even an argument within the same group—you basically think your morality has validity over the other’s, and you don’t relate to them the way you relate to the Eskimos, or maybe you do, not that you’re arguing about what to do with the elderly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, of course not. I demand that the Eskimos stop putting the elderly out in the snow—of course. Now that’s the first point. Second point—and again, you can argue about everything. I’m only trying to identify intuitions, trying to define my intuitions, and whoever agrees agrees and whoever doesn’t, doesn’t. These aren’t arguments that can convince someone who doesn’t feel this way. I’m only trying to say: many people who do feel as I do retreat from it because it has no serious basis. So I’m trying to offer a possible basis for remaining with this intuition. Second point: I think it’s worth noticing—
[Speaker D] Wait, maybe I’ll jump ahead here. If there’s some way to understand—if I, with my intellect, the seeing of my seeing, yes, all this is seeing—then how do I get to something I don’t now know, which is morality?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, I’m getting to that now, exactly. Look, the second thing I want to say—and it will get to that point—is this: advocates of relativism, of moral or cultural relativity and so on—moral, cultural, it really doesn’t matter—point to this: look, cannibals in Africa, I don’t know what, keep eating people, while the West doesn’t eat people. And everyone depends on where he was born, and therefore there are really multiple moral truths. And then I ask: why is it that in an encounter between such cultures, I know in advance what will happen?
[Speaker H] Who will eat whom?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who will eat whom—if he doesn’t restrain him first. In other words, it is completely clear that what we often call “Western” morality eventually takes over the other cultures. Now, those who see everything as subjective explain this in terms of power: colonialism, media, scientific power, and things like that. I don’t accept that. Again—my personal position, as a continuation of the notion of truth and falsehood, is that when people don’t see well, you can correct them. Just as you can teach people all kinds of other things, and after they learn, you see that they also agree with you. The fact is that, despite all the criticism—and yes, there are lots of murderers and lots of problems and lots of everything—today there are almost no people who argue with the principles of Western morality at the principled level. That is, not in practice. In practice there is force, there are drives, there is everything, interests. But today everyone already has to find an explanation for why he murders. They no longer say, “I murder because I am the king.”
[Speaker E] Islam is taking over Europe?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, Islam is taking over Europe; Islam is Islam. But I’m saying: look at the world generally. African cultures are becoming more Western, not the other way around, in this encounter.
[Speaker D] But who said this has anything to do with morality? A much simpler explanation could be capitalism and effectiveness.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As I said: those who don’t accept the concepts of truth and falsehood, or of perception with respect to morality, but continue with the subjective, emotional, relativistic view—then they really do find all kinds of mechanisms to explain why this works. And they claim that if, say, the Africans had stronger science, technology, or media, they would dominate. And I claim that’s not true. In the end they would fall. They would fall in the end because ultimately we are getting closer to moral truth. And we all understand more—it’s not that we behave better, because we have drives and interests, all true. But we all understand what we didn’t understand before. And for me, that also answers the question of how we can see: the fact is that when you encounter someone who thinks differently from you and you argue with him, contrary to the popular image, in the end you can persuade him. And many times people are persuaded. Yes—they are persuaded.
[Speaker E] You’re saying the Jews are the best in the end.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say that.
[Speaker E] Because in the end you get to a level where there are the animals, the Africans, the Europeans, and the Jews.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I didn’t say that. I said there is one moral truth. I didn’t say where it is located. By the way, Judaism and morality are not the same thing either—we’ll talk about that later.
[Speaker D] I don’t think Judaism… but someone might say that whoever accepts the morality of that culture, yes, that happens because that culture is more effective. In other words, it’s more effective, the way people say the family is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s more evolutionarily successful. What? More evolutionarily successful. Right. Okay.
[Speaker D] So I’m saying, that has nothing to do—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said, that kind of explanation comes when you don’t accept the explanation that, in my view, is the simplest one: that they were persuaded it is true. Fine—after all, all of postmodernity is built on plots and interests and explanations. It starts, by the way, with Marx’s capitalism, with capital, where he too saw the belly or money as what drives all processes. Why? Because he didn’t accept—he was a materialist—he didn’t accept the idea that there is truth and falsehood here. It’s all a question of interests. Which raises a small question about him himself: so what about his own truth? But never mind. He too tried to impose his truth. But I’m saying: these explanations exist, certainly. But I’m saying they are the result of the fact that you are unwilling to accept the type of explanation I’m proposing. This is part of that same retreat into subjective emotional territory that stems from your unwillingness to accept a statement like, “I simply see that this is right, and therefore it is right.” I demand of you that you be like… It’s like what we said about the Nuremberg trials. I said that the Nuremberg trials prosecuted people for obeying the law, obeying legal rules. Now on the face of it that’s absurd. What do you mean? They grew up in a society where that was the law. More than that—it was actually dangerous not to obey the law; they would kill you. Right? And you judge him for obeying the law? So there were difficult dilemmas here. But in the end they decided yes. Why? Because there are principles that stand above the law. In Dworkin’s terms—or others, doesn’t matter—there are principles beyond enacted law. A black flag. A black flag, yes exactly. Later formulations. Because they didn’t think it was such a case, never mind. They didn’t think it existed. No, that’s not true. Not true. There’s no one today who thinks it doesn’t exist, in my opinion. Maybe isolated cranks on the margins. There’s no one who thinks it doesn’t exist. The claim is that the conduct in question is not at such extreme margins as to justify that conclusion. At least that was the claim.
[Speaker E] The argument wasn’t about the height of the partition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it was. Nobody says that if you’re told to shoot three people in the head, that’s just what you have to do as a soldier, for no reason… that’s obvious. Why is it obvious? Well then, there you go—that’s proof that the argument is about the height of the partition.
[Speaker K] That the inquiry into the moral world, more or less familiar to us, is an evolutionary product.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—on the contrary. That’s exactly it. It’s the product of being persuaded, of higher, better recognition.
[Speaker K] And there are two questions here. First of all, you assume that people act according to their conscience, if they have one.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not act—I’m talking about conscience, not behavior. Behavior has not necessarily improved.
[Speaker K] Do people even seek conscience?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so. Most people who murder today explain why they murder.
[Speaker K] Not just to spend less time in prison?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’m talking about societies too, not only individuals—societies that are not going to prison. Because they understand that murder is forbidden; they just explain their actions to themselves in all sorts of interest-based ways. Just as everyone who sins explains to himself what his ideology was when he sinned. We all know that process.
[Speaker K] Let me ask another question: might it be that the more a person asks himself moral questions and reflects on his morality, the more he weakens himself in the evolutionary struggle?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It may be, yes. I don’t deny that. That’s a factual question.
[Speaker K] Because you said in the end he wins. No—sometimes he loses.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, I don’t think so. The fact is that in these encounters he generally wins. Just a fact. Wins—again, not in the sense that the world behaves better. That’s another argument. I’m not sure what happens there, by the way, but that’s another argument. I’m talking about the question of what the world thinks. In the end, I think there really isn’t all that much argument today, despite the problems—ISIS and Islam and everything—but look at the world in a broader perspective: there is broader and broader agreement.
Just look at us internally. How many times did someone have to give an account to morality—someone committed to Jewish law, or a person committed to Torah and commandments—according to external moral principles? Why would he? The Torah says this, and that’s it. Today we invent tricks and contortions and interpretations and try to work it out. No, this is not apologetics directed outward, as those who see everything in terms of plots will explain again. It’s real, because we understand that it is true. We understand that it is true; something here has to fit with it. There cannot be such a frontal contradiction. And this happens among us too, not only with murder and terrible things, but even at the most basic level. We need to give some kind of explanation.
[Speaker H] You’re making an interesting historical claim about the development of morality in the world. Now I want to ask the opposite question: according to that claim, why didn’t morality develop in the same way in all regions of the world? If it screams from the wall so clearly, why didn’t morality develop in the same way everywhere? And why in Africa… yes, it did develop; it takes time. Why? Why in certain places?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In evolution, do all human beings look exactly the same?
[Speaker H] There are certain principles that… In morality too there are certain principles. If it’s something that screams, true, the Eskimos have a hundred words for white.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But again, leave that aside. I’m talking about morality now, not about how you physically look. Someone who explains morality as having evolved evolutionarily—not like me—how would he explain the differences in morality?
[Speaker H] I’m asking according to your claim. Why, if morality screams from the wall—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t scream. “Screams” is your term.
[Speaker H] What do you mean, “I see”? A person in Africa, to use your terms, and a person in the United States, and a person in China all see a blue wall in the same color. Right. Why don’t they see morality to the same degree?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said: why don’t they see Tzvika’s dress in the same color?
[Speaker H] But in evolution the boundaries of discourse… You said before that in ninety percent of things everyone sees the same thing. Fine, so leave Tzvika’s dress aside.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s what I’m saying—morality is there. That’s where we are. Therefore there are arguments.
[Speaker H] And ninety percent of the argument is only in ten percent?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, who said it always has to be ninety-ten? The eyes of morality don’t have to have the same capacity as our physical eyes. The eyes of morality—maybe the margins there are fifty percent and not ten percent. So what? Still, there is a core and there are margins, and the core keeps growing. That’s what I’m trying to argue. And therefore I think the process really is one of seeing, not a process of violent takeover. Don’t take this analogy with eyes too far.
[Speaker G] There are lots of questions, but let’s continue.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. What I actually want now—if you’ll let me continue a little, right? Because my time is almost up and I just want to get to one more point.
[Speaker G] I think this is your last class until Elul? Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Until—that means including Elul?
[Speaker G] No, until Elul. Until Elul.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Maybe I’ll give you an example. Once I was at the environmental high school in Sde Boker. It’s no coincidence that it was Sde Boker—I told you another story about it once, but that’s a different story. They asked me to speak about atonement, pardon, and forgiveness during the Ten Days of Repentance, and this was a completely secular high school, explicitly secular, not just accidentally, and they said to me: without religious stuff. That is, talk about these concepts in honor of the Ten Days of Repentance without connection to religion. So okay, I thought about what to do, and I asked them a certain question at the beginning.
I said: look, suppose I describe a hypothetical situation. Suppose I hurt a certain person and I reached the conclusion that I had done something wrong. So I want to go and appease him. I go to him and ask forgiveness. Now inside I feel nothing. In my heart I’m whistling a cheerful marching tune. In other words, I don’t care at all whether I hurt him or not; I don’t care. But I know intellectually: this was wrong, I need to say I’m sorry. The apology is spoken from the mouth outward. Inside, I don’t care at all. I don’t feel sorry for him, it doesn’t pain me that I hurt him, nothing. I’m emotionally autistic. Okay? What do you think of an apology of that kind? That’s what I asked them. It seems to me that almost all of them said this is hypocrisy. In other words, you’re not really… I’m skipping the discussion I would open here because I want to move on. So I’m saying: that’s what they answered there—hypocrisy. No, better not to apologize.
And I said that in my view, this is the best apology I can imagine. The finest one I can imagine. Because when you come and ask forgiveness because you have a stomachache over it, then you’re doing it to calm your own stomachache. You’re doing it for yourself, not for him. But if someone has no stomachache at all, and only knows cognitively that he hurt the other person—he knows he was in the wrong. No, he knows it himself. He understood in his moral consciousness—exactly, that’s why I’m bringing this example—that he hurt the other person and needs to ask forgiveness. So he comes and asks forgiveness, and inside it doesn’t hurt him, he doesn’t care at all. It changes nothing for him. That person, in my opinion, is doing a noble act. He is doing a noble act because he is not doing it to soothe his own stomachache; he is doing it because it is right.
Now, you understand that this is the difference between people who see morality as something rooted in emotion and people who see morality as something rooted in perception, in cognition. I understand that this is right. It has nothing to do with how I am built and what my subjective feelings are. It changes nothing—I don’t have such feelings. Were they persuaded in the end? It seems to me they understood at least by the end—I don’t know. I didn’t check what happened afterward. But that was the thesis I tried to defend in that talk. I think it gave them something to think about afterward.
[Speaker H] So it isn’t hypocrisy? Huh? It isn’t hypocrisy?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what they claimed, but I say no. I… let’s say I’m speaking now on the assumption that what I’m describing is true—that this is really what’s going on in him. He isn’t doing it in order to gain something else, but genuinely thinks he was in the wrong and comes to ask forgiveness. In my eyes, this is truly a noble act. It is the ultimate apology. On the contrary: if someone has a stomachache over it, then I have questions about his motives… who says he comes because he really… Maybe he wants to ease his own stomachache. We are all built in such a way that we have pangs of conscience when we do something wrong. So what do you actually see here in this example, if you accept my perspective? You see that the emotional arousal is not the basis of our moral judgment at all. Our morality is not because this is how I feel, but because this is how I think, or this is how I understand. Do you understand the difference?
Now, why do people hang it on emotion? Again, the sense of emotion is very strong, especially in our generation, precisely because of this despair over the possibility of finding another explanation. Because there are no facts, and moral facts—in the scientific age nobody accepts that kind of statement. So what remains? Feelings remain. Now not only do feelings remain; feelings can lead me to a despairing fatalism—but no, feelings have become an ideology. That is, someone who has no emotion is already not a moral person; something is wrong with him. Why on earth? If he has no emotion, then he’s built differently from me. Maybe that’s not good; maybe it’s dangerous, because if he has no emotion he won’t always manage to be moral. That’s another discussion; I’m not talking on the practical plane. But what is morally defective about him if his amygdala is damaged? So what? Does that make him less moral? Of course not. The question is how he understands moral principles and how he acts out of that understanding, not out of emotion.
[Speaker H] On the contrary, there’s greater moral potential here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right. As long as it doesn’t happen too often—again, because emotion helps us—but potentially, yes, right, exactly. Now this is again an expression where, I think, you can clearly see the difference I spoke about earlier. On this matter I still want to finish with just one chapter from the book Tanya—not the whole chapter, but the principles. Chapter 9. It seems to me that’s where he talks about it. He says: “The abode of the animal soul, from kelipat nogah, in every Jew is in the heart, in the left chamber, which is full of blood. And it is written, ‘for the blood is the soul’; therefore all desires and boasting and anger and the like are in the heart. And from the heart they spread throughout the whole body, and also ascend to the brain in the head, to think and meditate about them and become cunning through them, just as the blood has its source in the heart and from the heart spreads to all the limbs and also rises to the brain in the head.”
What is he saying? The abode of the soul—he has the animal soul versus the divine soul. The animal soul dwells in the heart, in the section with the blood. The blood rises to the brain; just as the blood rises to the brain, so too the animal soul rises and essentially spreads throughout the whole body. That is how the animal soul works. “But the abode of the divine soul is in the brains in the head.” The divine soul is in the brains in the head, “and from there it spreads to all the limbs, and also in the heart, in the right chamber where there is no blood, as it is written, ‘the heart of the wise is to his right.’ And it is the love of God like fiery flames blazing in the heart of those who understand,” and so on, doesn’t matter. “But behold, it is written, ‘and one nation shall prevail over the other nation, and the elder shall serve the younger.’ For the body is called a small city. And just as two kings wage war over one city, each one wishing to conquer it and reign over it—that is, to govern its inhabitants according to his will, that they should obey him in all that he decrees upon them—so too the two souls, the divine and the vital animal soul from the husk, wage war with each other over the body and all its limbs. For the divine soul desires and wills that it alone rule over him and guide him, and that all the limbs obey it and be completely nullified to it and become a chariot to it,” and so on, “while the animal soul wants the opposite.”
What does this picture say? There is something very interesting here. It sounds like a collection of Hasidic-kabbalistic notions, but I think there is a very interesting picture here. We are usually used to thinking that the struggle between good and evil in a person is a struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination. Someone whose good inclination is stronger is a moral person; someone whose evil inclination is stronger is an immoral person. That’s the kindergarten-teacher picture. Now in the kindergarten-teacher picture there is one problem: where am I in all this? The good inclination goes here, the evil inclination goes there—where am I? If that is me, then the good inclination is always better and the evil inclination is always worse. If the good inclination is better than the evil inclination, then it is good; and if it is not better than the evil inclination, it is still good, just not stronger than the evil inclination. So who is this “I” that is judged in terms of good and evil? Clearly the inclinations are something that is not me. And that’s his starting point.
He says: “The animal soul from kelipat nogah in every Jew is in the heart, in the left chamber.” He says that in Kabbalah there are four husks. Three husks are entirely evil, and kelipat nogah is evil mixed with good. Now kelipat nogah in the teachings of the Arizal is called the “snake’s skin,” the impurity of the snake that it cast into Adam. We are slowly getting close to the Guide for the Perplexed, which we never quite get to… yes—but this is basically the impurity of the snake that it cast into Adam, or Eve, after it caused them to stumble. That is what is called kelipat nogah, and notice: it contains evil and good. It’s not evil; it’s evil and good mixed together. So usually people think the problem there is that it’s mixed—that it’s not entirely good. Not at all. The problem there is that it is a husk, that it is not me. A husk is something around me; it is not me.
What does that mean? The claim is that the struggle is not between two inclinations, good and evil, but between a divine soul and an animal soul. It is not between right and left, but between above and below. What is below—the animal soul—is both the good inclination and the evil inclination together. Both are the animal soul. There are people, there are animals—we spoke about Amnon Yitzhak’s sheep—there are animals that behave very well because that’s how they are built. So their animal soul leads them to do the good. Why is that called an animal soul? Because they do what their nature dictates; they do not choose to do it. Therefore it is an animal soul. “Animal soul” is not a synonym for evil. “Animal soul” means functioning like an animal; conduct according to instincts, according to what is embedded in me. That can be for good or for bad. In every one of us there is both good and evil embedded. As long as you conduct yourself according to what is embedded in you, that is what is called the animal soul. The divine soul is cognitive conduct. It is conduct where you decide what you do, not the inclinations.
If I return to the feeling of remorse: when I come and ask forgiveness, then someone who acts out of feelings, out of pangs of conscience in the emotional sense, that is the animal soul. Someone who acts because he understands that he did something wrong and must ask forgiveness—that is the divine soul. Now someone who acts from the animal soul, in that example, did a good deed. He went and asked forgiveness, he appeased the person he had hurt. It is not synonymous with evil and good. It is not the same thing. The author of Tanya rotates the coordinate system. It is not a struggle between evil and good; it is a struggle between above and below. But even that is not entirely simple. Because the author of Tanya goes on to say that it is like two kings fighting over one city, and each king wants to conquer the whole city. That means the animal soul rises to the brain to think about it, to become cunning through it, and to meditate upon it, while the divine soul also descends into the heart. So in the end both are present in the whole city, in the whole body. So what nevertheless is the difference between them? Where it starts, right? In one case it starts in the mind and descends through the whole body; in the other, it starts in the heart and rises through the whole body. What is the meaning of this?
There are people who do a good deed, who go to ask forgiveness. After they ask forgiveness, they will write a learned essay explaining why—why it is right to ask forgiveness, philosophically, not emotionally. But that comes after their feeling tells them to ask forgiveness. It began in the feeling. Intelligence and emotion?
[Speaker D] What? Intelligence and emotion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not intellect and emotion, not really. Okay, I’m saying: that’s not what I call intellect and emotion, maybe people will accuse me that it is—but no. So in such a person there is a train: the locomotive is the heart, and the head is in the cars, the brain is in the cars. Now these are not stupid people; this is not an argument between good and evil and it is not an argument between the smart and the foolish. People can be geniuses. It has nothing at all to do with intelligence or wisdom. Rather, the question is whether intelligence is what drives you, or whether it comes afterward and always gives explanations for what your heart wants. That is the difference between the animal soul and the divine soul. There can be super-sophisticated moral theories, but they are the result of the animal soul rising to the head, and the head thinking about it, meditating on it, and becoming cunning through it, as he writes. Then it gives it a kind of appearance, as if this were some rational theory and so on—but it all begins there. It all begins in the heart. In the end, your heart determines things. Okay? That is a person of animal soul. And he can write very sophisticated philosophy books, but he is a person of animal soul. He is not a bad person, and he is not a stupid person. He is a person of animal soul—that is the only definition one can give. Not bad and not stupid; those are not synonyms. Can one change? Yes. That’s why he wrote the book—to try to change.
A person of divine soul is someone whose heart functions the same way; he too has the animal dimension, we all do. There is a good inclination and an evil inclination. But he decides what to do. And here I return to the practical implication we spoke about earlier: when he decides to do something, he does not do it because that is what his good inclination tells him, but because that is what is right. When I go to ask forgiveness—even if I have feelings… if I’m built correctly and healthily, then I have feelings of guilt when I’ve done something wrong to someone. And still, when I go to ask forgiveness, it is not because of them. The fact that I have them does not mean I’m doing it because I have them. I’m doing it because that is what is right; I need to do it because that is what is right. That is truly a moral person.
And therefore I say that the question is: who is the locomotive? Not what exists. Everyone has feelings and intellect and everything. The question is: who is the locomotive? Is the locomotive the intellect, or is the locomotive the emotion? Once I heard in the name of Dov Sadan, a literature scholar from the Hebrew University, a very amusing Jew, that he once said the next person who will change the world will be a Jewish orthopedist. They asked him: why? Why a Jewish orthopedist? How do you know? Why Jewish—that’s obvious, because everyone who changes the world is Jewish. But why an orthopedist? He said: simple. Because the first Jew who changed the world was Abraham our patriarch—or Moses our teacher, I don’t remember which version—who taught us to look with the head: “Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these.” Understand what is happening here. The second person who changed the world was Jesus, who said that everything is in the heart, right? “The Merciful One desires the heart.” So we began with the head and went down to the heart. The next person who changed the world? Freud? Not yet. Marx. Right—who says everything is in the belly. Right? Capital, essentially—interests, economics—this changes the world. The next Jewish man—and they were all Jews more or less, Marx, Freud…—the next man who changed the world is below the belt. Okay, we began with the head, then heart, then belly, then below the belt. The next one will be an orthopedist. What’s left? The legs.
[Speaker H] What doesn’t get in through the head gets in through the legs. Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now, beyond the fact that this is a nice joke, I think it represents a very true and very real idea. And this is something worth taking into account, and with that I’ll end today’s class. Emotion occupies a very important place in our world. It’s not that the world has become more stupid. The world is not stupider than it once was—on the contrary. But it is much more emotional than it once was, much more. In other words, today there is almost no… I don’t hear a person come back from a film, from an exhibition, from a lecture, and his critique is not: “It was moving,” “It spoke to my heart.” Tell me what you think—was it sophisticated?
[Speaker L] Was it complex? That’s why we suffer in the world, because the visits to the Palestinians as poor victims and so on…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Among other things, I think that’s one of the reasons. And it’s true that they’re suffering. The right is mistaken when it says we should ignore that; it’s not right to ignore it. On the other hand, I think the left is mistaken too—again, right and left are broad generalizations, there are many shades—the left is mistaken when it uses that as a means to decide what is right. Those are two different things. You have to try to reduce suffering and not do wrong things, and at the same time you have to know what should be done here. But I’m saying—that’s why I say this is a practical implication that isn’t unequivocal, but I think it is connected to our topic. And emotion takes such a central place because of despair over reason. The claim is that reason can say this, it can say the opposite, you can’t get anywhere with it. So people go with emotion. But they haven’t lost the pathos that says my emotion is binding. Someone who doesn’t do that—what, I’m going to go out against him in the town squares! Against someone who doesn’t act that way. Meaning, the pathos remains. Why? Because they don’t understand that this isn’t really just the heart. Clear? If this is the right thing, then it obligates me too. So what, my heart is built differently—what do you want from me? Why are you calling me wicked? You call me wicked because you understand that it’s binding. You understand that it cannot be right to do this; you condemn me on the moral level. So it’s as if you let the heart lead you, and afterward you build a theory through which you try to convince me, because to convince me you need a theory; it’s not enough to say that my heart hurts. Okay, but that theory constructs a representation of your gut feelings. Again, I don’t want to accuse left and right here because this exists on both sides, but there is a correlation in what I think about these arguments. And the other side of the divine soul basically says: I begin with the head, I want the heart to be a partner in the matter too, I harness it—the divine soul descends to the heart, to the right chamber, as he says. Everyone wants all our dimensions, but the question is who is the locomotive and who are the cars. I think all these things together bring us to this point: you have to be very careful about confusing emotion with morality. Morality is not an emotional thing. Emotion is an emotion; it arises on its own. Fine, so you’re built this way and someone else’s juices are built differently, so for him it doesn’t arise—so because of that he’s not moral? What does that have to do with it? Morality is part of reason. Now I’ll say just one sentence, because I simply feel I already owe you three classes. When Maimonides says at the beginning of Guide of the Perplexed—Maimonides says that Adam and Eve, after they ate from the tree of knowledge, became knowers of good and evil. So Maimonides says that conventions entered into their understanding of conventions; until then they understood only intelligibles. And conventions—the disgraceful and the praiseworthy—came only after the sin of the tree of knowledge. Then that wise person there asks him, yes, how can it be that after the sin they improved? They became knowers of good and evil. After a sin you’re supposed to decline, not improve. So Maimonides begins to explain there that these are conventions, these are intelligibles—maybe we’ll still read him—and I’ll just say one sentence. When Maimonides speaks there about conventions, he’s talking about walking around naked; he’s not talking about not murdering. That’s a common mistake in understanding this Maimonides. Walking around naked is a matter of convention, of what is accepted or customary. That they understood after the sin, but that is a decline. Because it basically means that you submit to your emotions, and now you really do have to act in accordance with the truth—there’s no point denying it. But in the end it is a deterioration. But that it is forbidden to murder, forbidden to steal, forbidden to harm another person, that one should help another person—for Maimonides that certainly belongs to the realm of reason; you see this in many places. It does not belong to conventions. When he speaks there about the disgraceful and the praiseworthy, he is talking about something much closer, for us, to the word etiquette than to the word morality. Or cultural norms, or I don’t know what to call it; there’s a bit of a continuum, it’s not exactly sharp, but it belongs more to the pole of etiquette and culture and less to the pole of morality. Not murdering, for Maimonides, is reason. It is not convention. So, along those same lines, I’m saying: a person with a divine soul does not murder because it is not right to murder, not because he has an emotion against murdering. Because that would be convention. Rather, because it is not right to murder. Okay? Again, this is a reflection of the animal soul and the divine soul. Good.