Intellect and Emotion, Lesson 1

Table of Contents

• The Tanya, chapter 2: the animal soul and the divine soul
• The war of the two souls over the “small city” and the garments
• Reversing the framework: not right-left but mind-heart, and then the systems get mixed
• Kelipat Nogah, the serpent’s skin, and the relation of the inclinations to the animal soul
• “A Jewish orthopedist” and explaining the descent from the head to the body
• The ethics example: thought experiments, rationalization, and intuition versus emotion
• The vital soul as an engine, “and bring it back to your heart,” and harnessing emotion
• Deciding with the mind versus “deciding not to decide”: matchmaking, a sheep, and responsibility
• Bar mitzvah, “better a poor but wise child,” and the deaf-mute, the mentally incompetent, and the minor
• Choosing evil, Nazism, drunkenness, and evading a decision
• Veganism as ad hoc theories and the struggle between heart and mind
• The dominance of emotion in the last generation, postmodern despair, and politics and morality

Summary

General overview

The speaker places the discussion of emotions in a Jewish-law context through a reading of chapter 2 of the Tanya, and argues that the simple picture of a struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination is incomplete and problematic because it leaves the person himself outside the story. He presents a more complex structure from the author of the Tanya: an animal soul rooted in the heart and spreading to the body and the mind, versus a divine soul rooted in the mind and spreading to the body and the heart, so that the real struggle is over the governance of the person, not merely the victory of “good” or “evil.” From this he develops a fundamental claim that the decisive question is whether a person decides and leads himself through the mind, or “decides not to decide” and allows impulses and emotional stances to lead, while the mind sometimes serves as a rationalization for what the heart has already determined.

The Tanya, chapter 2: the animal soul and the divine soul

The speaker reads the Tanya’s wording, according to which the dwelling place of the animal soul from Kelipat Nogah “in every Jew” is in the heart, in the left chamber, “which is full of blood,” because “the blood is the soul,” and therefore desires, self-glorification, and anger dwell in the heart and spread throughout the body, and even rise to the mind “to think about them, meditate on them, and become clever about them.” He explains that this implies that the animal soul is not just “stuck” in the heart, but operates throughout the whole system, including the intellectual dimension. He then reads the Tanya’s wording about the divine soul, whose dwelling place is in the mind, and from there it spreads to the limbs and also “to the heart, in the right chamber, where there is no blood,” and he connects this to the idea that love of God and joy of heart in the glory of God derive from Chabad in the intellect, and that the holy traits in the heart come from that Chabad.

The war of the two souls over the “small city” and the garments

The speaker presents the image “one nation shall prevail over the other,” in which the body is called a “small city” and two souls battle like “two kings” over control of the city, and he emphasizes that the war is over the whole body and all its limbs because both souls spread throughout the whole system. He details the desire of the divine soul that the limbs become a “chariot” for it, and that they become “a garment for its ten faculties and its three garments,” so that the three intellectual faculties be filled with Chabad in order to contemplate the greatness of God, that the traits in the heart be directed to God alone, and that thought, speech, and action be filled with the garments of the divine soul, to the point that “his mouth never stops from study,” and with the performance of commandments alone. He also notes the Tanya’s wording about the animal soul, that “its desire is exactly the opposite,” yet “for the good of man,” that he should overcome it, “like the parable of the harlot in the holy Zohar,” and he adds his own understanding that “its desire” here means a purpose stemming from the One who created it.

Reversing the framework: not right-left but mind-heart, and then the systems get mixed

The speaker argues that the author of the Tanya “rotates the axes,” so that the struggle is not described simply as right versus left or good inclination versus evil inclination, but as a struggle between mind and heart, and this is why he opens the discussion of emotions here. He adds that the next stage in the picture is that the mind also spreads into the heart and the heart rises into the mind, so there is “an intellectual dimension within inclination” and “an emotional dimension within the mind,” and the struggle is not exhausted by a sharp contrast between two regions, but by a structure in which the question is what the root is and what leads. He defines the divine soul as led by the mind and harnessing the heart after it, whereas the animal soul is led by the heart and uses the mind in order “to get clever” and dress theories onto what the heart already wanted. He formulates this as: “there is an inclination of intellect and an intellect of inclination,” and it is really a question of dominance.

Kelipat Nogah, the serpent’s skin, and the relation of the inclinations to the animal soul

The speaker explains that Kelipat Nogah is one of four kelipot, where three are “complete evil” and Kelipat Nogah is evil mixed with good, and he wonders why it is still called a kelipah. He interprets Kelipat Nogah in the language of the esoteric tradition as the serpent’s skin, and connects it to sin and to the description “and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil” as an internal mixture of good and evil within the person. From this he presents a position according to which both the good inclination and the evil inclination belong to the sphere of the animal soul and the kelipah, and therefore the struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination is an educational “stage one,” the level of “the kindergarten teacher,” and is not the essential struggle according to the author of the Tanya.

“A Jewish orthopedist” and explaining the descent from the head to the body

The speaker brings a joke quoted by Shlomo Nitzan in the name of Dov Sadan, that the next revolutionary will be “a Jewish orthopedist,” and explains the chain: Abraham our father as “lift your eyes on high,” representing the head; Jesus as “the Merciful One desires the heart,” representing the heart; Marx as “everything is in the belly”; and Freud as “below the belt,” so all that is left is the legs. He argues that behind the joke there is a truth about a historical process that is not necessarily “the world has become stupider,” but a change in the question of what leads a person, and he identifies the distinction as depending on whether the mind leads or serves the heart. He states that a person can have high intelligence and still be “a person of the animal soul” if the mind is used to justify what the heart already wanted, whereas “a person of the divine soul” is not necessarily smarter, but is governed by the mind, which harnesses emotion as an engine.

The ethics example: thought experiments, rationalization, and intuition versus emotion

The speaker describes the construction of ethical theories through thought experiments, such as survival cases in which one person is killed in order to save many, and shows how sometimes the rejection of a utilitarian conclusion does not stem from a neutral intellectual correction but from an earlier emotional assumption that forces one to patch the theory. He uses the Tanya’s phrase “to think and meditate… and become clever” to describe a situation in which the heart decides and the mind supplies an intellectual garment, and he identifies this as a mechanism of the animal soul. He adds a qualification that rejection can also stem from “intuition” in an intellectual sense and not necessarily from emotion, and he proposes a practical distinction: a strong emotional upheaval hints at a source in the heart, whereas an abstract principle like “maximum utility” does not necessarily carry a similar emotional charge.

The vital soul as an engine, “and bring it back to your heart,” and harnessing emotion

The speaker explains that the animal soul is also called the “vital soul” because it is found in animals too, and because it is the engine of life and impulse, and he argues that the heart is a far stronger engine for action than intellectual understanding. He gives the example of his appreciation for activists like Greenpeace who risk their lives out of strong identification, and on the other hand, the difficulty of devoting oneself with that same intensity to “technical” commandments such as redeeming a firstborn donkey, even if one understands intellectually that this is the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. He defines the desired move by the formula “and know today and bring it back to your heart,” in which the decision comes from the mind, but one must harness the heart in order to generate motivation and find inner power, with the heart supplying the energy and the head determining the direction.

Deciding with the mind versus “deciding not to decide”: matchmaking, a sheep, and responsibility

The speaker gives a practical example from matchmaking and argues that one should go “only after the mind,” while the heart supplies data such as chemistry and love, but the decision itself is made through intellectual weighing and not through “making a decision with the heart.” He uses a story told by Amnon Yitzhak about the rabbi who cries over a sheep as a “righteous man,” in order to argue that righteousness is not the result of pleasant behavior, but of acting מתוך decision and responsibility, and that someone who does good only because he was “born a sheep” is a person of the animal soul even if he does a great deal of good. He sharpens the point that the struggle of the good inclination versus the evil inclination within the animal soul does not determine righteousness or wickedness, because even if “the good wins,” the person still is not deciding but being carried along. He defines the divine soul as the force that compels a person to be one who decides and takes responsibility.

Bar mitzvah, “better a poor but wise child,” and the deaf-mute, the mentally incompetent, and the minor

The speaker connects Rashi’s interpretation in Ecclesiastes of “better a poor but wise child than an old and foolish king” to the idea that the evil inclination enters a person from birth and the good inclination at bar mitzvah, and interprets this as the appearance of the capacity for responsibility and decision, not merely the appearance of wisdom. He argues that children can understand a great deal long before age thirteen, but they do not possess full legal and moral responsibility, and he cites the categories of “the deaf-mute, the mentally incompetent, and the minor” as those who are not legal entities not because of a lack of technical understanding, but because of a lack of responsibility and judgment. He adds that a “mentally incompetent person” is not necessarily someone with a low IQ and may even be a genius, but he lacks the ability to be responsible in the way that a minor lacks it.

Choosing evil, Nazism, drunkenness, and evading a decision

The speaker finds it hard to imagine a person who decides “coldly” to do evil while knowing it is evil, and suggests that most evil happens through building theories that present evil as good, or through social drift and avoidance of decision, comparing it to “drunk driving” in the sense of choosing to put yourself into a state from which you will be swept along. He describes the regret after doing something bad as a sign that the person “whitewashed things and fooled himself” and did not truly stand before a conscious decision. He mentions various ways of “not deciding,” such as falling asleep, repression, drugs, or “narcotic theories” that allow the heart to lead and the mind to justify.

Veganism as ad hoc theories and the struggle between heart and mind

The speaker brings a personal example about a militant vegan daughter, and says that he himself is vegetarian but has difficulty becoming vegan, and he distinguishes between admitting weakness and producing theories that justify continued participation in the industry. He describes industrial reality as one accompanied by “terrible abuse” and compares it to “a Holocaust for animals,” and presents how people invent explanations like “the Torah permitted it,” or “they were created for this,” or factual denials, in order to continue doing what their gut wants. He uses the example to illustrate his claim that the animal soul causes the mind to become an instrument of the heart instead of the mind leading and harnessing the heart.

The dominance of emotion in the last generation, postmodern despair, and politics and morality

The speaker argues that in the last generation there has been a strong phenomenon of emotional dominance stemming from postmodern despair about the mind, out of a view that reason “can lead anywhere” and that philosophy “doesn’t make progress,” and therefore there is no binding rational conclusion. He describes people who say, “You’re right on the principled level, but my heart won’t let me,” and presents a position according to which if something is true, then it should be done even if the heart rebels, while opposing the removal of “the reins” from the mind. He offers criticism of emotional arguments in political and moral discourse, including an example of writing by Gideon Levy that generates compassion and then asks that one derive a “worldview” from it, and he argues that emotion should not dictate a worldview but at most motivate practical concern to reduce suffering within the framework of a cognitive decision. He concludes that the focus of the discussion must be on the cognitive plane and not the emotional one, because emotion alone can lead to mistaken moral decisions in both directions.

And after that I’ll go into—probably not today already—I’ll go a bit into more specific contexts in which emotion appears, mainly halakhic contexts, really only halakhic contexts; all the rest doesn’t really matter to me. So maybe I’ll start here with the chapter on the book of Tanya. Tell them to go downstairs, the children, they should go up and down, down and up. Once he’s gone up, he shouldn’t come down. So, chapter 2—I’ll just describe the context. Usually we’re used to descriptions of a struggle between good and evil, Alex, there’s a page here, a description of good and evil represented by two inclinations, the good inclination and the evil inclination. That’s how we grew up in kindergarten: the good inclination fights the evil inclination, and whoever wins determines whether we’re righteous or wicked. That’s a very problematic description, of course, because if there really are two forces here fighting each other, then what does that have to do with me? Meaning, if someone is born with a stronger good inclination, then he’s righteous? Righteousness is supposed to depend somehow on me, not on the Holy One Blessed be He. What? The one who has a stronger good inclination enter him, they told me once he… Ah, that someone is born only with the evil inclination, an old and foolish king. When it enters him, that’s only at age thirteen or at the bar mitzvah, when he grows two hairs. So this description is problematic, this description of the struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination. Of course, everyone feels within himself certain urges toward doing good or urges toward doing bad. I’m not denying the fact that we have a good inclination and an evil inclination, but clearly that cannot be the full picture. If that were the full picture, then basically something is going on here that has nothing to do with me. There’s some struggle between two forces here, and whoever wins, wins—but where am I in this whole story? So that can’t be the full description. And indeed, the author of Tanya changes the perspective a bit, and somehow it looks like he rotates the axes a little—but not exactly. Let’s start reading, and then I’ll come back to that point. “Now the dwelling place of the animal soul, which is from kelipat nogah, in every Jew, is in the heart, in the left cavity, which is full of blood, and it is written: ‘For the blood is the soul’; therefore all desires and self-glorification and anger and the like are in the heart, and from the heart they spread throughout the whole body, and they also rise to the brain in the head, to think and contemplate about them and to devise cleverness regarding 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.” Here he’s really speaking about something called the animal soul. I’ll define the concepts later; for now I just want to see what it says. There is something called the animal soul, and it is taken from something else called kelipat nogah, some kind of cryptic phrase, in every Jew. Its center is in the heart, in the left cavity, which is full of blood. There’s some right side that is supposedly without blood; that comes later. “And it is written, ‘For the blood is the soul’; therefore all desires and self-glorification and anger”—which apparently are somehow connected to the animal soul, right? “Therefore.” Like in the Talmud sometimes they derive “therefore,” “therefore the place and the stones belong to both of them” at the beginning of tractate Bava Batra, right? So Tosafot there says “de-fikhakh.” The word “therefore” is always a key word. Meaning, when you have something and “therefore” something else follows, that means not only that the other thing is true, but that it also emerges from the first part, and you have to understand not only why it is true, but also why it emerges from the first part. Right? So here, “the dwelling place of the animal soul is in the heart, and therefore the desires and self-glorification and all the rest”—meaning, the desires and self-glorification are really the expressions of the animal soul. So it’s in the heart, and from the heart they spread through the whole body like the blood, because the blood too comes from the heart and spreads through the whole body and also rises to the brain in the head. All of this is by analogy to blood. So too the desires and self-glorification and anger and so on begin in the heart and rise to the head, and all that is what’s called the animal soul. So already here you can notice that the animal soul is not in the heart; rather, it begins in the heart, but it also rises to the head. It is everywhere. It basically fills the whole body. Of course it’s all a metaphor—it’s not in the heart and not in the head, these are just metaphors—but it basically fills the whole body, the astral body if you like. “But the dwelling place of the divine soul”—that’s the antithesis of the animal soul, right? The divine soul—“is in the brain in the head, and from there it spreads to all the limbs.” But it too does not remain in the head; it too spreads throughout the whole body. “And also in the heart, in the right cavity in which there is no blood.” The left side, which has blood, is the animal soul in the heart; and the right side, which has no blood, is the divine soul. The blood is really the soul—“for the blood is the soul.” The soul in that expression is what is called the animal soul. “And it is the love of God like fiery flames blazing in the heart of the enlightened, who understand and contemplate with their knowledge”—“the enlightened,” of course, in the sense of intellect and not Enlightenment, heaven forbid—“which is in their brain, concerning matters that arouse love. And likewise the joy of heart in the glory of God and the splendor of His majesty, when the eyes of the wise man in his head”—“the wise man’s eyes are in his head”—“in the brain of his wisdom and understanding look upon the honor of the King and the glory of His greatness, which is beyond all investigation and endless and without limit, as explained elsewhere. And likewise the other holy traits in the heart derive from Chabad in the mochin”—that is, from wisdom, understanding, and knowledge in the mind in the head. In contrast, self-glorification, anger, and all these things are apparently the unholy traits, which are connected to the animal soul, and their center is in the heart, and from there they spread also to the brain and to the rest of the body. “Now behold, it is written, ‘One nation shall prevail over the other,’ because the body is called a small city. And just as two kings wage war over one city, each wanting to capture it and reign over it—that is, to govern its inhabitants according to his will and that they should obey him in whatever he decrees over them—so too the two souls, the divine and the vital animal soul from the kelipah”—again, the “vital” is what is also called the “animal,” another clue in this puzzle, that “from the kelipah” is the kelipat nogah mentioned in the first line, right?—“fight one another over the body and all its limbs.” Meaning, the war is over the whole body. One is in the heart and spreads through the whole body; one is in the head and also spreads through the whole body. So after this spreading, both souls are really in the entire body. It’s not that each one is in its own area. That’s why there is a war here over the whole thing, a war over the whole body—which one will actually take over the whole body. “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 a chariot to it, and that they become a garment for its ten faculties and its three garments mentioned above, all of which will be clothed in the limbs of the body, and the entire body will be filled by them alone, and no stranger shall pass among them, heaven forbid.” That stranger is the animal soul. “That is, the three brains in the head shall be filled with the Chabad of the divine soul, which is the wisdom of God and understanding of His greatness, which is beyond all investigation”—this is all operative—“and likewise all the other traits in the heart, which are branches of fear and love, shall be for God alone. And all speech in the mouth and thought in the brain shall be filled with the garments of thought and speech of the divine soul alone, which are thought of God and His Torah, that his speech be all day long in it and that his mouth never cease from study. And the faculty of action”—these are the three garments: thought, speech, and action; that’s what he said above—the three garments should be filled by the divine soul. So here he details it: the three garments are thought, speech, and action. Thought is in the head, speech is in the mouth, and action is in the hands and the organs of action in his hands and all the other 248 limbs shall be only in the performance of the commandments, which is the third garment of the divine soul. “But the animal soul from the kelipah”—so up to here, yes, until the sentence beginning “But the animal soul,” all this is a specification of what the divine soul wants. There is a war over the whole body, and the divine soul wants everything we’ve described so far. And here, one more sentence: what the animal soul wants, because that’s simply the antithesis. “But the animal soul from the kelipah wants the exact opposite, for the benefit of man, that he should prevail over it and conquer it, like the parable of the harlot in the holy Zohar.” Meaning, the animal soul too fights over the whole body; it too wants to take over everything. But at the root, really, it wants people to overcome it, because it too comes from holiness. There really aren’t two sides. It too comes from holiness; its purpose is that people should overcome it, like the parable of the harlot. What’s its purpose? Not its desire, right—that’s a good comment. The purpose of the One who made it, really. So it seems to me like some entity beyond the inclination that I feel—there’s some entity behind it that wants… The One who created the inclinations is the Holy One Blessed be He. No, no—not the One who created the inclinations, but some kind of entity of the soul. Yes, but what he means here by “its desire”—I don’t think he means its desire, but rather its purpose is like that. But its desire is really the desire of the One who made it—that’s how I understand it, at least. “Like the parable of the harlot in the holy Zohar” refers to a parable brought in the Zohar about… Okay, that’s broadly the structure. So there are a few important points here. First of all, let’s go back to the schema with which I opened. So instead of presenting some struggle between good inclination and evil inclination—let’s say metaphorically, right side versus left side—he rotates the axes. It’s a struggle between up and down, not between right and left. Between the brain and the heart. And you understand why I’m opening the discussion on emotions here. It’s really a struggle between brain and heart. But even that is not a simple picture. That’s stage two. We started with good inclination versus evil inclination; we rotated it and said no, no, it’s between brain and heart. In a moment we’ll see how this is connected to the first level of the two inclinations. But even that is not the whole thing. There’s a third level. The third level, or third stage, is that really it’s also not between up and down, because the upper spreads downward and the lower spreads upward, and the struggle is somehow throughout the whole business. Okay? Somehow, in the end, everything gets mixed together. That, really, is the picture. Now I’ll try to flesh it out a bit more. I’m starting again from the beginning of the chapter. “And the dwelling place of the animal soul, which is from kelipat nogah…” Kelipat nogah, in Kabbalah, is really one of four kelipot. Three kelipot are complete evil, and kelipat nogah is evil mixed with good. It works. But it too is a kelipah. One has to understand why it is a kelipah if it also has a good aspect. Kelipat nogah, in the language of the esoteric tradition—the Ari speaks about this—is mishkha de-chivya, what is called the skin of the serpent, the serpent’s skin in the language of the Zohar. And the serpent, after the sin, cast its contamination—the serpent cast its contamination—“and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil.” “Knowing”—“Adam knew Eve his wife”—to know means to connect, to join with something. “Knowing good and evil” means that good and evil became connected and entered into me. Good and evil—that is kelipat nogah, which contains both good and evil. And that kelipat nogah entered; the serpent cast it, mishkha de-chivya, the skin of the serpent, cast its contamination into the human being, and now the human being has within him this kelipah that contains good and evil. Those are really the inclinations. The good inclination and the evil inclination—notice, both are from the kelipah. So that is the beginning; that is really the first level. The first level is a struggle between inclinations, in which there is a good inclination and an evil inclination, but notice that all of this is the animal soul. Both the good inclination and the evil inclination belong to the animal soul. So the struggle between good and evil is not at all the relevant struggle. It doesn’t matter at all. These are all games taking place inside, in the gut, in the heart, okay? Between right and left. But that’s not the struggle; that’s just kindergarten. That is stage one, level one. Stage two says no, there is also a divine soul above this whole story. The divine soul is in the head, and there it stands against the animal soul, which contains both good and evil, the two inclinations. What does that mean? It basically means there is a struggle between cognition and the inclinations, between our higher part—our intellect or our will; here he doesn’t distinguish between will and intellect—which is in the mochin in the head, the higher part, and the inclinations, both the good inclination and the evil inclination. The struggle is against both of them. And therefore, the essential struggle according to the author of Tanya is not between good inclination and evil inclination, but between inclinations and decisions, or rational guidance, intellectual guidance, higher guidance—let’s call it cognition. Okay? That is really the essential struggle. But even that is not all; that is level two. Level three basically says that the inclination ultimately climbs up into the brain as well. There is an intellectual dimension in the inclination. And the brain ultimately also descends to the heart—there is also an emotional or instinctive dimension in the brain. So now it becomes very hard to understand who is against whom. Because really there is a struggle taking place on both the intellectual plane and the emotional plane. And then the question returns after this third stage: so what exactly is the difference between the divine soul and the animal soul? Between what and what is the struggle? After all, both are here and here. So what exactly is the difference between them? The difference between them, as he himself defines it, is where the root is. The divine soul is throughout the whole body, but its root is in the mind. The animal soul is throughout the whole body, but its root is in the heart. And the struggle is not between brain and heart in the simplistic sense, but a struggle between an entire structure of brain and heart, except the question is: which comes first and which comes second? For the divine soul, the brain comes first and pulls the heart after it. From there it spreads into the heart, but it starts in the brain. For the animal soul, it starts in the heart and from there spreads to the head. Now, the animal soul also has intellect. It too has wisdom. But the heart is what dictates. In contrast, the divine soul is guided or led by cognition. After that it also harnesses the emotions. It has an emotional dimension too. So yes, in the end there really is a struggle here between cognition and emotion, or between feeling and intellect and between will and inclinations. But there is instinctive intellect and intellectual instinct. Meaning, within the intellect there is intellect-of-intellect and instinct-of-intellect. And within the instinct there is instinct-of-instinct and intellect-of-instinct. Okay? So in each of them there is… it’s a bit like the yin-yang image. You know it? Yin-yang talks about the masculine and feminine side in a person, left side and right side. So it says that within the feminine there is also a masculine side and a feminine side, and within the masculine there is also a masculine side and a feminine side. It’s a question of dominance. It very much resembles this structure. By the way, that too is right and left. Masculine is right and feminine is left. Well, one can add meanings and interpretations to that from our world, where I think many people are mistaken. Mathematics is a feminine field, for example, contrary to what most people think. Mathematics belongs to the left, not the right. And people—you can even see it—it’s not just a slogan, it really is so. Anyway, I’ll get to that later. No, no, no. Left and… no. Fine, maybe I’ll get back to that later. So what exactly is the meaning of this whole thing? I’ll try to sharpen it a bit more. Actually, maybe I’ll start with a joke I once heard from Shlomo Nitzan. He told it in the name of Dov Sadan. Dov Sadan, who was a literature scholar at the Hebrew University—A Bowl of Raisins, something like that, he has a book, Appearance. So Dov Sadan said that the next person who will bring about a revolution in the world will probably be a Jewish orthopedist. Why a Jewish orthopedist? Why Jewish is obvious, because whoever brings about revolutions in the world is Jewish. But why an orthopedist? He says: the first Jew who brought about a revolution in the world was Abraham our father, who told us: “Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these.” Use your head. Meaning: there is a world here, someone is responsible for it, someone created it—think. He calls on people to use their heads. The second Jew who brought about a revolution in the world was that man, Yeshu, who basically said: “The Merciful One wants the heart.” Emphasis on the heart. Practical commandments? You don’t need all those things. “The Merciful One wants the heart”; the Holy One Blessed be He wants the heart. So he brought us down from the head to the heart. The next Jew who brought about a revolution in the world—Marx, right? Marx, who tells us: Capital. Everything is in the belly. Interests determine everything really, needs, means of production, and so on. Economy. So everything is in the belly. So we started in the head, went down to the heart, got to the belly. The next Jew who brought about a revolution in the world was of course Freud, who brought us down below the belt. So what this means, basically, is: head, then heart, then belly, then below the belt. The next thing left for us is an orthopedist. Meaning, apparently it will be somewhere around the legs. A podiatrist, if you like, a foot doctor. Behind the joke I think there is truth—sad truth in my opinion; others say not, I don’t know—but there is truth, and it is very apt. It’s not just a joke. There is something here, some kind of historical process of descent. Now, it’s easy to identify it with some notion that the world is becoming stupider. Especially if this fits with “the decline of the generations” and all sorts of myths we grew up on, that once people were so wise and today we are so stupid. Not really convincing. I don’t think that is the point. Rather—and this is exactly the description he brings here—the issue is not who is smarter and who is less smart, but who follows the intellect. A person can be very smart and have very high intelligence, but in fact be led by his heart. His heart uses his high intelligence to carry out what it has decided to do, what it wants to do—really, what it is driven to do. And that is a person of the animal soul. A person of the animal soul because, true, he produces very sophisticated rationalizations for his ideologies and values and decisions, but in the end everything comes from the gut, everything comes from the heart. And that is a person of the animal soul. A person of the divine soul is not necessarily a smarter person. He may be smarter, he may be less smart—that is not the issue. Rather, he is a person led by the intellect. As we said earlier, the dwelling place of the divine soul is in the brain, and afterward it spreads to the heart. It harnesses the heart in order to carry out what the intellect decided. But what leads this process—the engine—is the brain, the intellect, not the heart. The heart is the carriage. Whereas in the animal soul, the heart is the engine and the brain is the carriage. Now, the brain can be brilliant. This is not a matter of wise people and fools. This is not a struggle between the smart and the stupid. No one is blameworthy for being stupid. Meaning, it’s not… In the Four Sons in the Passover Haggadah, the opposite of the wise son is the wicked son, not the stupid one. If you want to accuse someone, you accuse him of being wicked, not of being stupid. If he’s stupid, what is he guilty of? So here too, the struggle is not between stupidity and wisdom. The struggle is between giving priority to wisdom, letting wisdom lead me, and not using wisdom—or really letting the heart lead me and perhaps harnessing intelligence or wisdom so that it becomes a tool in the hand of the heart, while the heart actually determines what gets done and makes the decisions. What is the wisdom in the animal soul? What? The wisdom in the animal soul is that same wisdom itself. We are using the brain, but the brain does not lead—the brain is led. It assists the leader. That is intellect-of-instinct. It is really part of the instinct, the intellectual part of the instinct. Okay? I’ll maybe give… What? You’re saying that instead of the decline of generations there is a decline of rationality? It’s not even exactly rationality, depending on how you define rationality. The term rationality is a bit hard to define. Maybe I should explain first, and then what changed in the generations such that there is a decline. I’ll try to explain. Look, I’ll give you an example. Say, how does a discussion in ethics work, in moral philosophy? You want to build a philosophical theory that defines your ethical obligation, your moral obligation. One person says, I don’t know, I claim that maximum good for the maximum number of people—that is the supreme ethical criterion. Now every act will be judged according to that criterion. Interesting proposal. How can you justify such a thing? Why should that be the supreme ethical criterion? Usually people don’t justify it; they just assume it. Fine. So how do you turn this into a paper? You need to write an article. How do you turn this into an article? So what people do is say: let’s take a test case, a thought experiment. Suppose there is, I don’t know what—those people in the Andes, there was that plane crash there, it was Manchester United? I don’t think so, it was something else, rugby. Some plane crashed in the Andes, and there were… Actually, just today at the conference I attended I heard about an English court case from the end of the nineteenth century, Miles or something, I don’t remember the name, about seven people who survived a shipwreck, got into a boat. A case parallel to the Andes one, and there was a boy among them who fainted, and they realized they were all going to die because they were in the middle of the ocean with no provisions, no water, nothing. And they decided to kill the boy who had fainted, drink his blood, and eat his flesh. And when they arrived they were eventually hanged—when they got to England and were tried. And they were tried for manslaughter, really, not murder. And there was—I don’t remember—some majority of three against two or something, I don’t remember the ruling, but it was a serious case. The case I know is the Andes one, where again a plane crashed, again they found themselves in some totally desolate place from which there was no way out. They decided to cast lots, and one of them would have to die and provide food for all the others. Then you take such a case, such a hypothetical case, and ask: okay, according to the moral criterion you propose—maximum good for the maximum number of people—the required decision is to kill one and use him to feed all the others. Assuming the psychological complications won’t be… okay, yes. Or assuming the psychological complications will not be worse than death. What if they won’t be clever enough? That the severity of those complications won’t be greater than dying. And then they say, well, that can’t be right, so something is flawed in this theory. It leads to an absurd conclusion, so we need to revise it, or correct it, or change it, or adopt a different hypothesis, or something. Then you take another case, another thought experiment, and you test the revised theory. Then you say, wait a second, this gives me results—do the results make sense? And I say yes, fine. Check another case. No? Then we need to revise it a bit more. In the end I revise the theory. It’s a bit like scientific work, actually. You pose a scientific hypothesis, you perform an experiment. If it survives the experiment, good; if not, you revise the theory. Articulation, refinement of the theory and fitting it to the facts. And there is a very important difference: in science, the facts are correct. Reality is like that. So clearly the theory, which is supposed to fit the facts, ought to be revised if it doesn’t fit. But here, who says it’s really not right to eat the tenth person so that the other nine will survive? Maybe that really is the right solution? You have a theory. The theory says maximum good for the maximum number of people. The conclusion is: one should kill one person in order to feed the other nine, period. What’s the problem? You can stop there—that’s the conclusion. Why continue? There is some obvious assumption that this can’t be right, it doesn’t make sense, so let’s fix the theory. Now notice what is really happening here. And I’m cheating a little bit here, but I’m cheating didactically just in order to sharpen the point. What I’m really saying is that my heart determines things, not the theory. I adapt the theory to what the heart says, right? Because otherwise, how do I really know it’s not right to eat the tenth person? Because my heart told me it’s not right to eat the tenth person. Ah, my heart said so—so let’s go back and revise the theory. Do you see how the animal soul works? The heart says something, and then it rises to the head “to think and devise cleverness regarding it,” as he writes here. How does he put it? “To think”—line four, yes—“and it also rises to the brain in the head to think and contemplate about them and to devise cleverness regarding them.” The decision of the heart rises to the brain—this is, as it were, the metaphor for the matter—and the brain gets clever. What does “gets clever” mean? It gives it an intellectual or theoretical garment. All right? It basically clothes my gut feelings in intellectual dress. Because in the end what determines things is my gut feelings. That is what determines what is moral and what is not moral. The head here is a servant; it does not determine. In contrast, a person of the divine soul—even though it sounds a bit harsh—but a person of the divine soul really does this: if the theory says maximum good for the maximum number of people, and the conclusion is that one should kill the one in order to feed the other nine, then that’s what I’ll do. So my heart says no? The heart must be subordinated to the head, not the head subordinated to the heart. But even that started from the heart, from that assumption. What? Which assumption? The axiom of maximum good for the maximum… Okay, I said I’m cheating a bit. In a moment I’ll come exactly to that point. But I just want to illustrate the mode of operation of the animal soul versus the divine soul. The example isn’t a good one. The example isn’t a good one, and I don’t know how to give a good example because you can never really make a diagnosis, so the example must inherently be imperfect. Because what I really assumed is that the claim that it is forbidden to kill the one in order to feed the other nine came from the heart, right? When I made the analysis I assumed it came from the heart. So I said that basically the heart determines what is morally right and wrong, and it uses the head to define it and give it theoretical clothing, to build the theory. But that theory is nothing but an orderly formulation of the collection of my gut feelings. That’s all. So in fact the gut determines things, not the head. Okay? Now what is the cheat here? The cheat here is that it’s not necessarily true. It may be true, but not necessarily true. The claim that it is not right to eat the tenth person—that is, to kill the tenth person in order to feed the other nine—is not necessarily the product of an emotion or instinct or whatever you want to call it. For now I won’t distinguish between instinct and emotion and so on; for me at the moment it’s the same thing. It could also be something else. And the indication of that is exactly what you noted earlier. Because even this theory that says maximum good for the maximum number of people—I’m a person of the divine soul, so I said: in a case of conflict between intellect and heart, I go with the intellect. Gladly, I go with the intellect. And what does that mean? Then yes, I will slaughter the tenth person and feed him to the other nine, and my heart protests, fine, but the brain determines, not the heart. The intellect determines; the brain doesn’t determine anything, the intellect does. But where did that theory itself come from? Where did I draw that hypothesis from? One can of course say that it came from a collection of many such thought experiments, and it’s the only thing that fits the total set of my instincts. But if so, then it is once again the animal soul. I’m asking how it came to the person of the divine soul. Meaning: you follow the intellect; your intellect tells you maximum benefit for the maximum number of people. Did you too arrive at this theory by the process I described before? If so, then that too is the animal soul. So what is it then? No—it comes from the intellect. What does it mean that it comes from the intellect? Apparently there is some wing, I don’t know, component, intellectual faculty, that can generate initial insights, give us things that are just true—call it intuition. We already discussed that too, in the hard questions about what is right and so on—here is intellect. Right. That was when we spoke about intuition versus intellect, and I linked intuition to emotion. That is exactly what I’m saying now. Meaning, let’s call it intuition for the sake of discussion. Intuition is really an intellectual faculty, not an emotion. And intuition gives me conclusions without an argument. Meaning, it is a conclusion that does not emerge from an argument based on premises and deriving a conclusion from them, but is simply true because my intuition says it is true. And the premises themselves? Is that a premise? Yes, that is how premises emerge. But it can also be a conclusion; I’m not deriving anything else from it. I derive it. Never mind. It can serve as premises for a future argument. Okay, so if that is so, then all kinds of things can emerge for me without an orderly argument leading to them, and they do not belong to the heart; they emerge from the intellect, from intuition. Fine. If so, then this feeling too, which says that it is not right to kill the tenth person in order to feed the other nine, I too can attribute that to intuition and not necessarily to emotion. Why did I decide that this comes specifically from emotion and the theory comes from intellect? So the truth is that there is still room to distinguish between them. It isn’t complete cheating. It’s actually a fairly good example, even if not a perfect one. Because it is obvious that this comes from the heart. We all understand that the heart revolts when we think about it. Whereas the heart does not tell me “maximum benefit for the maximum number of people.” That’s something I’m indifferent to. It seems right to me, but there is not the emotional fervor that drives me to think that way. There is no revolt against the opposite or anything like that. Do you understand? It is not accompanied by emotional events. So it is much easier and more plausible to attribute the theory to intuition, and in contrast there is definitely room to see this revolt against the decision to kill one in order to feed the other nine as an expression of the heart. True, it is not necessary. It could be the result of intuition. But it isn’t entirely far-fetched to say that this is emotion and that is intuition. Okay? Therefore the example is not all that bad. Couldn’t it be that you simply brought rules into such a situation, and then the totality of considerations is something like: if I kill him, then tomorrow they’ll kill me, and all sorts of things like that, and then you go to sleep at night, and if your heart doesn’t let you fall asleep and not your intellect? Okay, it’s true that the intellect says this is what should be done, but you can’t be at peace with it. It’s not that you started with let’s think about the idea of maximum. Wait—you’re describing it as a result of the heart. I’m saying, or the reverse: either you start with the intellect and say… Those are the two possibilities I presented: intuition or emotion. I’m saying, but it’s not as though you started from some assumptions. No, the hypothesis is not an assumption that leads to it. On the contrary, the hypothesis—maximum benefit for the maximum number of people—is a position now standing for examination. Yes, in reality you test it. It’s not—I’m saying it’s not a position; I’m saying it was a reality and now you examine it. What does “reality” mean? What is reality? A situation you get caught in, like the plane. No—“maximum benefit for the maximum number of people” is not a situation; it is a principle. A general principle. That is not a situation. The situation is a specific application of the principle. The question is where the principle came from. I’m saying that just… Not that you sat at home and thought about the principle; you got caught in a situation. Fine, and it came out of there. It comes out of there, but it does not come out of the rumbling of the heart. The theory is not accompanied by the same feeling of revolt, the emotional storm, that accompanies someone who sees another person kill someone to eat him. There, it is obvious to all of us that emotions are involved too. The question is whether it starts with them. That is a good question; I don’t know. That’s why I said the example is not compelling, but it isn’t absurd, because there is very strong emotional activity here, and there is definitely room to attribute the position that says it is not okay to do this to my emotions. It’s also the example of using the principle of proportionality later on in the law of war, harming innocents. Yes, so if there is too much harm to innocents, people say: here we stop. Yes, and there too you can debate whether that is emotion or intellect. There is definitely room to say that my intuition tells me there is proportionality here, not emotion. Not simply that it pains me that many people are killed, but really that it is not reasonable to kill a hundred people in order to save one, just as an extreme case. It is not reasonable—intuition. Fine, where the line passes is another question, but that is a question that lies here and not here. Fine, I’ll still get to dilemmas of proportionality and all sorts of things like that; I’ll get to those too, because it ties in. So the claim really, through this example—I don’t care right now what in this example is actually emotion and what is intuition—I only want to use it to demonstrate that we basically have two types of faculties, and it is important to distinguish between them. And that is what I was talking about when I spoke of intuition. Now here too, basically, assuming that this thing comes to me from the intellect, from the theory—I don’t care right now what theory; I spoke about the Talmud but it could be any other theory—that it comes from the intellect, and opposite it stands the heart, then this is litmus paper distinguishing whether I am a person of the divine soul or the animal soul. If I am a person of the divine soul, I kill that person and eat him. If I am a person of the animal soul, then I don’t kill him because my emotion revolts, and that is what dictates the decision, and then I will also build myself a theory that backs it up—but the theory is ad hoc. After the emotion said no, I built a theory too. And this is what he means when he says that it rises from the heart to the brain to devise and contemplate—the brain gives it, builds for it the theoretical structure, but in the end it only represents my emotions. Okay? That is a person of the animal soul. A person of the divine soul is the opposite. He says: there is a brain that tells me what it is right to do, and it descends to the heart. What is the role of this descent to the heart? “And you shall know today and take it to your heart.” The heart is a tremendously powerful engine. That is another hint he gives us here. Why is the animal soul also called the vital soul? First of all, on the practical level, the animal soul exists not only in human beings but also in animals, in living creatures. The vital soul is the soul of life itself, something more primitive. It exists in animals too, which perhaps have no free will and perhaps no intellect, depending on what level; in my opinion they have no intellect at all, but the concept of intelligence needs to be defined before asserting that, so I’ll leave it for now. But beyond that, I think it is called the vital soul because it is also what we live by. When I see something and it hits me in the heart, that is a much stronger engine for action than something I understand to be right. I remember when I was in Yeruham, studying there in the yeshivah—I don’t remember around what story this came up, with Greenpeace I think, I don’t remember exactly—some guys said: wow, if only we had the self-sacrifice that those people have for their values. Real envy. And these are not bad values, by the way; those are completely positive values—on the contrary, it really and truly deserves great admiration. But they didn’t find, and I don’t find within myself either, the spiritual powers that I see in those people. They risk their lives, devote energy and money and time and resources to this—amazing. Truly people dedicating their lives to fighting for values. Why don’t I find this within myself? Well, maybe just because my personality isn’t much, but I also have excuses, mitigating circumstances you might find in them—but there are other mitigating circumstances. The mitigating circumstances are that it is hard for me to devote my life with full emotional intensity to redeeming the firstborn donkey, with all due respect. I don’t see it. It doesn’t arouse me in any way experientially or emotionally. My emotions are not stirred there. I understand intellectually that this is what the Holy One Blessed be He wants, therefore it must be done. Intellect is not an engine; it is a very weak engine. And if there is something toward which you have strong feeling, that is a mighty engine. Now, when you see damage with your own eyes—you see animals suffering, you see the temperature rising, you see disease, ozone, all sorts of things they explain—you see people suffering, it is much easier to identify with that. It is a very strong engine for action. Now I’m not diminishing them; they deserve great appreciation. It is still a fact that I don’t do this even for their values, not only for my own values. So I’m not trying to reduce the appreciation they deserve. I’m trying to show through this that it is much easier to identify with things you see before your eyes than with things you understand to be true. Why? Because things you see before your eyes act directly on your heart. Meaning, perhaps because… How can you compare that to redeeming the firstborn donkey? Something technical. If I ran into murderers, I assume I would act much more vigorously than against people who don’t redeem the firstborn donkey. “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood”—there you have the same emotional dimension. But you understand? Exactly—the emotional dimension is the moral dimension, so I would belong to Greenpeace. I wouldn’t act there on behalf of Judaism; I’d act there on behalf of Greenpeace. That’s part of what they said: “a tear of morality and burning lips,” because you can see that it’s not… Redeeming the firstborn donkey is something artificial. Exactly. And this is called harnessing the heart. That is exactly the opposite process from the animal soul. To take what you think is right—and “take it to your heart”—you have to harness the heart, otherwise you won’t be able to find the inner strength to devote yourself to it. The engine is an engine in the heart, but the driver—the one who determines where this engine will go—is the head. Therefore the heart has a role, but the heart does not make decisions. The heart helps you carry out what you decided. Therefore the thoughts in the head descend into the heart, and it too has a role. In the divine soul too the heart has a role, but it is not a leading role—it is a motivating role. Meaning, it helps you find the energy, but what to do with that energy is decided… that decision is made here. Once, someone asked me in Yeruham—I don’t know whether I told this in Yeruham—someone asked me about dating: should one follow the heart or the head? I told him: only the head. But the head should take into account what the heart says. Meaning, the heart says whether there is chemistry, whether you love her, whether she loves you, whether you feel good, you… yes, those are the emotional dimensions. That is very important. Take it, weigh its significance in your head, weigh the other data too, and reach a decision. It is a very important input—but the intellect does that. Only the intellect has to take it into account, because part of building a healthy relationship is that there be an emotional relationship between the couple. But if the heart makes decisions, that is a very bad way to make decisions. Meaning, the very same input, if it is input for the head to make a decision while considering it, then that is perfectly fine, because the head makes the decision. But if the heart makes the decision, that is problematic. And often it will also be a bad decision. The heart can’t take the intellect into account. The heart doesn’t take anything into account—that is exactly the point. The heart does not make decisions. To make decisions with the heart is really called not making decisions; it is only a borrowed expression. You are not making a decision; you are letting the heart go wherever it goes. Making decisions by definition is the divine soul. Meaning, the animal soul is not making decisions, just as an animal does not make decisions. Right? When we spoke about morality, we spoke about Amnon Yitzhak’s story with the sheep, if you remember: the rabbi wakes up at four in the morning, slaughters a sheep, covers it with a tallit, and cries, “A righteous one, a righteous one has passed away,” wailing in floods of tears. All the people wake up at four in the morning, look out the window and see their rabbi crying like that—surely some towering righteous man has departed. Entire funeral day, everyone weeping bitterly. They come, accompany the righteous man to the cemetery, and there they remove the tallit to lower the righteous one into the grave, and everyone sees that this righteous man has four legs. At the first stage, of course, they all want to swap him with the rabbi, that is, to put the rabbi in there. Then he says to them: I don’t understand what you want from me. You… when I rebuke you, when I criticize you, you explain to me that you are terribly righteous. You don’t hurt anyone, you don’t murder anyone, you don’t steal, you’re really righteous, everything is fine, you don’t hit anyone. This sheep is no less righteous than you: it didn’t hurt anyone, it didn’t hit anyone, it didn’t murder anyone—it’s no less righteous than you. What does he mean to say? I think that’s a powerful story. Powerful because people think righteousness is a matter of outcomes. Righteousness is not a matter of outcomes. If someone behaves well because he has a good heart—he was just born that way. The good inclination overpowered the evil inclination, like in the kindergarten story. The good inclination overpowered the evil inclination, so he behaves well. That is a person of the animal soul. That is a person of the animal soul, except that he is a good beast—he is a sheep. He is not a lion; he is not a lioness. He is a sheep, and a sheep is a good animal. A lioness is… not evil, of course, but her nature takes her to prey, not to spread kindness. Okay? So it depends how you were born. That is neither righteous nor wicked. It is wicked because he did not choose? Because he can choose, and he decided to be a sheep. The sheep is not wicked because it did not decide to be a sheep; it simply is a sheep. But you decided to be a sheep. So you are a person of the animal soul. Now, there can be a person of the animal soul who is Mother Teresa. A pillar of righteousness, doing everything… Aryeh Levin, excuse me, there’s a synagogue here, Rabbi Aryeh Levin, okay? A righteous man. Righteous in all his ways; he does only good things, really a perfect person, a delight to be with, “he kisses lips who gives a right answer.” But he is a sheep. He has never made a decision in his life; he is just built that way, a good person, kindhearted, born that way. And he truly does good to others all his life. But he is not righteous in the Kantian sense, yes? In the sense that he made a decision to be good. No—he’s just that way, he’s a sheep. So that is a person of the animal soul. A person of the animal soul is not a bad person. A person of the animal soul is a person who does not decide. Now, what he will do depends on kindergarten. Meaning, if the good inclination is stronger, he will do good; if the evil inclination is stronger, he will do bad. But that has nothing to do with righteousness and wickedness. That is a person of the animal soul. A person of the animal soul, whether he does good or whether he does bad, fails the test. Therefore this is the second level I spoke about: it is not a struggle between good inclination and evil inclination. The struggle between good inclination and evil inclination is a struggle taking place within a person of the animal soul. Therefore it does not matter who wins—you remain, you lose in either case. Because you are a person of the animal soul. You do not make decisions; you are driven to these actions, you do not decide on them. What is required of you is to be a person of the divine soul. A person of the divine soul fights against both inclinations, both the good inclination and the evil inclination. I have strong desires to do good. We all do. There is an inclination to do good. We are good… it feels good to do good. Okay? Sometimes it is not the right thing to do. Sometimes one must behave harshly. Yes, “a teacher is strict with his student,” and all sorts of things like that. Educational considerations; sometimes other considerations in which harsh behavior is really the right thing to do. Okay, and the heart won’t let you. The heart won’t let you. What are you supposed to do in such a case? You are supposed to make decisions. If you go with the heart, then maybe you’re a good person—good in the sense of a sheep. But you are a good beast. Meaning, you are a person of the animal soul. And a person of the divine soul must make the decisions. Sometimes he will go with the good inclination, sometimes with the evil inclination. What is common to both sides is that he does not go with the inclinations. He decides. He can decide to go with this or to go with that, but what he does is his decision; it has nothing to do with the inclinations. The inclinations try to push him here or push him there, but what he does does not depend on the pushes. What he does depends on what he decides. At most, the pushes make the decision harder for him, because he has drives opposing it. So it will be harder, but in the end… that is the role of the inclinations, to make things harder or easier. But you make the decisions, not your inclinations. Is there someone who makes a decision to do evil? Really? I think we discussed this once. I wrestled with it for a long time. It seems hard for me to imagine such a person. So he doesn’t decide? What? So he doesn’t decide. So what does he decide? He decides not to decide. It doesn’t seem clear at all to me—a decision to do evil… If you can’t… if you can’t make a decision to do evil… No, you can decide not to decide, to be a sheep. Ah, okay. And it turns out you’re a lion and not a sheep. That is called a decision to do evil. Because really you are putting yourself under compulsion, yes? You decide not to decide and let your nature take you. Now, your nature can take you to do bad things or to do good things. If it takes you to do bad things, then in the end you are guilty. You are guilty because, after all, you are not a sheep—you decided to be a sheep. So you are guilty of that. Or a lion, yes. But a real decision to act even though I think it is wrong—I find that hard to imagine, even a Nazi. Huh? Nazism. I don’t know, I don’t know. I think in the end they somehow got swept along. Yes, they built themselves some theory that blinded… You know those stories, even about Himmler, who was squeamish at some massacre like Babi Yar—not necessarily Babi Yar itself, but some mass murder of people—and he had to drink a lot of wine and get drunk in order to endure it. And they were drunk for twelve years? Huh? They weren’t drunk for twelve years. He wasn’t doing the murdering for twelve years. He didn’t see it in front of his eyes. He made decisions, obviously. But I’m saying, I don’t know to what extent he said to himself: look, this is an evil deed and I’m deciding to do it. No—he explained to himself that it was the right thing to do. He thought it was the right thing to do, that Jews are a serious problem in the world and must be gotten rid of. Now again, then you ask: so why is he responsible for his actions? He is responsible for his actions because probably at bottom he should have understood that it was still evil. But he built himself some theory that justified it. A person doesn’t just function like that; he can’t endure it. Therefore I don’t know whether there is a person who, in a completely cold way, decides to do evil. I don’t know. Maybe. They also got swept along, and that too is something one is swept into, no? Meaning, they started from some good idea and… Yes, the theory pulled them along, and they go with society and all sorts of things by which you bypass the need to make a conscious decision to do evil. Meaning, to say “this is evil and in a conscious way I decide to do it.” No—you shut your eyes and look around at society and everyone says so, so apparently it can’t be entirely evil, and never mind. Now, that doesn’t exempt you from responsibility. But you should have stood there and insisted and investigated and reached a conclusion. But you did not make a decision to do evil. It’s like driving drunk, no? What? It’s like driving drunk. Yes—you chose drunkenness. Right, right. Though drunkenness is an extreme case, deep drunkenness, because there really after the beginning it’s not entirely in your control. Here with the Nazis, I think that even during it, after they had brought themselves into the situation, at least for some of them, there was still some element by which they could stop themselves. It’s not that they entered a deterministic state, some kind of “fire and forget.” You made the decision to be a Nazi and from then on everything is automatic. Clearly they also faced daily dilemmas, and in fact some of them also did good deeds—that is, there were some who still showed themselves to be human beings here and there, and alongside that also did terrible things. That is the problem with the mixture. People are complicated creatures. In any case, where was I? The sheep, yes. So the claim really is that your struggle ought to be over who will decide—not who will decide, but whether to decide. Because “the animal soul decides” is only a borrowed expression. “The animal soul decides” means that I decided not to decide. And the animal soul goes wherever it goes—it is the sheep within me. Yes, it is my animal, my lower dimension, the soul. Yes, this is called “man is the soul”; when people just say “soul,” they mean the animal soul. “Divine soul” uses the term soul only as an antithesis to soul; it is really the neshamah, the higher parts in the terminology of our spiritual layers. Maybe just a moment—who is the “I” that judges between all the forces? Is the “I” judging between the divine soul and the animal soul? No, no, no. The “I” is the divine soul. Only the divine soul can loosen the reins, let go of the reins for a moment and let the chariot drive by itself. Now, the decision to let go of the reins is really your decision to do evil, in that you decide not to decide. The fact that after we do something bad we usually regret it—during it we have lots of theories, but after we do the bad thing we regret it—what does that mean? That we didn’t really choose to do it as evil. Somehow we covered it up, fooled ourselves. Once the interests are over, because I already did it, now it’s finished, suddenly I already understand that I did something not okay. I don’t need anyone to explain it to me. And it accompanies me all the time. I just decide—in a certain sense I decide not to decide, or to fool myself. There are many ways not to decide. I can just not decide and fall asleep. Yes, I can not decide and wrap myself in some ideology behind which I understand that it at least requires checking, if not more than that, but it helps me. I’ll give you an example, yes, about myself. Speaking ill of myself I’m allowed to do, contrary to the myth of the Chafetz Chaim. I have a daughter who is very vegan and very militant, and the truth is I completely identify with her on the ideological level. I just can’t stand up to it. So I’m vegetarian, not vegan. Now I see her, I hear her, and I say to her honestly: listen, I simply can’t do it. I have no theories, I don’t know how to explain it. I can’t stand up to it, it’s hard for me. But I hear her arguing with people, and she argues with anyone sitting here—Shmuel knows the situation—and in the end people produce theories from here and there; if not for the interests, they themselves wouldn’t understand the theories. Everyone knows in his head that it’s not okay. There are insane abuses. Animals undergo insane abuses. And there is really no justification for it. Meaning, it’s repression, weakness, what’s called weakness. I mean, I just can’t hold out, I can’t, I’m weak. I have no other argument, nothing to say. But you should hear what theories people come up with. Well, the Torah permitted it, and this and that, and really what’s the alternative, and after all you can’t, and animals were made for this. Everyone invents his own theory. Everyone knows it’s not true. Everyone knows. Whoever knows the facts, whoever took a little interest and saw the facts—horrible abuses, truly horrible, something awful. She says it’s a Shoah in every sense—true, it’s a Shoah for animals, but it’s a Shoah. What people do there: concentration camps in every sense, only for animals. There is no comparison between animals and human beings, but they are caused suffering in a systematic, insane way. What theories people invent. Why? Because this is exactly the animal soul. The animal soul basically lets the gut decide, and the intellect builds theories that anchor what the heart is really telling you. Okay? But the heart decided, not… or really… nobody decided. It carries you. You decided not to decide. Okay, there are different ways. You can fall asleep, you can wrap yourself up, you can drug yourself, with narcotic drugs or with narcotic theories. It doesn’t matter. It is the same idea. So that is a person of the animal soul. Now, “opium for intellectuals.” What? “Opium for intellectuals.” Žižek said that? Okay, I didn’t know that one. In any case, sometimes intellectualism is itself the opium. Not opium for the intellectual, but intellectualism itself is the opium. Sometimes there are very developed theories to explain something that is clearly not right. And clearly in intuition—not emotional intuition—clearly in intuition it is not right. But they also surely have contradictory theories? Huh? And they also have contradictory theories. Even though it’s clear it’s not right, and still in the end really holding on to it. That is usually when the heart revolts, not when intuition revolts. Fine, that is another distinction. Okay. In any case, the claim is that the struggle is not a struggle between good and evil, but a struggle between deciding and not deciding—or deciding for evil, if you think there is such a thing; I said I don’t know. But either to decide or not to decide—that is the struggle between the divine soul and the animal soul. When one looks at… someone mentioned earlier that midrash, yes, “better a poor but wise youth than an old and foolish king.” So the youth is the good inclination, and the old and foolish king is the evil inclination. So Rashi explains there in Ecclesiastes why: because the evil inclination enters a person from birth, and the youth enters him from bar mitzvah, from when he reaches the age of commandments, and therefore he is young, he is a youth. So what enters the child at age thirteen? What is a child’s maturation? Is maturation that he becomes wise? I don’t think so. There are very wise children even before age thirteen. The process is not a process of becoming wise; it is a process of becoming a decision-maker. Becoming a decision-maker and becoming responsible. A child has no responsibility. A child can be smart; he can understand things, maybe even complicated things. Sometimes it’s hard, it takes skill, but not to be responsible. What? There is no aspect of responsibility. There isn’t, there isn’t, no. Again, it’s always a generalization; in any case it’s a generalization. Obviously not everyone begins to be responsible at age thirteen, that is obvious. But the process expressed in maturation, I think, is a process of developing responsibility, not developing wisdom. A child who cannot make a transaction—yes, a deaf-mute, an insane person, and a minor are not legal entities. They cannot enter into a transaction. Why? Because he doesn’t understand what it means? He understands what it means; explain it to him and he understands: this is mine and that is not mine and he gave it to me. A child understands that. He does not understand the significance, meaning, he lacks the responsibility to understand what responsibility this places on him. That requires maturity—that is, it requires an adult person who understands what it means, what the implications are, how to think further, what this places on me, what obligations. Is it worth buying this field? It imposes many obligations on me too, all sorts of things. That is judgment, but it is not wisdom. If you explain it to him, the child will understand everything, but he is not responsible for his actions. Now this is also true of the insane person, by the way. An “insane person” is not someone lacking IQ. He can be a genius—on the contrary, often geniuses have some element of madness. He is a genius, but there is no… no… the insane person in this sense resembles the minor. After all, the insane person and the minor are similar; they are the same category. It is not a category of wisdom; it is a category of responsibility. Now what is this responsibility? This responsibility is the ability to decide, right? To make a decision, to be a person and not a sheep. To decide, understand what that decision means, stand behind it, and bear the consequences, whether the consequences are good or bad, right? That is the good inclination. Now the inclination… What? What? “The righteous one knows the soul of his beast,” in the book of Psalms. It seems to me the Tanya or someone else says about that that sometimes one needs to know how to accept the inclination or yield to it, because otherwise you will break. Fine, that’s Rabbi Ilai perhaps: if a person’s inclination overpowers him, let him go to a distant place, wear black, and do what his heart desires. There it’s not necessarily a full transgression; it can be yielding to the inclination in the broader sense, not necessarily Rabbi Ilai—overeating, whatever. It’s not a formal transgression, but it is still the same idea. Like the beautiful captive woman. But there it would be, as it were, even for someone who does not accept Rabbi Ilai, relatively speaking he would still accept it. That if it’s not a transgression, then yes. I don’t care—I didn’t say this is Rabbi Ilai because the Jewish law does not follow him. I said these are the extreme cases of Rabbi Ilai. Yes, I agree. Regardless of whether Jewish law follows him or not—that’s a dispute among the medieval authorities. In any case, when they say that the good inclination enters a person at age thirteen, they mean the divine soul in the language of the author of Tanya. Not the good inclination in the sense of two inclinations, but cognition, understanding, responsibility, being a person and not a sheep. That enters at age thirteen. Until age thirteen, is the child evil? Until age thirteen does he do only bad things—he doesn’t do good things? Certainly not. It’s not the evil inclination and the good inclination—it’s the animal soul and the divine soul in the language of the author of Tanya. Meaning, until age thirteen, even if he does good, he does it because he is good. He’s a good person, a good kid, born good, so he does good. If he was born bad, then he does bad. From an adult person, what I expect of him is that what he was born as should not dictate what he does. Adults are exactly like children in this regard—meaning, someone who was born bad was born bad. Even when he’s an adult he was born bad. But when he’s an adult I demand that he overcome the fact that he was born bad. Activate your divine soul and decide not to go with your evil inclination. But the child, who does not yet have that ability—that is what is expressed here in the phrase that he does not yet have the divine soul, the good inclination has not yet entered him—so in principle I have no demands of him. I educate him, but I have no demands; there is no criminal responsibility, because if he does it, he does it because that’s how he is. So if he was born good, he does good, and if he was born bad, he does bad. Okay? So this idea expresses the matter of the divine soul and the animal soul. And in the language of the Sages they often call this the good inclination and the evil inclination, but that is really what they mean. Because the inclinations in their ordinary sense are all part of the animal soul, and therefore what the author of Tanya writes here—that the dwelling of the animal soul is from kelipat nogah. Kelipat nogah is good and evil mixed together. So why, if there is good in it, is it a kelipah? It is a kelipah because it is not the person himself; it is what surrounds him. The inclinations. There are good inclinations too, but it is still a kelipah, because it is my environment trying to drag me to do good or to do bad, and so it is a kelipah. And what I am supposed to do is not surrender to the kelipot, but let the inside decide—that I decide, not that they decide for me. Not that my environment decides for me, but that I decide. That is why he says the animal soul is specifically from kelipat nogah, not from the first three kelipot, which are complete evil. Because the good inclination too belongs to the animal soul. My goal is not to go with the good inclination; it is not to go with inclinations at all. Now I return to that Dov Sadan with the orthopedist. This phenomenon whereby emotion basically has dominance is, I think, a very strong phenomenon in recent years, in the last generation. A very strong phenomenon, and I at least think it is connected to the postmodern despair over the intellect. There is some feeling that the intellect can lead anywhere, a kind of despair because you often hear the statement that philosophy doesn’t progress anywhere. You can say this, you can say that; these assumptions lead to this conclusion, those assumptions… philosophy will never settle anything, a philosophical debate gets nowhere, so what’s the point of engaging in it at all? Fine. So how do you make decisions? The intellect doesn’t help me because the intellect will justify anything. Give it assumptions like these and it will derive conclusions from them. So what do you do? Then the heart decides. If you were to say that intuition decides, I agree. If you say the heart decides, that is problematic. Because “the heart decides” is really no—not deciding, letting the chariot go without the driver. Now, how do we know when it is this and when it is that? That is very difficult. Because often what I think is emotion may be intuition, and vice versa—I don’t know. I have certain feelings about myself. When I act, I can try to assess—and I’m not sure I always succeed—whether it comes from here or from there. It is harder to assess others. Maybe one can try, but of course that is very dangerous. It is hard to assess. All right? But in principle I think the lesson that really emerges from this picture is that one should operate from here and not from here. And often, because of this despair over the intellect, people say: okay, then the heart should just say whatever it says. And I think nowadays you hear this very strongly from many people I have spoken with, and with whom I had all kinds of debates about killing innocents—I probably won’t have time to get to that, maybe we’ll talk about it later—but with these kinds of questions many people say: listen, you’re right on the principled level, but I can’t do such a thing; my heart won’t let me. Okay, fine, so take a pill, I tell him. If that is the right thing to do, then that is the right thing to do. What difference does it make that your heart won’t let you? You feel bad about it, but that is what has to be done. No. Because for him the heart decides; the intellect is the opposite. Sometimes there is a kind of reservation that if you go with the intellect it can lead you to terrible places—you can be a Nazi with intellect. And maybe that is true in principle, but I still would not take the reins away from the intellect. Is this Nietzsche’s man? What? Nietzsche’s man, who says there is no truth, imposes intellect and determines… Okay, I don’t know Nietzsche well enough, so maybe. So this reservation about the intellect and the focus on emotion—you can see it everywhere: in political arguments, in philosophical arguments, in ethical arguments, in artistic arguments about taste, for example. Morality—a great many people tie it to emotion. Morality is emotion, many people will tell you. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, for example, would say such a thing? No—morality is only intellect. There are feelings about what is right and what is not right, but someone who hands over his moral decisions to emotion, in my view arrives at very bad decisions—morally very bad decisions, not utilitarianly. Morally very bad decisions. Sometimes I pity someone and it is not right to pity him, and then one must behave toward him with firmness, even cruelty, or vice versa, whatever. Sometimes I don’t pity him, but the truth is that he really is pitiable. In both directions. If we talk about left and right—say, Gideon Levy with heartbreaking articles about suffering Palestinians, and therefore we all need to be leftists. That’s a problematic argument. It’s a problematic argument not because he brings incorrect facts—which is also true sometimes—but that’s not even the point. Even if the facts are correct. Fine, one should try to ensure that an innocent person does not suffer—that is obvious. But why is that supposed to bring me to a change in worldview? One must be careful not to be dragged by this strong emotion, this emotion of compassion, into forming a mistaken worldview. A mistaken understanding of the consequences of a certain act or mode of conduct, which again leads many people… That’s the point. So no—I need to see to it that the consequences won’t be like that, and I can still remain with such a worldview. Show me that such views necessarily cause such consequences, and that would already be an argument one has to deal with. But they don’t necessarily have to cause that. In practice right now it does cause it, and there is nothing separating the two. Okay, so what do you want to change? In practice right now, this is my worldview and this too is the practical result—this is what you want to change? So let’s not change the worldview, let’s change only these consequences. That too is possible—or maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. By the way, this goes both ways. There are others who say: Gideon Levy doesn’t interest me at all. Why? Because they should all be killed while they’re young. No compassion whatsoever. And since that’s the case, there are no moral obligations either. The fact that you have no compassion—I don’t know, that’s another matter, take a pill so that you’ll have compassion. But the moral obligations remain in place. So what if you have no compassion? Still, an innocent person ought not to suffer. And this is true on both sides of the equation. Meaning, I’m saying that the focus of the discussion must not be on the emotional plane, but rather on the cognitive plane.