Ethics and Jewish Law 4

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t exactly remember what we did before the holidays. Right. Okay. So what I thought I’d do, since the current topic is, in one way or another, a continuation of what I talked about there, is give a kind of short summary, and then I hope from there we can move on. I don’t know exactly where we were holding, where we stopped. We talked a bit about the question of what morality is, and about the relation between consequentialist morality and a morality of intentions. I mentioned the Kantian view, which says that morality is measured not by what you achieve but by your intentions, what your motivations are for acting, as opposed to teleological morality, as opposed to deontological morality. Kantian morality is deontological; it is judged according to your will, your intention, and teleological morality is judged according to the results. Meaning, if you achieved good results then you’re a moral person, and if not then not. I said that according to the teleological view, a sheep is very moral, because all in all it’s very pleasant to live near it, it doesn’t harm anyone around it. I think I brought the story about Amnon Yitzhak, and it sounds a little strange. In a Kantian conception only a human being can be moral, because a human being has intentions at the basis of what he does, as opposed to a sheep, which simply does what it is programmed to do, what its nature instructs it to do. I brought the example—I think I brought it, I maybe intend to talk about it in a little more detail at some point—but that example of voting in elections. Why do something that in fact won’t bring about any result? Right, I think we talked about that, I’m almost sure. My argument with my daughter keeps coming up in a lot of contexts. Elections are a good example. She doesn’t go vote in elections, because in any case it changes nothing. The chance that your vote will change anything is zero. I mean, as they say, it’s about the chance that a meteorite will hit the ballot box at the very moment you’re there. When do you actually have an impact in an election? When the party you’re voting for has the exact number of votes needed for the next seat minus one, right? Then when you put in your vote, you changed something in the political map. Something—one seat—but that’s the effect you have. Right? What’s the chance? Let’s say one seat is worth thirty or forty thousand votes, something like that. So what’s the chance that it will come out at exactly thirty-two thousand five hundred seventy-four votes, when five hundred seventy-five is the threshold number for seats? One in thirty-something thousand. Meaning, that’s a probability that anyone who takes it seriously probably shouldn’t even get up from his chair.

[Speaker C] And what if everyone thinks like you?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, that’s the next stage, that objection. He always runs into that question, but it’s not a correct question. So he already moved.

[Speaker C] I’m going.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. So in any case it doesn’t matter.

[Speaker C] What difference will it make in the election if I come vote?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So basically, the chance that you’ll have any influence is zero, so why go? Why invest that half hour, or that chunk of your life, in something that is simply completely meaningless? And then people always tell him: fine, but what if everyone did what you do? Tzvika Cooper’s question. That’s always the question, and it’s the wrong question. It’s the wrong question because if everyone did what I do, things would be bad. But why would everyone do what I do? And if everyone does what I do anyway, then what difference does it make whether I go or don’t go? Even then, if I go, it won’t change anything. If everyone doesn’t go vote and I do go, will that change anything? That also won’t change anything. After all, my act doesn’t determine what others will do. Everyone else makes his own decisions. Whatever they decide, they’ll decide, and in the end what I do has no effect. So it doesn’t matter. “What would happen if everyone did what you do?” is a question that assumes that because I do a certain act, others will follow me, and then it becomes a macroscopic phenomenon. Meaning, it becomes something with significance; it’s not just one vote. I’m saying: no, leave it, I won’t tell anybody. I’ll sit quietly at home, I won’t tell anyone that I’m not going to vote. It won’t influence anyone. Even if I do say it, why should that influence anyone? But look, he’s been talking about this for years already, and in any case it barely affects anyone. So it has no influence. And if it has no influence, then the question “what will happen if everyone does what you do” isn’t relevant. If everyone does what I do, things will be bad, but whether they do it or don’t do it doesn’t depend on what I do anyway. So what difference does it make? Why go?

The only way to answer that—I gave it as an example, and it’s something worth a separate lecture—but… but it seems to me that the only answer you can give to this puzzle, aside from saying “you’re right,” which is also an option, but if you still want to argue that it’s wrong, the only way to do that is Kant’s categorical imperative, which basically says that you should act in such a way that you would want your action to become a general law. Right? The categorical imperative. Meaning, the criterion for a moral act is the question: what would happen if the whole world did what you do? Now notice, this is not the same thing as Tzvika’s question before. Tzvika’s question assumed practical influence—that if I don’t go vote, then others will be influenced by me and also won’t go vote. Kant is talking about a thought experiment, something hypothetical. What would happen if nobody went to vote? It has nothing to do with you. But what would happen if nobody went to vote? Do you like that state of affairs? Is it desirable? No. If it’s not desirable, that means that going to vote is a moral obligation. That’s an indication that the act of going to vote is a moral obligation. It’s not that there will be bad results if you do it. It has nothing to do with the results; there won’t be any results. It will be an act that influences nothing. But the Kantian criterion, although it looks very similar to “what would happen if everyone did what you do,” isn’t really that. Right?

When people compare Kant to Hillel the Elder—“What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow”—there too some people interpret it as saying that if I do something to someone else, then someone else will do the same thing back to me, and that’s the basis of morality. That’s Tzvika’s objection. But I think “what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow” means not that if you do it to him he’ll do it back to you, but rather: if you don’t like having that done to you, that’s a sign it’s a bad act, so don’t do it to him. It’s an indication. It doesn’t mean that if you do it to him, the actual result will be that he does it back to you. Because then it’s self-interested; it has nothing to do with morality. It’s just a self-interested consideration. If you want things to go well for you, then behave like a human being. But the moral principle, at least according to Kant, is not determined by the results—by whether things will go well for me, certainly not by whether things will go well for me, but also not by whether things will go well for others. Because the results do not determine the morality of the act. The morality of the act is determined in and of itself, not because of its results. Even if there are no results at all, I judge the act as moral or immoral by a certain criterion, which in this case he proposes as the criterion of universality, right? What would happen if the whole world looked like this, if this were a general law.

Why am I bringing this? Because it’s an example of an approach that says morality is not determined by results; rather, there is a moral judgment on the act itself, regardless of the results it produces. It’s an excellent example of the point, because here you’re obligated to do an act that truly has no good results, or if you don’t do it there are no bad results. You have no influence, none. So what’s the idea? Why should one do an act if it leads to no results whatsoever? And that is the idea of morality—Kantian morality. I’m Kantian, so the claim is that an act is not judged by its results. Meaning, an act is moral or immoral only if you would want it to be a general law, regardless of whether or not it leads to results.

Where do you decide that it’s moral? For example, say which profession to go into. Here I want to be a professor, but what would the world be like if everyone wanted to be professors? Then the world couldn’t function, because you need a variety of people doing different things. The Kantian criterion has absorbed a lot of criticism. That’s one of them. There are many criticisms; it can be discussed. I don’t care right now whether the criterion is “do what you’d want to be a general law.” That can be debated. The question is not only whether it’s true, but whether it’s even defined. What is a general law? Maybe the general law says that every two people should do this and every three people should do that, like with the professor example. Some will be professors, some will be something else, and that’s the general law I want. The general law doesn’t have to be a uniform law. So there are many criticisms. But what matters to me is not what the criterion is, but that there is a criterion, and it is not the result that determines things, but some criterion that determines the nature of the act. Okay?

So if morality is indeed judged not by results but by some such criteria or others, then the question is: okay, where do these criteria come from? Meaning, if we go by results—so we talked about that too—but okay, results sound reasonable, I understand why it makes sense to do that. Because if you do this, the world will be better, people will feel good, whatever. Fine, that too needs discussion, so what. Fine. Okay, we talked about that. But that sounds intelligible to us. But what does it mean to do an act just because it is good, with no connection at all—it does nothing, meaning it doesn’t affect anything, and not doing it also affects nothing. So what is that called? That is, in essence, what it means to act according to values. Acting according to values means I do the right thing because it is right, not because of what it will bring, not because of what it won’t bring, but the very rightness—in the moral sense, I claim, not factually right, but right in the moral sense—I do it because it is right. That’s all, I just do it that way.

Yes, it’s like—there’s someone whose claim I once mentioned, Chaim Perelman, a professor of law and philosophy of law in Belgium, Chaim Perelman. He writes: when you want to persuade someone to do some act, or not to do it—“Don’t steal.” Why not steal? Because it’s immoral to steal. And what does “it’s immoral to steal” mean? “Immoral” means it is improper to steal. You’re telling him it’s improper to steal because it’s improper to steal. That’s a tautology; it’s not an argument. “Don’t steal because it’s immoral to steal”—you’ve just repeated the same thing in different words. “It’s immoral to steal” means “it is improper to steal because it is improper to steal.” So what is the content of this word, that this is immoral or that is moral? And basically what this means is that the only reason I can give you for why not to steal is: because. Just because. That is basically what I mean when I say “because it’s immoral to steal.” Why not go to—I don’t know—Petah Tikva? Because not to go to Petah Tikva. Even in slang we say that, right? Now that’s not pretending to be an argument for not going to Petah Tikva because not to go to Petah Tikva; rather, the point is that it’s a basic principle. Meaning, it’s not a principle that needs to be explained by some more fundamental principle. It is its own reason; the principle is true in itself. Morality is like that too, and that is exactly the Kantian claim. I don’t need to explain to you what the moral act will bring or what the immoral act will bring. Those are already explanations—people call them naturalistic explanations—meaning explanations in terms of facts. You tell me what will happen if I do the act; that’s a fact: this will happen or that won’t happen. But facts cannot explain the morality or immorality of an act. That is a basic claim of Kant’s.

“Happy is the people that is thus.” Just because, right. Nice. So we even have a Hasidic quip about this matter. So basically the explanation why—“Why should the nations say?” Nice. “Why should the nations say?” Nice. “Happy is the people that is thus.” This “just because” says “thus” in morality, and “why”—meaning, someone who wants to explain why one does something—that’s “why should the nations say.” That belongs to the nations. Kant was a good Jew, just as Begin was Moroccan, Kant was Jewish.

Anyway, where does all the whole issue of commandment observance come in here? If I do something because the Torah or some Jewish law tells me to keep the Sabbath, then in doing so—I, I’ll sharpen the point there—I’m not affecting anything. I’ll get to that, because I’m building the structure on the principles of morality, and then I’ll try to check it on religious principles too, and after that I’ll try to see what happens when there is a conflict. That is exactly the course I’m taking now, okay?

So basically what Kant says is that morality, the judgment of whether an act is moral or immoral, is judged by some kind of criterion that does not depend on facts, does not depend on the results that will or won’t happen as a result of my act. But if that’s so, then the question is: why do it if not because of the results? The answer is: because. Just because. What does “because” mean? There are two kinds of “because”; I talked about that too. There are two kinds of “because.” Leibowitz—Yeshayahu Leibowitz—often used to say “because”: I accept it, okay, that’s it. He himself—I don’t know how aware he was of what he meant—but what he really meant was that his “because” was not arbitrariness. It’s not that I toss a coin and whatever came out—heads not tails—so therefore that’s what must be done. That’s nonsense. A person cannot preach morality to people on the basis of arbitrary principles. It’s absurd. You criticize people, you come out like some prophet of doom over how people here behave and don’t behave and so on, while the whole business is basically arbitrary? That is completely unreasonable. Rather, the “because” he was talking about there means self-evident. “Because” not in the arbitrary sense of “because I felt like it,” but “because” of the same type I talked about before: because it is self-evident. What needs explaining? Why is murder forbidden? Because. Anyone who doesn’t understand why murder is forbidden—what good will explanations do? I’ll explain it to him by means of something else—will he understand that other thing? He’ll ask “why” about that too.

And that is Aharon Barak’s reasonable person, with your permission. That’s exactly his method. Right. They’re the wise ones, they know. Right. And the slang—no, you’re already moving on. About the first part I agree; about the second I don’t agree. Exactly. Exactly the criterion of the reasonable person. The criterion of the reasonable person here is: what does the reasonable person see as right? The danger—and this is the slang of the reasonable person—the danger is that when you see your own likeness in the mirror, you think that’s always the reasonable person, which is not necessarily true. But the criterion of the reasonable person really is of that essence. That’s true. Since it’s dangerous, right, you need to apply that criterion carefully.

He didn’t only speak about the reasonable person; he also spoke about the enlightened person. No, the reasonable person, the reasonable person. He spoke about both. He spoke about both this and that. He also said explicitly: there is a reasonable person who is not statistically reasonable. And in several places he says this. And that is what is meant by the enlightened person.

Just—there’s some ruling somewhere, maybe I mentioned it—some woman who swerved with her car because a cat or something crossed in front of her and she ran over a person and killed him. And they convicted her—I don’t remember, acquitted her, I don’t remember exactly—acquitted her, I think. And then the prosecution appealed, I think, I don’t know exactly, and it got to the Supreme Court, I don’t remember the process anymore. The heirs of the cat sued her and it got to the Supreme Court; some of them sat on the Supreme Court. And what they ruled there—Aharon Barak basically ruled there—meaning, the defense argument of course was that this was a reasonable instinct, meaning a reasonable person would behave that way. A cat crosses in front of your car; she didn’t mean to run someone over. A cat crossed in front of the car and you swerve. Now you don’t have enough time to check whether there’s a person here or not and what to do, something happened there, but any reasonable person would have behaved that way—that was the argument. So he said: true, it is an unreasonable instinct of the reasonable person. And therefore they convicted her. He agrees that the reasonable person would have done that, and it is still an unreasonable instinct. It is an unreasonable instinct of the reasonable person. So that’s roughly parallel to the enlightened person versus the reasonable person. The reasonable person—and by the way, a lot has been written about this—the reasonable person is not statistically reasonable.

Someone asked him: if it had happened to you, it would have happened to you too, because it’s an instinct. And he said yes. And he said convict her? Yes. That’s what he thinks. Apparently. He said: a reasonable person would have behaved that way, and still convicted her. Meaning, in general—and by the way this is exactly the difference between a reasonable person and an enlightened person. It’s the subject of many articles that were written about it: the reasonable person is not the statistically reasonable one. He is ethically reasonable. How one ought reasonably to have acted. Society can be made up of many unreasonable people; that doesn’t change the legal criterion. If you have a society where there is a norm of stealing, does that mean the reasonable person there is allowed to steal? No. So the reasonable person has an unreasonable instinct or unreasonable behavior. There are places where you can hear this; it’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

Anyway, let’s get back to our subject. So the reasoning of “because”—because the reasoning of what to do, why act according to values? The answer is: because. It’s like someone who asks me why be moral. Let’s not talk about a particular value, but about moral values in general. Fine, it’s a moral value—so what? What does that mean? It’s immoral to steal. Now I’m going to steal. But wait, it’s immoral to steal. Right, I agree that it’s immoral, so what’s the problem? No, if it’s immoral then you’re not supposed to do it. Why? I agree with the theoretical, principled claim that it is immoral to steal. Right. So what? There’s no answer to such a question, right? What would you answer? Someone who understands what morality is understands that when you say something is moral, you’ve basically said that it ought to be done. And if it is immoral, then it ought not to be done. That is the meaning of the statement. If not, then you simply don’t understand the concept “moral.” No further explanation is needed after I’ve said that something is moral; no further explanation is needed for why it should therefore be done. If it is moral, that means that is what should be done. So that is the “because.” The “because” is not something arbitrary, but something self-evident. That is the meaning of the matter. That is the concept of “because.”

And then about that I spoke in previous sessions before the holidays: where does this “because” come from? So if this “because” really is a justification, not just an arbitrary stopping-point of the chain, then I need to ask myself: fine, but really, really, why do I think it is self-evident that there is a wall here, or self-evident that one ought to behave morally? So I talked about the fact that this is some kind of observation, not thought. And if it were something that is thought, then okay, not terrible. Fine, the fact that my brain is built in a certain way doesn’t say anything about what is right, what is true, what reality is. Okay? But if I see it as a kind of observation—meaning, I simply see, just as I see that murder is forbidden, just as I see that there is a wall here. Meaning, it’s the same logical function; it’s not the same sensory seeing. Here I see it with my eyes; there I see it with my conscience, I don’t know, however you want to call it. But it is the same logical function. Meaning, some kind of observation that gives you the basis.

Why is some particular thing clearly true and doesn’t need explanation for why it is true? So I talked about the fact that we are dealing here with observations. And basically, if I summarize, then it comes out that moral behavior is essentially understanding that standing before you is some kind of idea—the idea of the good, you could call it—and you contemplate it, observe it, and from that you understand what is moral and what is not moral. And not only do you understand from it what is moral and what is not moral; this is not a neutral understanding like understanding that this wall is yellow—or maybe not yellow, I don’t know, never mind, something. When you understand that this wall is yellow, or whatever, that does not necessarily move you to action. That is a fact. A fact is a neutral thing. But an ethical fact is not a neutral thing. When you understand that something is moral or something else is immoral, that is an understanding that is also supposed to move you to act or stop you from doing something. It is a non-neutral understanding. It is a fact—yes, in quotation marks—of a different kind. Okay?

So I spoke about this observation of the idea of the good, which is basically the source of values. But then it follows—if that’s the picture we get, and here I’m reaching the end, I think that’s about where I was at the end—basically it comes out that when I talk about ethical, moral, or generally normative justification, that justification is always based on arguments. Arguments built in the regular logical way. But the premises of those logical arguments are what we call values. These values we derive from ethical observation. Meaning, we look at the idea of the good—ah, murder is forbidden, or stealing is forbidden, or one ought to help, or one ought to do all kinds of values of this sort or that. From here on we can derive conclusions, and that is by logical means. Once I have the evaluative premises, I can derive conclusions by logical means. From this it follows that it is forbidden to do such-and-such or that one ought to do such-and-such. Here logic starts speaking. The axioms or evaluative premises are basically what we call values.

Do we learn those values? What? Fine. I don’t need to teach my child that there’s a wall. He’ll learn that by himself from his senses. Values—do I need to teach them? I don’t know if I need to, but it helps. It’s like—think of geometry; maybe I once gave this example. When you teach geometry, in the end after you teach the children geometry, they understand it on their own. If they didn’t understand it on their own, if it weren’t clear to them by themselves, the teacher also wouldn’t be able to convince them of it. The teacher helps them see it within themselves. Meaning, usually you do need a teacher. Most people need a teacher; they don’t manage alone. But after the teacher does it, you understand that all he did was help you discover something that is self-evident to you. Sometimes we need help seeing what is self-evident. And that is true in many areas of life. And I think here too it’s like that.

Meaning, if you can’t teach—you can of course brainwash someone. You can do that by all kinds of psychological means. But to teach someone to be moral means to help him uncover the morality that is within him. You can never really teach him to be moral—what does it mean to teach him to be moral? If it is foreign to him and he doesn’t understand what you’re talking about, why would he do it? At most you can help him find it within himself, or program him. Meaning, that’s something else. We have a complex psychology, so you can program someone. But then he’s not a moral person; he’s just a hypnotized person. Okay?

A moral person who undergoes education, and the education helps him be moral—I once spoke about this in the context of religious education, right? People often think that the fact that someone who gets religious education usually turns out religious—not always, but there’s a correlation—and someone who gets secular education turns out secular, so what does that mean? That education determines everything. And it’s not a question at all of whether I believe or don’t believe, but simply how I was programmed in childhood. A very widespread claim. It is not correct on the logical level. At least it is not logically necessary. Whether it’s correct or not, everyone can decide, but it is not necessary. The fact that there is a correlation between the form of education and the outcome can also be interpreted according to another model. For example, if God really exists—that’s the truth. Okay? But if you don’t educate toward that, you won’t discover it. Meaning, you won’t think in that direction. But you need education to help you with that. That also explains all the facts, right? That also explains why secular education usually produces secular people, and religious education usually produces religious people. By the way, the opposite model also explains it; that’s why I say it’s not proof that God exists. It only means there is no logical necessity to the opposing claim, that it’s all just nonsense, that education is merely programming and that’s it. There are other models that can explain these facts, and now let everyone decide what the truth is.

According to this, the same with education toward values: it may be that you discover those values the way you discover geometry, and that is the result of education. You caused the person to see the values… no, no, you didn’t cause it. On the contrary, you didn’t program him. If he discovers those values, then these are real values that he discovers. But maybe he doesn’t discover those values; he discovers secularity and for him that’s the truth, and the religious person discovers religiosity and for him that’s the truth. When you educate toward values, he discovers values that are not necessarily… what? It’s possible, but not necessary. That’s what I’m saying. Right. No, I’m saying—I didn’t say anything about what is possible. Everything is possible. What I wanted to claim is that this model…

What I’m saying is that you, who defined this as seeing values, morality as “vision of the heart,” as you defined it—okay, so that vision of the heart, according to what you said, can be taken as education, socialization, social conditioning… Ah, that’s the claim of moral relativism, and therefore this “because” isn’t really “because”; you are basically the cause of morality because that’s how you were educated. That’s the dispute. I completely agree. It’s a possible model. That’s the dispute. The question is, exactly as I said in those contexts—and is there the same question in morality too? Yes, like secular and religious, the same thing. That’s why I brought the example. Here too it’s exactly the same. So there are people who want to claim that values are only a matter of socialization and programming and what’s called social engineering, and that’s how values are created, or that’s how… But then of course these are people who do not recognize the existence of morality. They say this is all just some kind of programming; it has no meaning. Meaning, it’s not that if I don’t do it nothing happened. Other than maybe I’m dangerous to my surroundings, but I’m not… there’s no such thing as a bad person or a good person. Bad and good are just invented, fictitious concepts. As opposed to the interpretation I suggested earlier—not proved it, but suggested it—an interpretation that says no, I discover the good, I am not programmed to be good, just as I discover faith in God or just as I discover geometry.

Suppose someone comes and does not accept the principles of geometry because he didn’t learn them in class. So you’ll say, fine, those who learned in class were programmed to know geometry and those who didn’t, didn’t; there’s no such thing as geometry, it’s all nonsense. There I assume we would agree that education there only helps you discover. So I bring that as an example—not a proof, but an example—that such a model is possible in other contexts too, where of course there is a dispute about it. Okay?

By the way, this goes back to something we once discussed—now it’s the weekly Torah portion—Maimonides’ “generally accepted notions.” The “generally accepted notions” are… yes… yes, that basically means social conditioning. But then I had trouble reconciling that correctly with The Guide for the Perplexed? I don’t remember… There I heard that when Maimonides talks about the “generally accepted notions” there, he means etiquette and manners, not morality. Not walking around naked, right. And there are those who say that… yes, of course. But I’m saying that people quote Maimonides in The Guide, at the beginning of chapter 2, where Maimonides writes that “their eyes were opened,” meaning that Adam and Eve suddenly discovered the generally accepted notions. And it appears from Maimonides’ words that morality is these generally accepted notions, and the generally accepted notions are convention. It is basically social inculcation, which is a little odd when there are only two people in the world to talk about conventions, but never mind, that’s what Maimonides calls it. And then the question really arises: does Maimonides think that all moral principles are only convention? Are they “generally accepted notions”?

So I showed—I think one can see, if one reads Maimonides carefully—that this is a wrong reading of Maimonides. Maimonides isn’t talking there about moral principles; he’s talking about principles of etiquette. He’s talking there about walking around naked. Not walking around naked in the street is not an issue of immorality; it is an issue of bad manners, lack of culture, I don’t know what to call it. Those things are conventions. In a nudist village there’s no problem with it, it bothers nobody, and everything is fine. There is nothing immoral about it. Okay? It’s a matter of conventions. By contrast, moral principles, for Maimonides, are a branch of the intellect. You see this in many places: not to murder… that you have to read him a little differently.

Okay, so values are basically the starting points I arrive at, if so, and from them I can derive ethical conclusions. The axioms of ethics are basically what are called values. There are various values, and how do I know what is a value and what is not a value? When I can no longer ground it in something more basic, then I’ve arrived at a value. Right, like any chain—how did I arrive at an axiom in geometry? When you come to a proposition that I can no longer ground in previous propositions, but it is the first point from which I proceed. So everywhere it’s like that, in ethics and morality too. When I reach axioms, the stages where I say “because,” those are values. Okay?

So a value by definition—and Leibowitz talks about this too, and I mentioned Leibowitz’s article at the end of Faith, History and Values, where he discusses disconnecting the life support of that American girl whose parents asked to disconnect her from the machines, and it reached the Supreme Court there, and there was a big public controversy over whether it was permitted or forbidden—it was in the 1970s I think, Karen something, I don’t remember her name—and around that matter Leibowitz discusses what values are. And he says: a value is something that cannot be rationalized. Therefore it is forbidden to disconnect from the machines in any case. Because the moment you allow disconnecting from machines in certain contexts, you are basically saying that the value of human life can be rationalized. In one place, when it serves me for something, then there is such a value; and in another place, where it doesn’t serve me for that thing, then there is no such value. And then what does that mean in the language I used earlier? That human life is not a value, it is a means. Because if the person can use his life in order to live and act and do everything, then life has value, and if not then disconnect him, then kill him—then life has no value. So what does that mean? That human life is not a value; it is a means for acting or whatever, for doing things. But by definition, a value is something that is not a means to anything.

Someone deciding about his own life. Same thing. Same thing. From Leibowitz’s perspective, that’s exactly the same thing. In that particular case I agree there was very much another value, but sometimes there are two values. No, I’ll get to two values—that’s conflicts. That’s where I’m heading, in just a moment. I want to understand clearly what a value is before entering the realm of conflicts. But disconnecting is a conflict. Even in disconnecting. Of course. No, what I’m saying is no. There too, of course, disconnecting is a conflict, but not between two values. Rather between a value and economic cost, convenience, and so on. She’s not suffering, nothing is happening to her, so there isn’t a counter-value saying to disconnect. It’s just a shame about the money; we the parents don’t want to be dragged around by this whole matter, she’s not coming back to life anyway, there’s nothing to be done, we’ve already lost our daughter, so leave us alone and…

If she’s suffering, then it’s a value-conflict. Then that’s a different discussion. Before I get to conflicts—and I’ll get there in a moment—I’m talking on the level of what a value is at all. He says that the moment you turn human life into a means for something else, it’s no longer a value. By definition, a value is the point, the end for whose sake all the other things are done. And if the money you invest in keeping her alive? Then you’ve turned it into a value-conflict, fine. I don’t want to get into the topic; for me it’s just an example. Right, so that’s basically the implication: you can’t rationalize it because it is something very basic.

But now the question arises, and I think that’s about where I reached at the end: now we come to the realm of conflicts. In the realm of conflicts, when we have a value-conflict—now the girl is suffering, okay? Let’s return to the earlier example. Now this is already a value-conflict. On the one hand, to kill—to disconnect her from the machines; on the other hand, to leave her to suffer. This is no longer a question of economic expediency or not bothering the parents, but of value against value. What do you do in such a situation?

Now, in the Leibowitzian conception, which is seemingly what follows from the Kantian conception—he too was Kantian on this issue, on most issues—in his view a value-conflict is something that by its essence is insoluble. Insoluble. It cannot be solved. By definition. Not just that in practice we haven’t managed to solve it; a value-conflict cannot be solved by definition. Why not? Because exactly—it’s “because” against “because.” Exactly because of what I said earlier. Since there is a value here against a value, how do you rank values? After all, you need to build a scale, right? In order to decide a conflict, you need to decide where on the scale stand the two values that are on the two sides of the barricade. Which is higher, and therefore overrides the other. But how do you rank values? If values were means to something else, then I would say—suppose values were a means to happiness, as in the teleological conception I mentioned earlier, yes, making the world a better place. Not morally better, but more comfortable, pleasant, nice, okay? Happier, more joyful. Fine? If that were the situation, then in principle there’s no problem. You could say: what brings the world to a better state, my leaving her connected and suffering, or… and then you need to check what brings more happiness, and on that basis I determine the ranking on the scale. Because if the value is a means to something else, I have a way to measure it. I have a way to rationalize it, as Leibowitz says, because I ground it in something else; it is a means meant to serve something else. So the units in which you measure it are the units of the thing for whose sake it exists. Okay? How much happiness it brings as opposed to the other value, or suffering, whatever. And then I compare and build a scale.

But if a value is not a means serving anything, but an end, then there’s no way to measure it. If you can’t measure values, then how can you rank one above or below another? Okay, that is the question. I say, that was the question. Fine, maybe that’s a solution. But I’m saying on the principled level we reach a dead end here, because according to this conception of values—and it’s a correct conception—every value-conflict is insoluble by definition. Insoluble. And then basically—sometimes people call this the incommensurability of values. “Incommensurable” means lacking a common measure. Right? “Mensur” is measure. What? There’s no common scale or common yardstick for the two values. You cannot measure suffering and the value of life by some common standard and then decide which one has more units and which one fewer, in order to determine. Human life versus animal suffering versus the rank of a person. In the case of a cat… I don’t know, you tell me.

So I think there is. What? Explain. Go ahead and do the calculation. The calculation is that the value of a human life is more important. Why? What’s higher? Because. What kind of because? The Torah will tell you “because.” No, clearly I’ll get to “because” in the end, but I’m saying that in the final analysis what you’re really doing implicitly is saying that even the value of life is not the final word. You are in fact measuring it by something else. There’s more and less. It serves the purpose more, it serves the purpose less. And the moment you begin to measure things, then you also disconnect from the machines, because there are certain circumstances in which the value of life is worth nothing. What is the value of the life of a girl who has no consciousness, does nothing with it? Someone will come and say: same as a cat. What’s the difference? Same thing. Except that you say no, because the value of life is a postulate, meaning something that has no… okay, but then I also don’t know how to compare a cat and a person. Once you make such comparisons, and once you measure it, once you rationalize it, you are basically saying that this is not the end of the chain. There is something else, more basic, that measures the value of human life and the value of the cat’s life, and then fine, now I can place them on a scale of values.

That’s true—someone who kills other people and I can kill him, I… okay, but you understand all this is examples. Here I once mentioned the idea of a rebuttal. I’ll say it differently. When you present a paradox, I don’t know, like Achilles and the tortoise, I say Achilles never catches the tortoise. By the time he gets here, the tortoise is already there. By the time he gets there, the tortoise has moved a bit more. What kind of nonsense is that? It’s obvious that in two seconds he’ll catch the tortoise. And that’s it, we solved the paradox. No, we did not solve the paradox. The paradox is precisely that on the one hand, in reality, you know he catches the tortoise, and on the other hand, what is wrong with the calculation? In the calculation you see that he never catches it. That’s a paradox. So you can’t solve a paradox by saying, ah, clearly that’s not true. I know—it’s exactly for that reason that I’m saying it. Meaning, I know that we do decide value-conflicts, but precisely because of that it’s interesting to examine what is wrong with the picture I’ve given until now. That doesn’t solve the problem; it only sharpens it. Okay?

So basically that’s called the incommensurability of values, because even for a single value there is no other measure by which you measure that value. All the more so for two values. You have two values and you want to rank them; you need to measure them on the same scale. And then decide that this one has eight units and that one has five units, and therefore this one is above that one. But if there is no common measure, no common unit, then what has more? We talked about it maybe—what is there more of: water in the ocean or good-heartedness in people? That’s a meaningless question. It is not measured in the same units. It is incommensurable. Okay?

There are several kinds of incommensurability, by the way. For example, integers and irrational numbers are also incommensurable. That’s where the term comes from. There is no common unit by which you can measure irrational numbers and integers. Rational numbers, yes, right? For example one-third: then there are three thirds in one unit, and one unit in a third. Right? So rationals and integers have a common basis. They are commensurable. But irrational numbers are incommensurable numbers. You have no common basis by which you can measure an irrational number with an integer or with a rational number. But that is not the same as our case. Because rational numbers and—well, we’ll see in a second—but ostensibly it’s not the same thing, because irrational numbers and integers are still of the same type. They measure the same thing. You just won’t find a unit of length that fits an integer number of times into both of them. But you do know that you can compare them. Pi is greater than one, right? Even though… So incommensurability between an irrational number and an integer does not mean you can’t measure them against one another, because they are of the same type. They both measure lengths, say, in the case of the number line or something like that, okay? That’s weak incommensurability.

The incommensurability I’m talking about is strong incommensurability. It’s not even on the same axis. It’s not just that I don’t have a common unit; it’s not the same axis, not the same scale, not the same units—it’s not even the same axis at all. It’s like comparing—sorry, lawyers—between complex and real numbers. Which is larger, i or 2? A meaningless question. Which is larger, to ride once on bus 12, or to ride twice on bus 6? Right. That’s the irrationality of VAT. Okay. Pi you can… with vectors? Two and i—no. You can use absolute value—absolute value has no meaning here. So I’m saying it’s more similar already, because here they’re simply on different axes, not merely lacking one unit that fits both. We even have mathematicians here, thank goodness, so we have to be a little careful not to mislead them. There are lawyers and mathematicians here; we need to maneuver somehow. Sue him afterward, Tzvika.

Here there are two values that are not the same value, like perhaps “do not steal” and “do not murder.” Yes, maybe at root both of them are “don’t harm a person,” “don’t cause suffering,” so maybe you’d say partly—maybe it’s “don’t cause suffering to living creatures,” everybody, all people, all of them—so maybe then you can indeed begin. So I’m saying: if you can—and I’m not at all entering the question of whether the examples are correct, I’m just saying examples—if you succeed in finding a common measure, then no problem, you can do it. But then they aren’t two values. Because a value by definition is the measure itself, the axis; you can’t ground it in something else. Therefore I’m not entering right now the question: there are dilemmas that are merely apparent dilemmas. If you can put them on a common scale and manage to order them, no problem, you decide the conflict. But then it’s only apparent, and that’s not interesting. I’m asking what to do with a conflict where you can’t do that, okay? Those are the real conflicts.

Now here I’ll perhaps bring an example from the Talmud, tractate Yoma, of how conflicts are nevertheless decided. The Talmud deals with this in several places. Overall, saving a life on the Sabbath is one of the classic examples. When the Talmud discusses what to do when there is danger to life on the Sabbath—do we desecrate the Sabbath?—it brings several reasons. But two remain in Jewish law: one remains in Jewish law, and another according to some of the medieval authorities (Rishonim). This is one example out of three, I think, where you have a series of Tannaim, each of whom gives a different reason, and then Shmuel, an Amora, comes and says: if I had been there, I would have said something better than all of them. And we rule Jewish law like Shmuel. An Amora against all the Tannaim head-on and explicitly. Meaning, he says explicitly that he is against the Tannaim. It’s not that he says maybe he had some other Tanna, or he says nothing and then you say maybe he had another Tanna. No, he says head-on: I disagree with all the Tannaim. A beautiful example. And that basically means that one can disagree with Tannaim, and I think we already talked about that once.

Anyway, this is one of the examples. There, the Tannaim bring different examples, different sources, for the idea that saving life overrides the Sabbath, and in the end Shmuel says: “and live by them, and not die by them.” Okay? The commandments of the Torah were given to us so that we should live through them, right? And if living by the commandments will cause us not to live, then forget it—then there are no commandments, they’re suspended. Except for the three grave sins, for which a special source from the verse is needed, because the basic assumption is indeed “and live by them, and not die by them,” whether as a verse or as logic.

What? A Jew. What Jew? On the Sabbath. No, also a gentile, also a gentile. One who clears away a collapse? Yes. Not only one who clears away a collapse—that’s only rabbinically muktzeh; on the Torah level the matter is over. At least that’s my opinion; I once wrote an article about it. There’s a Meiri who writes this, and there is… maybe we’ll talk about it sometime. A gentile, not a cat. Huh? If there’s a cat, save it with a change in the normal method; it’s animal suffering, why not save it, poor thing? What’s he guilty of, that we keep the Sabbath? Why do I know Jewish law isn’t like that? Because nobody says so. Okay, everybody thinks like you? No, not thinks like me—says so. Okay, people say what they think, yes, fine. But I think differently; I think they’re mistaken. I did it the other way around, but never mind.

Like the beginning of the Torah portion Matot: Rashi brings the case of a woman whose husband annulled her vow but didn’t tell her that he annulled it. Then she went and violated the vow—in other words, she intended to commit a transgression, and the poor thing, even though she wanted to commit a transgression, she didn’t manage to, but it isn’t a transgression because the vow was annulled. About that situation Rashi says: this is like someone who intended to eat pork and ended up with lamb. So that’s probably your example. You wanted to eat pork because you thought it was forbidden and you did it anyway, but it turned out to be lamb. Fine, maybe we’ll talk about that sometime; we’ll devote a lecture to it. Rashi says it’s still a sin. Talmud in tractate Nazir, not Rashi. Yes.

Anyway, so one reason of Shmuel is “and live by them, and not die by them.” Okay? There’s an earlier reason from one of the Tannaim, Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, who says: desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths. Now notice: these two reasons are completely opposite one another. It’s interesting that there are medieval authorities who bring both into Jewish law. They are directly contradictory. “Desecrate one Sabbath for him…” ostensibly, “desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths.” How does he solve it? After all, we have a value-conflict. We have the value of life on the one hand and the value of Sabbath on the other. The Sabbath is most important. Exactly. What is he really saying? He translates the value of life too into terms of Sabbath observance. And now there’s no problem; I can build a scale of values, because saving the person means gaining many Sabbath observances. Not saving him means gaining this one Sabbath that I didn’t desecrate. Better to gain many Sabbaths. Now you can refute that, and it doesn’t matter now, because that’s gaining potentially, and here—never mind, one can debate it. But on the level of what the Talmud is doing, what the Talmud is doing is precisely translating one of the values in the conflict into a measure that is common with the other value. And now it’s possible to order them and decide the conflict.

So what does that actually mean? That according to Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s reason, the value of life is a means, not a value. Life is a means; there is no independent value of human life. It is a means to fulfilling commandments. But that’s difficult from many places. It’s a difficult conception. Okay? But that’s ostensibly what emerges from Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya.

On the other hand, in Shmuel’s conception the opposite emerges: that the whole purpose of the commandments is life, not that the purpose of life is the commandments. And if observance of the commandments will lead you to lose your life, forget it—the commandments weren’t said here at all. “And live by them, and not die by them.” Exactly one hundred and eighty degrees the opposite. Meaning, the commandments are a means to life, not life a means to commandments. And both remain in Jewish law. It sounds very strange. For some medieval authorities, the Meiri for example, both are brought. And there is a practical difference between them. For example, saving a fetus. Saving the life of a fetus. So here—who says? The fetus is not obligated in commandments. So who says one may save it? But on the other hand, it will keep many Sabbaths in the future if I save its life. So if the calculation is a future-oriented calculation, then you can save a fetus too. The Talmud talks about saving a child, not a fetus, and it brings “desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths”; it itself brings it in the conclusion. Even though apparently in Yoma this is rejected, there is a Talmud in tractate Shabbat, one hundred and something, I don’t remember, where it discusses saving a child on the Sabbath and it brings only “desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths.” It doesn’t bring “and live by them.” Okay? Because that’s the practical difference. That child, when he reaches the age of commandments, will keep many Sabbaths.

Anyway, how can there be two utterly opposite reasons, and both remain in Jewish law and live together peacefully? The answer is that if you understand properly how the logic of deciding conflicts works here, then you see there is no contradiction. Take the value of human life, say in “desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths.” How does it work? What I said earlier, basically. It turns out that human life is not a value, but a means. It is a means to fulfilling commandments. If I’m alive, I can fulfill commandments. Okay? Since that’s so, you can translate everything into the currency of commandment observance, and then you can build a scale and decide the conflict. That’s how we actually decided it, because otherwise you can’t. That is exactly the point. It isn’t really a translation. We are in a genuine value-conflict between human life and Sabbath observance. We have no way to decide this conflict because it is a value-conflict; it is incommensurable. So what do we do? A brilliant trick. Besides the value of human life, which is an immeasurable value, which I don’t know how to measure in such terms, besides that, human life also has the utility of enabling the fulfillment of additional commandments. And that is not the only thing—it’s one more thing.

So now if I want to measure, in simpler mathematics now, suppose I have two options: either save him on the Sabbath or don’t save him on the Sabbath. Let’s see how much this is worth and how much that is worth. If I don’t save him, I’ve gained one Sabbath, so that’s worth one. Okay? In terms of Sabbath observance, I’m now translating this into the currency of Sabbath observance: that’s one. How much is saving him worth? I say: he has dollars and shekels in his wallet—Sabbath observances plus something else measured by different yardsticks. Okay? Now in terms of Sabbath observances, it’s worth the number of Sabbaths he’ll live. I don’t know how many—his life expectancy, a thousand Sabbaths.

That isn’t consequentialist—you said if you’re Kantian you don’t look at consequences; here you are looking at consequences. No, the consequences are an indication. Even for Kant, consequences are an indication: what would happen if everyone acted like you? Kant too asks that. But not because everyone really will act like me; it’s an indication that this is the moral act. At least that’s one possible interpretation; of course one can interpret it differently.

So the value of saving him, when I now measure it, let’s say it’s a thousand. The other one is one. This is a thousand—one thousand Sabbath observances—plus x, the value of human life, which I don’t know how to measure in the language of these ones, of these units. But a thousand plus x is certainly greater than one, because even the thousand alone is greater than one. Therefore it is clearly preferable to save him. Now notice, why is this calculation different from what I did earlier? Because what it actually says is that the value of human life remains a value; it is not a means. It is not a means to commandments. De facto, of course, it also yields the possibility of keeping commandments, but that doesn’t mean that that exhausts the entire value of human life. There is a value of human life that I don’t know how to compare with commandment observance, so that won’t help me; it isn’t constructive, I can’t solve the conflict that way. So what do I do? I make a detour. I say: besides the intrinsic value that human life has, it also allows me to keep many more Sabbaths than I would lose if I save him. So no problem—we can save him. I solved the problem by going around the conflict, not by denying that there is a conflict. Okay?

And so this basically means that I remain with the incommensurability, and I remain with the fact that I do not know how to compare the value of human life with the value of Sabbath observance, and still I managed to decide the conflict. You maximize both. What? Yes, combine them, exactly. It’s enough that one of them is greater. By the way, for Shmuel now, he has the issue there? For Shmuel now it actually comes out that life is more important than the value, right? And that can remain even according to Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel. Because Sabbath observance is a value, meaning commandment observance. Yes, every commandment is a value. But where does this piece come from—why must one keep the Sabbath? Why keep the Sabbath? Because someone told you to. And if I tell you to jump off the roof, will you jump off the roof? Like your son asked you? Over 120 kilometers too—that’s also a value? Of course. Not to drive over 120—is that a value or a law? No, it’s a value. What’s the value? A legal value. What does it matter? The law is a legal value. Why observe it? Because it’s the law. So what if there’s a law? Because there is value in obeying laws. Because. So what if it’s a law? I can legislate all kinds of laws for you too now—will you observe those as well? What does that have to do with it? There is no value in obeying laws that I legislate, but there is value in obeying the laws the state legislates. So at base it is a legal value. Not a moral value, a legal value in this case. Maybe it also overlaps with a moral value—that’s another discussion. It is a legal value. There are values of all kinds, we talked about that too. There are aesthetic values, ethical values, religious values, legal values. Almost anything that is not a fact can basically be called a value.

So here this is a good demonstration of how one gets around incommensurability and yet it remains. Meaning, you still cannot compare values, but that doesn’t mean you cannot decide conflicts. Often I can find some trick that bypasses the incommensurability and helps me decide the dilemma. But sometimes I can’t. Why, I don’t know—allocating budgets, someone mentioned that earlier. How do you allocate budgets in the treasury basket of the state? The state budget. How do we allocate budgets? How do I compare sports to culture? Let’s take extreme examples: sports and culture, two things—some people see value in this and some see value in that. Now I have only one shekel. Where do I put it—in sports or in culture? Or half-and-half. Some will say half-and-half because… And sometimes it’s almost an opposite unit of measure. Some will say that—but I’m not one of them. But those are deficiencies, yes, not a solution. It basically says: I have no way to compare them. And there I don’t know how to translate those two things into something else. Someone will tell me maybe this brings contentment and that brings contentment. No, let’s say the same number of people participate in both, so I still can’t bypass the technical issue. You could say how much happiness this brings and how much happiness that brings. If you do that, then you’ve turned them from values into means. So happiness is the value, and these are basically… Happiness has no end, suffering does, right? There’s some song like that.

Anyway, the problem of a value-conflict is not solvable head-on; it is solvable only through detours. Like the detour of “desecrate one Sabbath for him.” “And live by them” means that the value of human life is greater. I said earlier that maybe Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya agrees with that too, but he can’t prove it, so he chose a detour, and there it’s obvious, simple math. How do you know that the value of human life is greater? It’s simply greater. The Sabbath is not a value. Why isn’t the Sabbath a value? Because, for example, “and live by them.” The Sabbath as a means for living. You’re saying that the Sabbath basically turns into… yes, but what, if I don’t keep the Sabbath then I don’t live? So how are you comparing? If both are values, you can’t compare. No, I claim Sabbath is not really a means either, after all even if I don’t desecrate the Sabbath I continue to live, at least if a religious court doesn’t catch me.

Everything you’ve said so far is that you can’t say one value is worth more than another because they have no measure. Exactly. That’s why I brought… that’s my question. “And live by them.” Human life is universal; Sabbath belongs… human life belongs to every person, Sabbath belongs only to those obligated in commandments. So what? Then it is something that according to Kant… Right. The obligation to save a human life is only on doctors because they know? I don’t know, so is that why it’s less important than the obligation to, I don’t know, give charity? It’s not about what someone knows—whoever is obligated, only Jews are obligated in Sabbath. Yes, but who says that isn’t because only Jews can really do it properly, maybe? I don’t know. But that still doesn’t necessarily mean it’s less important. Maybe. Fine, but if I accept your reduction, then okay; let’s say I don’t accept it. What do we do here? How does Shmuel’s mind work? Tell me—is there maybe a verse? I don’t know. There’s no verse, because Shmuel comes and says precisely: leave the verse aside, the verse is “and live by them.” But I can also interpret that verse differently. Clearly Shmuel started from the fact that human life is a more important value, and then learned it from the verse. After all, others knew this verse too and didn’t interpret it that way. So it does begin with reasoning.

Now I’ll say more than that: if it really were incommensurable, a verse wouldn’t help even if the verse explicitly said “desecrate the Sabbath to save human life.” It still wouldn’t help at all. Because a verse also cannot… If I ask you what is there more of: water in the ocean or the good-heartedness of people? We said earlier that’s a meaningless question. You can’t answer it, right? Suppose there’s a verse. The verse says there is more water in the ocean. Fine, have we solved the problem? We haven’t solved anything. A verse can’t state nonsense. That’s nonsense. There is no answer—not that I don’t know. Where I don’t know the answer, the verse reveals it to me, because the Holy One, blessed be He, is very wise, He knows everything, so the verse reveals to me an answer that I myself don’t know how to solve. But in a place where there is no substantive answer, where it cannot be answered, the question is meaningless—what does it help that there is a verse? It doesn’t help. Therefore, once Shmuel brings a verse, he is basically saying that there is meaning to the answer; it is not incommensurable. Because if it were really incommensurable, a verse would not help. So what Shmuel is basically saying is: it is not incommensurable. And now I say, fine, and still I don’t know which one prevails. So the verse tells me that human life prevails.

Incommensurability—between what, clarification or policy? Maybe the Torah says there is no clarification here. Meaning, it doesn’t clarify who prevails, so we said at least, fine, then let’s proceed this way. Why? But afterward there still has to be some explanation. No problem, but offer me an explanation. There is an explanation. What explanation could there be for that? Even for policy there has to be an explanation. Take an example like presumption. Yes, I understand, but even presumption has an explanation. It leads to legal convenience. You don’t take property from anyone just because someone else pounced on him. Not because he isn’t right, but because the legal system can’t function that way. So there is a certain logic to that policy. But as long as you don’t provide logic, it doesn’t help me. Meaning, and the logic has to be ethical logic. I don’t see anything here—if anything, the logic, I don’t know. I don’t see a possible explanation for this matter.

What I want, and here I’ll stop and continue next time, is that the very fact that there is a verse says there is something here that is not incommensurable, because otherwise the verse wouldn’t help. And that is the dispute between Shmuel and Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya. Because Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, as I said earlier, also agrees that it is incommensurable. He just found a way to bypass the problem. He translates the value of saving life into terms of Sabbath observance plus the value of life. With the value of life I don’t know what to do; it is incommensurable. And now Shmuel—notice this—the picture turns completely upside down. Shmuel actually says that it is commensurable, because otherwise a verse would not help. And Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is the one who says it is incommensurable. Okay? He says yes. I’ll continue from here next time.