Ethics, Faith, and Halakha – Lesson 14 – Rabbi Michael Abraham
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- Introduction and course definitions for the new semester
- Separating psychology from philosophy of morality
- Moral pluralism versus one moral truth
- The argument from morality and its connection to God
- A theological argument versus a philosophical argument
- The naturalistic fallacy and the connection to normative validity
- The Euthyphro dilemma: good because of God, or God because of the good
- The positions of halakhic decisors in the Euthyphro dilemma
- Summary: the meaning of defining the good and God
- The good does not depend on God
- Moral laws as constraints on God
- The meaning and the coloring of the statement
- The evening star and the morning star—the coloring
- An external source for morality
- The definition of a law and its maker
- Logical limitations on God
- The stone paradox and omnipotence
- Moral laws as logical constraints
- The moral concept does not change
- The difference between principles and practice
- The debate over abortion and the definition of the value of life
- The connection between logic and facts
- Morality as a system of if-then
- The connection between divine freedom and morality
- The tension between foreknowledge and human freedom
- Closing and invitation for questions
Summary
General Overview
The lecture opens the second semester of the course on morality, faith / belief, and Jewish law with a bird’s-eye summary of the previous semester, and then moves into an in-depth discussion of the Euthyphro dilemma and the question of whether morality is imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He, or is a product of His will. The speaker argues that morality is objective and is not subject either to human determination or to divine determination, and that what seems like a contradiction between God’s omnipotence and morality being imposed on Him is resolved once we understand that morality arises from necessary relations between contents, and not from independent facts.
Summary of the Previous Semester: The Nature of Morality
The speaker goes back over the definition that a moral act is an act done מתוך free choice and moral motivation, and not מתוך nature or programming. He distinguishes between the psychology of morality (what people actually do) and the philosophy of morality (what is right to do), illustrating this by means of the trolley dilemma. He also rejects the claim that a multiplicity of moral opinions indicates moral pluralism, and argues that the very existence of debate proves that the disputants assume there is one moral truth.
The Objectivity of Morality and Moral Intuition
The speaker explains that morality is objective, and moral intuition is only the tool by which we perceive moral reality, just as eyes are the tool by which we see physical reality. Intuition does not determine what is moral; it reveals what is objectively moral.
The Euthyphro Dilemma and the Two Options
The speaker presents Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma: Is the good good because God commanded it, or did God command it because it is good? If the good is only a product of divine command, then the statement “God is good” has no meaning because it is a tautology. If the good precedes God, then there is something imposed on Him. The speaker chooses the second option and argues that morality is not determined by the Holy One, blessed be He.
Resolving the Contradiction: Moral Laws as Relations Between Contents
The speaker explains that the contradiction between God’s omnipotence and morality being imposed on Him is resolved when one understands the difference between independent facts and relations between facts. The Holy One, blessed be He, can determine any fact He wishes, but once He has determined the facts, the relations between them are determined by the contents of those facts themselves. For example, once God created a world with living creatures, the value of life follows from that necessarily, and the prohibition of murder is imposed on Him. It is like the claim that once you determine that God knows everything in advance, it follows that there is no free choice—not because of a limit on omnipotence, but because the relation between knowledge and choice is a necessary relation of content.
Implications for Theology and Jewish Law
The speaker concludes by arguing that this understanding solves many problems in theology: things that seem imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He, do not limit His omnipotence, but are rather a necessary result of the choices He Himself made in creating the world. He promises to continue the discussion of this topic in the next lecture.
Full Transcript
[Speaker A] Well,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This semester we’re continuing the course from the previous semester, but I’m not assuming attendance in the previous semester. Each semester is self-contained, yes, it stands on its own, so I’m not going to use things we dealt with last semester. I’ll begin with some kind of short summary, just to give the full picture to those who were in the previous semester. This summary is actually for those who were there. Those who weren’t there, as far as I’m concerned, can of course listen to the recordings if they want, but in principle they can also take part in this semester and nothing should be missing for them. That’s the definition of the relationship between the semesters. Okay, so I’ll maybe start with a bird’s-eye summary, really. We dealt with the question—first of all, the question of what morality is. And I said that morality doesn’t just mean a certain kind of actions. You can be a person who does good deeds all your life and refrains from doing bad deeds all your life, and you still won’t necessarily be a moral person. You’re not a moral person because an inseparable part of the matter is the motivation for which you do those things, and the capacity for choice—that is, that it’s done out of choice. Therefore, a moral act is an act done from moral motivation, out of commitment to the moral imperative, or in Kant’s formulation, the categorical imperative, and only then is it a moral act. Yes, a sheep that doesn’t harm its companions and helps everyone around it is not a moral creature. It’s not a moral creature because it does that because its nature causes it to do so; it doesn’t choose to do it, it isn’t done from moral motivations, it simply does it because that’s how it’s programmed. Such a thing is not a moral action, and it’s not a moral agent, yes, it’s not a person or an entity that acts morally. That’s the first point. The second point is that the definition of what is moral and what is immoral is not a human definition. Meaning, if we say that a person determines his own values for himself, legislates for himself what is considered moral and what is considered immoral in his eyes, that’s a mistake. What do I mean, a mistake? You can define things however you want, empty definitions—but that’s not the accepted definition of morality, contrary to what many people may think. I brought Ari Elon in his derashot and elsewhere—the rabbinic and sovereign human being—and my claim was that moral behavior is conditioned on the moral imperative being given. You didn’t decide what is moral and what isn’t moral, because if you decide what is moral and what isn’t moral, then it becomes almost a tautology. You always do what you decide. So what’s the difference between a moral person and an immoral person? A moral person is a person who decides to do X on the assumption that X is good, or because X is good. So you can’t say here that a person legislates his values to himself and still preserve him as a moral entity. Just one second, there’s something urgent here. Okay, so that’s the second point. After that I said that I distinguished between the psychology of morality and the philosophy of morality. The psychology of morality talks about the question of what my motivations are, what drives me to behave morally. Philosophy of morality determines what is moral and determines that if you did it in order to be moral, or because it is the moral imperative, then you are a moral person. When I describe the moral behaviors of human beings, that’s a branch of psychology. Philosophy deals with the question of how one ought to behave, not what human beings do. Yes, an example would be the trolley dilemma. In the trolley dilemma we usually talk about a situation where a person is standing near a railway junction, and a train is coming that is about to run over, say, five workers sleeping on the track. I can divert, shift the train to the second branch, the other set of tracks, and there one person is sleeping. So instead of killing five people, it will kill one person. The question is whether it is right to do that, or to leave the train as it is and not sacrifice the one in order to save the five. That is what’s called the trolley dilemma. Now, the trolley dilemma gets psychological treatments. Psychologists study how people think about that dilemma, what people decide, why they decide that way. That’s psychological research, descriptive research, yes? It describes what people do. Those are facts, not norms. Because what people do is not necessarily what is right. I’m only describing what people do. The philosophical discussion of this dilemma will not deal with what people do, but with what people should do. Meaning, even if most people don’t do that, I may still think that the majority is mistaken. What is right to do is actually to do the other thing. The first discussion is a psychological discussion; the second discussion is a philosophical discussion. Okay? Moral theory deals with the second kind of discussion, not the first. The first discussions are a branch of psychology. They have no connection to the question of what is right to do. And many times people mix up the description of what people do with what is right to do. I also mentioned that very often—and this is a similar mistake, so I’ll mention it already here—people often bring as proof of moral pluralism, yes, of the idea that there isn’t one moral truth but rather a plurality of moral truths, the fact that there are disagreements in the area of morality. Yes, different groups think differently, different people think differently. And my claim was that the fact that there are disagreements in morality has no connection at all to the question whether there is a plurality of moral truths. Because it is entirely possible that group A thinks it is permissible to do X, and group B thinks it is forbidden to do X. Does that mean that both conceptions are correct? No. It means that factually there are two conceptions in the world, but it does not mean that both conceptions are correct. When you say there is a plurality of moral truths in the normative sense and not in the descriptive sense, then you are basically saying that both claims are correct. Not only that there are two groups, each of which thinks differently—you are actually saying both claims are correct. That is a completely different claim. I can say that there are two groups that think differently, and one is right and the other is wrong. Therefore, the existence of disagreements in no way indicates a plurality of truths. And now I moved one step further and said more than that: the existence of a disagreement usually actually indicates that there is one moral truth.
[Speaker C] Because if there were
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a plurality of moral truths, then what is there to argue about? You think it’s right to do X, and I think it isn’t right to do X, and both of us are right. When we argue, we are actually assuming that there is one correct answer, and we are only arguing about what that correct answer is. So now we try to persuade one another, and either we succeed or we don’t. But still, the very existence of an argument indicates that at least the arguers—I don’t know whether that’s the absolute truth—but at least the arguers agree that there is one moral truth, otherwise there would be no point in arguing. Okay? I didn’t say that there is a plurality of halakhic truths—where did you get that from? I don’t think there is. It was in the chat here, just a question in the chat. By the way, I’d prefer that you just jump in and ask through the microphone, not in the chat, because in the chat it’s hard to maneuver between the video and the chat. So if anyone has a question, let him jump in and ask it.
[Speaker D] Maybe I’m mistaken, but from what I know there definitely is a possibility that this tanna states Jewish law and that tanna states Jewish law, and each one has his own truth and root, and because of that there are also different customs today and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Each one has his own truth and root—that doesn’t mean both are right. I said: the description that there are two opinions does not mean there is a plurality of truths. It could be that one opinion is right and the other is wrong. Now—
[Speaker D] I won’t give a lecture here about “these and these are the words of the living God”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] which is actually the topic where this issue should be discussed, because it isn’t our topic. But if you want, I can send you places where I wrote about this, and there I explain it in detail. Meaning, I claim that there is one halakhic truth. Fine. In any case, yes, so I said that the very existence of a disagreement, if anything, indicates that there is one halakhic truth and not many halakhic truths. Again, it indicates that the two disputants think there is one halakhic truth. It may be that they are mistaken and there is no one halakhic truth, or one moral truth, but that is what they think. Meaning, the fact that there is an argument is actually support for the monistic thesis, not the pluralistic one—for the thesis that says there is one moral truth and not a plurality of moral truths. Now, if we are talking about truth, that means that in order to talk about moral behavior we need to talk about objective morality, as I said earlier. Because if morality is subjective, then moral behavior has no meaning—everyone does what he thinks, so by definition he does what he thinks, so there’s no point talking about it. When we distinguish between moral and immoral people, we are really talking about some kind of objective standards that determine what is good and bad, or what is moral and immoral. A moral person is a person who behaves according to the standards of the good, and an immoral person is one who does not behave according to them. Okay, but the determination of the standards themselves does not depend on human beings; it is an objective given. That is the scale or the criteria against which we measure good and evil, or the moral and the immoral. Okay, and now I ask: if human beings do not determine it, then who does?
[Speaker C] Where does it come from?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, and so here we begin to get a bit tangled in philosophical issues, because often someone who doesn’t believe in God escapes into moral relativism or pluralism—that there are many truths, nobody determined anything, everyone determines his own values, and so on. As I explained earlier, that’s just conceptual confusion. What you are really saying is that there is no morality. Everyone does what he decides, what he wants. In other words, there is no morality. When you talk about morality, you are talking about objective standards. When you talk about objective standards, you have to ask yourself what the source is that determined those standards, what good and evil are. And in that context, this is the argument from morality, what I said earlier. The argument from morality basically says that there has to be some factor that determined what is good and what is bad. That factor is God. And again, not necessarily the God who revealed Himself at Sinai and gave the Torah, or the Christian God, or some other God—I’m not talking about a specific God—but there has to be, this is one of the arguments in favor of God’s existence, the moral argument, which basically says: if binding morality exists, if there is a difference between good and evil, one ought to do good and ought not to do evil, then there has to be some legislator who determined these things. And the legislator who determined these things we call God. In an atheistic world, in a world where there is no God, there cannot be morality. And to this I said again—maybe I’ll sharpen it—I did not say that people won’t behave well. People who don’t believe, or atheists, there are many atheists who behave wonderfully on the moral level. I am arguing that there cannot be valid morality in a world without God—not that people won’t behave well. Because valid morality requires standards or binding norms that determine what is good and what is bad, and they do not come from me. Therefore there must be some source that is the source of the validity of those norms, that determines that good is what ought to be done and evil ought not to be done. If there is no such source, then there is nowhere for that validity to come from. In other words, what is that validity grounded in? Of course atheists too can behave in what we might call a moral way. What do I mean? They can do the good thing. They can do the good thing because they feel like it, or I don’t know exactly why. But if they say they do the good thing because they are committed to morality, then in fact they are implicit believers. They are not aware of it, but behind their doctrine there sits a belief in God, even though they are not aware of it. Because they are basically saying that there is some source that gives validity to good and evil, and I do this because there is validity to doing good, because one ought to do good. If you tell me, “I do it because I feel like it,” like a sheep—it does the good because that’s how it is built, that’s what it feels like doing—that is not moral behavior. If you say that, that’s fine, you can remain an atheist. But you won’t be moral; you’ll be a good person, a person pleasant to be around, but you won’t be a moral person. A moral person is someone who acts out of commitment to the moral imperative, and therefore he must also recognize the existence and the validity of the moral imperative, and therefore also God, as I said earlier. Therefore I think there is no way around this. In other words, either you are an atheist, but then you cannot be moral—you can be a sheep, you can behave well and do good deeds, but you cannot be moral, meaning committed to the moral imperative. To the principles of the good—then you really have to assume that there exists a source that gives validity to the principles of the good, and you are committed to that validity, and therefore you act. That is basically to believe in God, even if you don’t call it that or aren’t aware of it. Again, it is not the God of putting on tefillin, or Sinai, or Christianity, or whatever—it is some abstract God who gives validity to the rules of morality. Okay, that is the argument from morality. Now, I want to say just one sentence nonetheless about the character of this argument. I talked about the fact that this is an argument—I called it a theological argument, or a revealing argument, and not a philosophical or generating argument. What does that mean? When I prove God to you on the basis of morality, you can always say, “You’re right, there is no valid morality,” and then indeed I cannot convince you that there is a God. In that sense, this is a kind of argument that is very easy to escape from—you can say there is no God, and that’s it, okay? So the claim is that if you believe in the validity of morality, then by definition you believe in God. But you always have the option to say, “No, I don’t believe in the validity of morality.” That is what I called a theological argument, because—I said “theological,” yes—the theologian proves; no, the philosopher assumes premises and proves God from them. The theologian looks for premises from which God can be proven—in other words, he adopts the premises because they have the potential to prove God’s existence. So that is basically reversed logic, and I explained why that is not a flaw; it is simply two different ways of looking at a logical argument, but I won’t get into all that here. So regarding the—yes?
[Speaker D] What do you mean by the validity of morality? What does that mean? Binding?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can assume on the lexical level, yes, that murder is bad and giving charity is good, but without thinking that one must give charity and must not murder. Meaning, these are moral principles, but they have no validity; one is not obligated to act according to them. I’m stressing here, because in a moment we’ll see the implication, that we are saying two things here. A, there is an objective distinction between good and evil. B, that distinction has binding validity. Because I talked about David Hume’s is-ought problem, yes, what is sometimes called the naturalistic fallacy—that you can’t derive a normative conclusion from factual premises. You can’t say: this table is brown, therefore this table is beautiful. That it is brown is a fact, and that it is beautiful is a judgment; a judgment never follows from facts. You can say: this table is brown, and I also think that everything brown is beautiful, and now you can infer that this table is beautiful. But you need to add another premise beyond the factual premises. I called it a bridging premise, yes? Brown is a fact; beautiful is a judgment. A premise that connects the facts with the evaluative statements. But facts alone cannot yield an evaluative conclusion or a normative conclusion. Okay? Therefore this is also what I said earlier, that there is a difference between describing what people do, which is facts, and saying what ought to be done, which is a norm, a judgment. You cannot derive judgments from facts. This is David Hume’s is-ought fallacy: you cannot derive the ought—what ought to be done—from the is, from what is done, from the facts, from what exists. Okay. So this naturalistic fallacy, I’ll now expand it a bit. Even if I determine that murder is bad and giving charity is good, these are moral facts—we spoke about moral realism, ethical realism. These are objective facts; they do not depend on my judgment or my assumptions, these are facts. But precisely because they are facts, they are not enough to determine what should be done and what should not be done. For that, those premises also need to have binding validity—that is what I called validity earlier. Okay? Meaning, that one should do the good and that one must not do the bad. That is already a normative or evaluative determination; it cannot derive from facts. Okay? That’s more or less the summary of what I did last time. And now I want to continue exactly from this point, from the point of the argument from morality. Yes, notice: the move was basically this. I tried to show, through the definition of morality, that there have to be facts—objective facts, objective moral facts—that determine what is good and what is bad, and those facts need to have validity. The one who gives them that validity is not me, but the Holy One, blessed be He, or God, yes, doesn’t matter. And therefore, if you believe that there is validity, then there is a God. That is why I needed the whole long discussion about the definition of what morality is, in order to arrive at the end of the semester at the argument from morality. Because if I do not understand that morality is something that is supposed to have some kind of objective validity that does not depend on my decisions and choices, then there is no room for an argument for the existence of God on the basis of morality. That argument is based only on moral realism, on the claim that morality is a set of principles with objective validity. And then the question always arises: who gave them this validity? And since it is objective, it cannot be me and it cannot be you. So it has to be some factor that has authority over us, such that what it determines is binding for us. And that is what I call God. Yes, the determination of society, or things like that that people proposed, doesn’t really stand the test of reality. Yes, society can also make utterly wicked determinations. Nazi society made social determinations, and they were utterly wicked. No one would even think to say that those determinations were good because society determined them. Why not? Because we don’t think society is the authorized factor to determine what is good and what is bad. There is some objective factor such that even if society determines something, we can still judge it against objective standards and decide whether it is good or bad. So that objective standard has to have some source that is not society. So what is it then? It cannot be anything connected to the world, to humanity, to what we know. So what then? It has to be some authoritative factor that gives validity to these principles, and that is God. Therefore, the proof of God’s existence is tied by the navel to the understanding of what morality is. That is why I devoted most of the semester to the definition of what morality is. Once you understand that properly, within a lecture or two we saw that it necessarily leads to the existence of God. In other words, it follows from it. Okay, now I want to continue and really go a bit deeper into the distinction between moral definitions and their validity. This is an important distinction, as I’ll try to show now. So maybe I’ll begin with what is called the Euthyphro dilemma. There is a Platonic dialogue, yes, a book by Plato called Euthyphro. Most of Plato’s books are named after people, and those people are the speakers there, who speak with Socrates. He always puts things into dialogues between Socrates and different people—in this case, Socrates and Euthyphro. Now in this dialogue the following dilemma comes up, and therefore in contemporary literature it is called the dilemma of Euthyphro, the Euthyphro dilemma. The question is, in their formulation—and it’s a mythological formulation, yes?—do the gods want the good because it is good, or is the good good because the gods want it? Okay, the question is whether—
[Speaker C] I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m now translating this into monotheistic language—so now the question is: is the good good because God decided that it is good?
[Speaker C] Or did God decide
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to do it, or want us to do it, because it is good? Not that it is good because God instructed us to do it. God instructed us to do it because it is good. All right? That is the Euthyphro dilemma. Now, the discussion of the existence of God and the argument from morality—I had some debate about this with Professor David Enoch from the Hebrew University. You can watch it on YouTube, or it also appears on my website. And there, in the course of that debate, the moderator was Jeremy Fogel, a lecturer from Tel Aviv University. And during the discussion he raised the Euthyphro dilemma. He asked how what I was saying fits with the Euthyphro dilemma. At first I didn’t really understand what he wanted, because I didn’t see a connection between the things, but it seems to me there is some connection between them, and therefore I need to explain why that connection is only partial. So I presented the Euthyphro dilemma earlier. On the face of it, yes, if you ask an ordinary religious believer, he will tell you that obviously God determined the good. He could also have determined other things to be good; that is His decision. He cannot be subordinate to something that preceded the Holy One, blessed be He, that does not depend on the Holy One, blessed be He. Okay? Therefore the first inclination of religious people is to say: what do you mean, there is no dilemma here at all. Obviously the good is good because God wanted it, not that God wanted it because it is good. One has to understand that if I say God wanted it because it is good, that means that its being good has nothing to do with God’s will; it comes before that. Once we determine that it is good, then God wanted it too. But the determination that it is good is not entrusted to God; it precedes that, it precedes Him. Otherwise the statement that God wanted it because it is good has no content. If God wanted it because it is good, and it is good because God wanted it, that has no meaning at all. Okay? If I present this as an alternative option, that God wanted it because it is good, that means that its definition as good is a definition imposed on God, not one He determined; it is imposed on Him. He could not have determined otherwise. This is a very counterintuitive claim, yes, it goes against common religious intuitions. And therefore people’s first inclination is to say yes, obviously the first option is the correct one—that it is good because God wanted it, not that God wanted it because it is good. Now there is a book by Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman on religion and morality devoted entirely to this question. They call it the DCT thesis—morality as divine command, yes, morality as God’s command. Meaning, morality is such because that is what God commanded. And they survey the literature in Jewish thought, yes, they survey the literature on this issue, and they arrive at the surprising conclusion that almost all the thinkers do not agree with the DCT thesis. Or in other words, in the Euthyphro dilemma, almost all the thinkers in Jewish thought think that God wanted the good because it is good, and not that it is good because God wanted it. Contrary to that initial intuition I described earlier. The intuition that says, wait, but nothing is imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He; after all, He created the world and its laws and everything. He could have created a different world with different moral laws. Everything is in His hands. What could compel the Holy One, blessed be He, to do something? How can it be that the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself cannot create a world in which there is a different morality? Okay? So here—that is first of all a surprising fact. Now I’ll explain why I think—what the fundamental motivation is for people to really adopt this thesis. Why do they in fact adopt the thesis that the good is not in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He? The good is defined objectively, and it is imposed—imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He. One might perhaps have—no, I’ll formulate it this way. The principled consideration in favor of this is the following. When I say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good—right, it is common to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good. You understand that according to the other side of the Euthyphro dilemma, that is an empty statement. If the good is defined as whatever God wants, then saying that God is good says nothing. That God wants what He wants? Wow, I know that already. I also want what I want. In other words, the statement that God is good is emptied of content if we adopt that view. You cannot say that He is good. And in my view this is the main reason that the prevalent approach—and I agree with it, despite the fact that it is prevalent—is the second approach in the Euthyphro dilemma: that God instructed us, or wants us, to do the good because it is good. Not that it is good because God wants it, but the reverse. And then indeed the statement that God is good has meaning. When I said that God is good, I said something that is not just a tautological definition. We have a standard of good that does not depend on God. And now I look at God and compare, and I say yes, that fits—He really wants what is defined as good. So I made a claim. According to the second view in the Euthyphro dilemma, when I say God is good, that is not a claim—it is a definition. The good is defined as what God wants. That is not a claim; it is a definition, a tautological statement. Okay? Since we tend to think that the statement God is good is a claim and not merely a definition, we praise Him for being good, right? We are not just neutrally describing that God is good, or defining God as good. We praise Him for being good. If we praise Him for being good, that means that we have adopted the second view in the Euthyphro dilemma—that the good is not the fruit of the Holy One’s decision, not entrusted to the Holy One’s decision. It is imposed on Him. It is a standard that in a certain sense preceded Him. That is, it does not depend on Him—let’s formulate it that way—not preceded Him, but does not depend on Him. Okay? And then if there is such a standard, exactly like when I say about human beings—when I say about human beings that they are moral human beings, I said earlier when I summarized the previous semester, I said that when I say human beings are moral human beings, I assume the existence of some standard by which I judge them, and then I ask what the source of that standard is, right? The same thing with respect to God. When I say God is good, I am in effect, as it were, judging Him—not judging Him in the sense that I am above Him, but I am taking a stance toward Him, I am saying God is good. That is an evaluative statement. Once that is so, it means that the term good has some kind of objective meaning that does not depend on the one being judged, that does not depend on God, or on the human being in the previous example, right? Because otherwise there is nothing to judge. Obviously God is good if the good is defined as what God wants; then of course He is good. When I say that this is a claim, when I judge God and determine—judge Him favorably in this case, yes, I say that He is good—I am actually assuming that the good is an objective a priori standard that precedes the decisions of the Holy One, blessed be He, does not depend on the decisions of the Holy One, blessed be He, because otherwise I have emptied that sentence of content. That is the reason the accepted view in Jewish thought is the second view—not morality as God’s command, but the opposite: God’s command is because it is moral.
[Speaker D] And is that a problem when we say that the good both compels and also preceded the Holy One, blessed be He?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here we’ve reached that problem—we’re only just beginning. So what I first want to say, and I think it’s very hard to say otherwise, is that the good does not depend on the Holy One, blessed be He, because otherwise all the praises about Him being good and everything are empty of content—it’s just a definition. Okay. Now of course the problem remains that I pointed to earlier: how can it be that there are laws imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He, that He did not create? Seemingly, He is the source of everything, He made everything, He made the laws of nature—why assume He did not make the laws of morality? So what is the difference? What, can’t He make a world in which different moral laws prevail? What’s the problem? He created the world and all that is in it, including the laws that govern it. Here I want first of all to set aside one possible suggestion. There could be a suggestion that gives meaning to the statement that God is good without going quite so far. Concepts of good and evil are implanted in us, right? We know what good and evil are; we have moral intuitions; we know that murder is bad, giving charity is good, for example, okay? This is implanted in us; we don’t need the Holy One, blessed be He, for that. Let’s assume that He is the one who implanted it in us, but factually it is implanted in us. Okay? When I say God is good, I am basically saying: God behaves in accordance with what is perceived by me as good.
[Speaker C] And then that
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s no longer an empty statement, because if I say that the good is whatever God wants, then to say that God is good is simply empty—it’s a definition. But if I say no, the good is what is planted within me as good, and now when I say that God is good, I really am making some kind of claim. I’m making a claim about a fit between the way the Holy One, blessed be He, acts and the standards that my moral intuition determines to be good. Okay? So now it’s no longer a definition but a claim. But I still come back and ask: if these really are the standards that exist within me, where did they come from? If they got there because the Holy One, blessed be He, planted them in me and they have objective validity—sorry, if the Holy One, blessed be He, planted them in me—fine, then again you still haven’t said much, right? He planted within me standards by which He would come out looking the best. Okay, I’d do that too. That says nothing about the question whether He is really good in any objective sense, right? And if I understand that the standards planted within me have some objective validity not because it is the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, then we haven’t escaped the other side of the Euthyphro dilemma. So we’re left with the fact that there is a yardstick for good and evil that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not determine. I don’t think there’s any way to escape that, because otherwise it just goes back to being a definition—a wrapped-up definition or an explicit definition. You’ve said nothing by saying that He is good. In my view, there’s no way around that.
So if that’s the case, there’s an example of this. You know, in analytic philosophy they distinguish between meaning and reference—or meaning and designation. Frege, from the nineteenth century, distinguished between meaning and reference. What does that mean? Suppose I talk about the center of gravity of the Milky Way galaxy on Wednesday at 4:47. The description I gave here involves lots of concepts, and you have to understand their meanings and all that, right? That’s the meaning of the description I gave. But that description also has a reference. What is the reference? It’s some point in space, right? A particular point in space that I’m describing by saying that it’s the center of gravity of the Milky Way galaxy on that day at that time. That’s a description of it. But that whole big description just points to a point in space. I could just as well take my finger, put it in front of that point, and show you that point—I’d be pointing to exactly the same thing as the verbal description I gave before, right? A description has meaning, and it has reference. Reference is the thing the description points to. The meaning of the description is the concepts involved in the description and their meanings: center, gravity, galaxy, Milky Way, date, hour. Lots and lots of concepts that have to be understood in order to understand that description. That’s the distinction between meaning and reference, or designation.
Now when I say, for example—in philosophy they discuss this—what happens if I say the evening star is the morning star? There are stars that were known by the names evening star and morning star—two stars—until someone suddenly discovered that it was actually the same star. In the evening you see it one way and it’s called the evening star; in the morning you see it differently and it’s called the morning star. But in fact it’s the same star somewhere in the sky. So when I said the evening star is the morning star, did I say anything? If I’m talking about the reference, I said nothing, right? I said that that star is that star. The evening star has as its reference that particular star; the morning star has the same reference. So I’m saying that that star is that star. I said nothing. But if I’m talking about the meaning, not the reference—about the meaning—then yes, I did say something. What in our terms is called the evening star and what in our terms is called the morning star have the same reference. That is definitely a statement that taught me something new. It’s not a trivial statement, it’s not a definition.
Now, when I’m talking about meaning, I can connect two things with the same reference and the claim can still have meaning. If I say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good or moral, and I mean that He conforms to the standards within me that determine what is moral, then in terms of meaning I’ve said something that definitely has meaning; it’s not empty. What I call good corresponds to the way the Holy One, blessed be He, behaves in the world. There is a fit between two things that are concepts for me. When I’m talking about reference, then really I’ve said nothing. Because what I call good is what the Holy One, blessed be He, determined. And when I say that what the Holy One, blessed be He, determined is what He determined, I’ve said nothing. It’s like saying the evening star is the morning star at the level of reference. So that’s why I say this can solve the problem of the meaning of the sentence that God is good. I’m saying this is not a definition. It’s a claim. Why? Because what God wants corresponds to what is planted within me. So fine, that’s a claim that definitely teaches me something; it’s not an empty claim.
But that solves only one problem. The second problem remains exactly as it was. What importance is there to the statement that God is good? It gives meaning to the statement that God is good, but does that statement become a meaningful statement of importance? Is there any value in saying that God is good? The answer is no. Because if He planted the good within me and He Himself behaves in the same way, then of course He will match the standards He planted within me. Therefore, for this to have importance and not just meaning, I also have to assume that there is another source—not God—for the distinction between good and evil. Another source that determines what good is. Okay, so let’s move one step further.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, forgive me—this concept of good as my personal intuition, is that the same good we’re talking about in terms of whether something is moral or not, or is there a good that is subjective and a good that is objective?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’m talking about what is moral and what is not moral. My intuition is only the instrument by which I understand what is moral and what is not. My intuition does not determine what is moral and what is not. It’s the observational tool, you could say—the tool by which I understand what is good and what is bad. But that good and bad are objective terms; there is an objective scale.
[Speaker D] So what does it help me to describe the Holy One, blessed be He, as good if I myself—well, in my own terms—I don’t really know what is moral and what isn’t, because in the end it’s subjective? Why don’t I know? Because the Rabbi said that according to society you can’t define what is moral.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you can’t define what is moral. But if I ask myself what is moral, and I say giving charity is moral, murder is not moral—then I understand that objectively murder is not moral and giving charity is. I didn’t determine that. It’s not that I determine that this is moral and that isn’t. It’s like the eyes don’t determine that there’s a lamp here; they perceive that there’s a lamp here. So moral intuition is the tool, these are my moral eyes. With this tool I perceive that this is moral and that isn’t moral. But why this really is moral and that isn’t—that’s not because of my moral intuition. That is an objective determination. Moral intuition is the eyes through which I see this objective moral reality. Okay?
So now we’re actually—if so, then I hope I’ve convinced you that the definition of what is good and what is bad is an objective definition that was not accepted from the Holy One, blessed be He. Not only is it objective—physics is objective too—but it’s more than objective. Meaning, it’s objective in the sense that it isn’t even in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He. Not only is it not in the hands of human beings, not handed over to human decision; it’s also not handed over to the decision of the Holy One, blessed be He. It is imposed on Him. He could not have determined a different morality.
That of course raises the question of how that fits with the fact that He is the source of everything, that He is omnipotent, that everything comes from His power, that He created the world and its laws. Yes? So how does that fit? There are two theological intuitions here that seem to stand in contradiction. One intuition says that God is good—and not just as content, this is a statement, it’s an evaluative description: God really is good, not by definition. That’s on the one hand. On the other hand, God is the source of everything, and nothing precedes Him and nothing compels Him and nothing is imposed on Him. That is a second theological intuition. These two intuitions, apparently, do not fit together. I’ll try to devote some time to solving this problem, because I still think the second option in the Euthyphro dilemma is the correct one. What misleads us when we ask this question is—
[Speaker C] Basically the concept of law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s think for a moment about what a law is. A law is something that someone legislated. Say, state law: parliament legislates the law; here, the Knesset legislates the law. The laws of physics are admittedly laws in a slightly different sense, but they are still laws in the same general sense, and when I ask who legislated them, I say the Holy One, blessed be He, legislated them. He embedded them in creation. It’s not legislation in the same sense as state law. State laws determine what is permitted and forbidden; the laws of physics determine what will happen. It’s not that it’s forbidden to violate the laws of physics—you can’t violate the laws of physics. The laws of physics dictate what will happen, not what ought to happen. But still our assumption is that there could be a world in which the laws of physics were different. The Holy One, blessed be He, decided that in our world these laws of physics would prevail. So for our purposes, let’s call it legislating the laws of physics. And the laws of physics too have a legislator; they are not imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He—He legislated them.
In principle, in modal logic you could say that I can imagine another possible world in which the Holy One, blessed be He, creates a world where the laws of physics are different. The speed of light won’t be three hundred thousand kilometers per second, but two meters per hour. Light would move very, very slowly. There’s no principled barrier to the Holy One, blessed be He, creating a different system of laws, right? Or gravity—bodies would fly upward instead of falling downward, or who knows what, all kinds of things like that. Yes, masses would repel one another instead of attracting one another, like with magnets, where you can have both repulsion and attraction. Never mind—anything you want.
So therefore, both regarding the laws of physics and regarding state law, we assume that they have a legislator. Why? Because they could have been otherwise. So why are the laws specifically these? Because there was a legislator who determined that they would be these and not others. Right? That’s the usual move. In the same way, we assume that moral laws could have been different. So why are they specifically these? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, legislated and determined that they would be these and not others. But that’s the mistake. Moral laws could not have been otherwise. I’ll give you an example that will make this clearer. Let’s think about the laws of logic.
We too are accustomed to calling the laws of logic “laws,” right? There too there are laws. For example, the law of the excluded middle: either X is true or X is not true; there is no third possibility. Okay?
[Speaker C] Or the law of non-contradiction.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It cannot be that X is true and also X is not true. Or laws of that kind: if every X is Y and A is X, then the conclusion is A is Y. That too is a law of logic. Okay? So all these laws we call the laws of logic. Did God create the laws of logic? Or let’s phrase it differently: could the laws of logic have been otherwise, and the Holy One, blessed be He, chose that they be specifically this way—in that sense, did He legislate them? My claim is no. The use of the term “laws” with respect to the laws of logic is a misleading mistake. These are not laws in the same sense as state law or the laws of physics.
And let’s take an example. Can the Holy One, blessed be He, make a round triangle? The answer is of course no. Why? Because a triangle is not round. That’s a logical contradiction. And a circle is not triangular.
[Speaker C] So that means the Holy One—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Blessed be He cannot make a round triangle? He cannot. What do you mean, cannot?
[Speaker C] Doesn’t that contradict His omnipotence?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Because omnipotence—let’s say that when I speak about the omnipotence of the Holy One, blessed be He, I mean: anything that can be conceived, the Holy One, blessed be He, can do. That’s called omnipotence. But a concept that is empty of content, that has no content at all—then the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do it is not an infringement of His omnipotence. There simply is no such concept. If someone asks me whether the Holy One, blessed be He, can make a round triangle, my answer is not that He cannot make a round triangle. The correct answer is: explain to me what a round triangle is, and then I’ll answer you. There is no such thing as a round triangle. You won’t be able to explain to me what a round triangle is. It’s like asking me whether the Holy One, blessed be He, can make blah blah blah blah blah. I don’t know what blah blah blah is. Explain to me what blah blah blah is, and I can consider whether He can do it or not. A round triangle is like blah blah blah. So what if it’s made up of words? This combination is a contentless combination. There is no such thing as a round triangle.
There is no such thing, not because the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that in our world there would be no round triangles. There is no such thing because a triangle, by its very essence, is not round. There is no imaginary world you could conceive—or fail to conceive—in which there are round triangles. There isn’t. Because it cannot be. Not that it cannot be physically. What cannot be physically in this world might be physically possible in another world, because there the laws of physics would be different. But what cannot be logically cannot exist in any world. This is not a decision of the Holy One, blessed be He, that this should be so in our world. It is not entrusted to His decision at all. It is imposed on Him. But it is imposed on Him not in the sense—why are we uncomfortable saying that something is imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He? Because how can it be that something limits Him? My claim is that logical compulsion does not limit. Because there are no other options that the Holy One, blessed be He, is limited from doing and cannot do. They simply do not exist. Not that they exist and He cannot do them. Do you understand what I’m saying? That is not called limiting Him; that is not called His being limited. Okay?
When I ask whether the Holy One, blessed be He, can make a shell that penetrates every wall, I assume yes. Can the Holy One, blessed be He, make a wall that stops every shell? I also assume yes.
[Speaker D] He can’t make both of those together.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there is a shell that penetrates every wall and there is a wall that stops every shell, what will happen when the two meet? One of the two will turn out not to be true. Either the shell penetrates the wall, in which case the wall does not stop every shell; or the shell does not penetrate the wall, in which case it is not true that the shell penetrates every wall. Right? So what, the Holy One, blessed be He, is limited? No, He is not limited. The concepts “a wall that stops every shell” and “a shell that penetrates every wall” do not fit together; that is a logical contradiction. It cannot be that both those things exist simultaneously. Okay?
Here I can’t avoid getting to the omnipotence paradox—the so-called paradox of omnipotence: can the Holy One, blessed be He, create a stone that He cannot lift? You know that trick? The atheist asks the believer: you say God is omnipotent, so tell me, can your God create a stone that He cannot lift? If He can create such a stone—because after all He is omnipotent—then He can create such a stone, so there is a stone He cannot lift, so He is not omnipotent. If He cannot create such a stone, then again He is not omnipotent—look, He cannot create that stone. So either way, He is not omnipotent. QED. What do you say? Good proof?
[Speaker A] Not exactly, because it’s something He Himself chose that He can’t lift, so technically He can change that and lift it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, chose? No, no—if He created a stone that He cannot lift, then now I ask you: can He lift that stone? Don’t evade it—can He or can’t He? If He can’t lift that stone, then He is not omnipotent. If He can lift that stone, then He didn’t create a stone that He cannot lift.
[Speaker E] Okay, it’s a paradox for a good reason. What? It’s a paradox for a good reason.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but it’s not really a paradox, it’s just a mistake. Think about it as a conversation between the atheist and the believer, okay? Suppose the atheist comes to me and says: tell me, do you believe God is omnipotent? I say, of course. He says: tell me, can He create a stone He cannot lift? I say: look, when you ask me a question, you’re asking me within my conceptual world and my assumptions, right? You’re asking questions based on my assumptions, otherwise there’s no point. You want to show me that based on my assumptions I arrive at a contradiction, right? That’s how a discussion should be conducted. So let’s see, based on my assumptions. If I say God is omnipotent, then what does “a stone He cannot lift” mean? Explain the concept to me—leave aside, for the moment, the question of whether He can or cannot. Explain to me the concept of a stone that God cannot lift. Translated into my conceptual language, God means omnipotent, right? So “a stone that God cannot lift” means a stone that the omnipotent one cannot lift. Right? At this point I’m only translating your question; I still haven’t answered it. Okay? You understand that this is like a round triangle? It’s like asking me whether God can produce a round triangle. Same thing. You’re really asking me whether the omnipotent one can create a stone that He Himself cannot lift. There is no stone that the omnipotent one cannot lift—not because it doesn’t happen to exist, but because it cannot exist. It’s like a round triangle. What is a stone that the omnipotent one cannot lift? It’s a combination of words that has no meaning whatsoever—
[Speaker C] Meaning, in the sense that it won’t work.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay? Therefore, if the atheist asks me this question, I’ll say to him: first explain what a stone that the omnipotent one cannot lift is, and then I’ll answer whether God can create such a stone or not. Now of course he can explain it to me—what’s the problem? A stone that God cannot lift—a very heavy stone that God cannot lift. Or in other words, he explains it according to his own position, because according to his own position God is not omnipotent. Maybe He doesn’t exist at all, but in any case not omnipotent. Okay, so according to his position there’s no problem; there is such a stone, it is well defined. But when you ask me a question, you have to ask it according to my position. Because you want to show me that according to my own position I reach a contradiction, not that according to your position I reach a contradiction. Obviously according to your position I’ll reach a contradiction, because we disagree. In order to prove something to me, you have to show me that according to my own position I reach a contradiction. According to my position, I do not reach a contradiction. Okay?
What does this actually mean? It means that there is a difference between logical laws or limits and physical laws and limits. There is no logical law saying that a triangle cannot be round. A triangle cannot be round because it is a triangle, because it is not round. It’s not that there is some law forbidding it, right? In the laws of physics, a stone falls downward and cannot remain suspended in the air because the laws of physics forbid that to it. They could have been different, and then it could have remained in the air. But the laws forbid it, and therefore it falls. State laws, certainly, I can violate; the laws only forbid me from violating them. Okay? The laws of logic do not forbid what exists and what doesn’t, or what can exist and what cannot. They just are that. They do not forbid anything. Therefore the laws of logic are also not a limitation. When you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to the laws of logic, that He cannot deviate from the laws of logic, you have not said something that limits Him. He is not limited in any way. You have simply stated the boundary of what is well-defined. Everything that is well-defined, the Holy One, blessed be He, can do. What is not well-defined—it’s not that He cannot do it; I simply cannot speak about it. What does it mean that it isn’t well-defined? It means I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have nothing to say about it. Not that He can do it and not that He cannot do it. I have nothing to say about it. It’s simply empty of meaning. You haven’t said anything.
It’s like asking me—yes, all the well-known nonsense examples—what’s the difference between a rabbit? Would the Holy One, blessed be He, answer that question? What’s the difference between a rabbit? What, He can’t? What, He’s not omnipotent? There’s no question here for Him to answer. The question asks nothing. It’s not that He can’t answer. There’s no question here; there’s nothing to answer. Okay?
[Speaker D] Rabbi, there’s an assumption here that our laws of logic and the laws of logic of the Holy One, blessed be He, are the same laws of logic. Is there no possibility that the laws of logic of the Holy One, blessed be He, are broader?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no such thing, because whatever is broader than my laws of logic is nonsense. I can’t speak about it. Even if I say it exists, I’ve said nothing. When I say X exists and X is a logical contradiction, I’ve said nothing. It’s fine, our intellect may be limited—
[Speaker D] It’s beyond our understanding. No, no.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The moment you say the intellect is limited, you’ve already said something—that there is something beyond it, right? But when you say there is something beyond it, you’ve said nonsense. Not beyond the intellect—beyond logic. There are things we don’t understand, of course there are. I don’t understand why we put on tefillin. But it cannot be both the case that one puts on tefillin and does not put on tefillin at the same time. For that you don’t need me, the Holy One, blessed be He, or anyone else, because it’s a logical contradiction. That’s not something I don’t understand. There are many things I don’t understand because I’m not smart enough. A logical contradiction is not something I don’t understand. A logical contradiction is simply what lies beyond existence—not existing, not defined, incapable of existing. There is no—
[Speaker C] Meaning to speaking—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About His logic and our logic. It’s nonsense. Just words. So what does this actually mean? That here we have an example of a system of principles that we are accustomed to calling a system of laws that is supposedly imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He—the laws of logic. I want to argue—
[Speaker C] That the laws—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of morality, in this sense, are similar to the laws of logic and not to the laws of physics.
[Speaker C] I’m arguing that you can’t say that murder is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Bad—sorry, that murder is good. To say that murder is good is like saying a triangle is round. Because the concept of good has a certain content, and its content does not include murder. That’s all. Conceptually, simply. That is the definition of good and that is the definition of evil. Therefore it is really like logic. The Holy One, blessed be He, did not create it. The Holy One, blessed be He, cannot create a world in which murder is good, just as He cannot create a world in which a triangle is round.
He can of course create a world in which people do not know that murder is bad, and therefore they murder. He can create a world in which, I don’t know, say people greatly enjoy torture. Suppose if I burn the soles of their feet they’re delighted. Okay? If there is a world with creatures like that, then it may be a commandment to burn the soles of their feet—what in our world would be perceived as an evil act. Okay? But that’s not because the concept changed. The concept did not change. It is forbidden to cause suffering. Only there, in that world, the facts changed. What causes suffering there is not what causes suffering here. The difference is a factual difference, not a moral difference. Morality is universal. Morality did not change. What changed are the facts, which of course have consequences for what is permitted and forbidden according to those same moral principles.
Moral principles are universal across all worlds. Their applications can differ because the factual circumstances that prevail in each such world are different. Obviously, applying morality means applying the ethical principles to the factual circumstances, right? So you can’t say—if the—you can’t know what to do in certain situations based only on moral principles. You also have to analyze the circumstances in order to understand how to apply the moral principles correctly. Suppose moral principles say that one must not cause suffering. Now, do you know from that alone that you may not burn the soles of someone’s feet? No. For that you need to understand that under the existing circumstances, burning the soles of someone’s feet causes them suffering. And for that, you need to know the facts. And now, once I understand the facts, I can apply the moral principles to them. Therefore moral principles can be universal, but under different circumstances they lead to different behaviors. That doesn’t mean morality changed. Morality is the same morality.
Think about the—we talked about this when we discussed moral relativism last semester. The Nazis, for example, thought it was good to murder Jews, a commandment to murder Jews. Gypsies, homosexuals, whatever, all kinds. Okay? Did they have a different morality from ours? The answer is no, absolutely not. If you listen to their justifications, you’ll understand what they were. That Jews are not human beings. There is no prohibition against killing someone who is not a human being, right? So the dispute between me and them is over whether a Jew is a human being. That’s a factual question. But we agree—the moral principles are entirely shared by me and the Nazis. There is no difference. Or maybe they would say that the Jews are plotting to destroy the world, and therefore even though they are human beings, it is permitted or even required to kill them under the law of a pursuer. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Again, the moral principles are completely identical to mine. The application is different because I perceive reality differently. Okay? So the difference is not a moral difference. And I think this shows quite nicely why morality is much more universal than people think at first glance.
When people say that abortion is permitted—let’s go to less extreme places than the Nazis—when some say abortion is permitted and others say abortion is forbidden, do they disagree about whether murder is permitted or forbidden? Of course not. Everyone agrees that murder is forbidden. The question is whether a fetus counts as a human being or as part of its mother’s body. Everyone agrees that it is forbidden to murder human beings. The dispute is a dispute over how I perceive reality. It’s not a moral dispute. And almost all the disputes you know are not moral disputes. They are disputes in the perception of reality. There are very, very few disputes that are actually moral disputes about moral principles. Usually, almost all disputes—ninety-nine percent of disputes—are disputes about the circumstances, not about moral principles. Moral principles are universal. Everyone agrees that it is forbidden—
[Speaker C] To steal, that it is forbidden to murder, that one should help. Everyone agrees about that. The question is only what counts as stealing, what counts as murder, who is a human being, under what circumstances it is permitted. Those are disputes about the circumstances. I’m not sure I agree quite that much specifically on abortion, because a lot of times I hear arguments where it sounds as though, for the conservative side, life has value in itself, and for the liberal side—I’m making an American-style division here—the liberal side gives value not to the person’s life itself but simply to not causing suffering to something. So because a single cell doesn’t suffer…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Take them, take them a little further, and you’ll see that that’s not true. That’s how the dispute is presented, but it isn’t true. Ask him whether I may murder you without causing you suffering. You won’t see it, you won’t feel it, and it won’t cause you any suffering. His answer will generally be that it’s forbidden. Meaning, the fact that things are presented that way—that is exactly the point I’m making. Many people perceive disputes like these as disputes about morality, whereas in my view they are not about morality. They are about one’s relation to the factual circumstances. Morality is applied according to your perception of reality. If your perception of reality is different, then the same moral principles can be applied differently.
Again, there can also be value disputes, but that’s very rare. I mean, the overwhelming majority of disputes are only about the circumstances or the applications of moral principles, and the moral principles are universal. Everyone agrees that stealing is forbidden, that murder is forbidden, that one should help—everyone agrees to that. The question is only what counts as stealing, what counts as murder, who is a human being, under what circumstances it is permitted. Those are disputes about the circumstances. Here there’s a gradual leaking out of people—
[Speaker C] Outside, I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Don’t know whether it’s technical problems or whether it’s—well. Maybe it’s sirens. Maybe it’s sirens, could be. In any case, the claim basically is that moral laws are similar to the laws of logic and not to the laws of physics or the laws of the state. And in that sense, when I say that God cannot create a world in which murder is good, it’s like saying He cannot create a world in which a triangle is round. That is not a limitation on Him. It is not a defect in His omnipotence. It is simply against the definitions. There is no content to saying that murder is good. Murder is bad—it’s like saying a triangle is round, as I said before. There’s no—it just isn’t—it’s not that you’re forbidden to say it; it’s nonsense. It is simply contentless.
Now, if I really accept it this way, then in principle there is no obstacle to saying that moral laws do not depend on the Holy One, blessed be He, but are imposed on Him. They are imposed on Him not in the same sense as I would impose the laws of physics on Him. To impose something on Him is to say: there is something else, and you are forbidden to be there or forbidden to do that. Here the claim is that there is nothing else. It’s not that there is something else and I’m limiting you and not letting you do it or be there. The laws of logic say: there is nothing else. Moral laws too say: there is no such world in which murder is good. It’s not that there is such a world and you won’t succeed in creating such a world. No—there simply is no such world. Okay?
Therefore, I think that if one has to choose between the two alternatives of Euthyphro—whether to say that the good is good because God wants it, which seemingly fits better with the intuition that everything depends on the Holy One, blessed be He, and He can determine any law He wants, versus saying that God wants it because it is good, which fits with the intuition that saying God is good is not a definition but a claim—I prefer the second option. Why? The reason is that when I say God is good, that is a description, but I can also solve the difficulty that comes along with it. The difficulty that comes along with it is: wait a second, how can it be that God is limited? That He cannot determine different laws, different moral laws? The answer is that God is not limited. Moral laws are like the laws of logic. And therefore there is no such thing as a moral system in which murder is good. There simply is no such system. It’s not that God cannot produce such a system. It does not exist; such a system is not defined. Like a round triangle. Because murder, by its essence, is evil. Okay?
I want to sharpen one more point in this context. I want to talk for a moment about another claim, because I don’t have much time left. Notice what actually lies behind all this. Maybe this is a remark I already made last semester too, I don’t remember. In fact, let’s think for a moment about the laws of logic. The laws of logic—suppose I say: all chairs have four legs, this thing is a chair, therefore it has four legs. Okay? That is a valid logical argument, right? Now let’s try to isolate what the logic is within this argument. The premise that all chairs have four legs is not connected to logic, right? That’s a factual, empirical question or whatever. The claim that this thing is a chair is also not connected to logic. It’s just a factual statement. And the claim that this thing has four legs is also not logic. That too is a factual claim. So what is the logic within this whole argument? The logic is the move by which the conclusion follows from the premises. Right? So what is necessary in this argument is not the premises and not the conclusion. What is necessary is only the derivation of the conclusion from the premises. That is what is necessary. Someone who does not accept that all chairs have four legs also does not have to accept that this thing has four legs, right? If you don’t accept the premises, you don’t have to accept the conclusion. So what is necessary in a logical argument? What is necessary is that if the premises are true, then you must also accept the conclusion. The if-then—that is the logic in the thing. Not the if and not the then, not the premises and not the conclusion, but only the connection between the premises and the conclusion, the relation of the conclusion following from the premises. That is what has to do with logic, right? Logic deals only with the relation: if this is true, then that is true. That is logical necessity.
So, for example, there can be an invalid logical argument whose conclusion is true. All doves have four legs, this chair is a dove, therefore this chair has four legs. That argument is a valid argument, right? Its conclusion is true, but its premises are not true. Okay?
[Speaker C] Or the opposite.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s say all chairs have four legs, this phone is made of plastic, and therefore this bag is black. Both premises are true and the conclusion is also true. But the conclusion does not follow from the premises. So this is not a logically valid argument. That means that the validity of an argument and the truth of its claims are two independent things. There can be a valid argument with two false premises and a false conclusion. There can be an invalid argument where both premises are true and the conclusion is also true. Because the validity of an argument does not examine the truth of the premises and the conclusion. It examines only whether the conclusion follows from the premises. And that is what is necessary in logic. In fact, that is what logic deals with. Logic deals only with processes of inference. It does not deal with the claims themselves. Science deals with the claims themselves. Science can discover for me what the facts are about the world. Logic creates connections between facts. The inference of one factual statement from other factual statements. Okay? I want to argue that morality too really deals only with if-then, with inference. Why? Because morality basically says this: if burning your legs causes you suffering, then it is forbidden to burn your legs. Right? So the if-then is a moral principle that is objective, like logic. There is no way to tamper with it, you cannot determine something else, something different. But there could be a world in which burning your legs does not cause you suffering. In such a world there would also be no prohibition against burning your legs. On the contrary, maybe it would even be a commandment if it caused you pleasure. Okay? So morality too really deals with if-then. If the circumstances are such-and-such, then the moral instruction is such-and-such. But if the circumstances are different, the moral instruction can also be different. So what is objective in morality? Only the inference of the then from the if. If-then. If it causes suffering, then it is forbidden to do it. That is the moral principle. The moral principle is not that it is forbidden to burn your legs. The moral principle is that it is forbidden to cause suffering. Or in other words, that if a certain thing causes suffering, then it is forbidden to do it. That is the moral principle, and it is a principle that cannot be tampered with. It is binding even on the Holy One, blessed be He; it is objective. It is not the result of a decision, it is not the product of a decision by the Holy One, blessed be He. Okay? In that sense, you also see that the laws of morality resemble the laws of logic. They deal with if-then. The Holy One, blessed be He, is all-powerful; He can make whatever world He wants, with whatever facts He wants, with whatever factual properties He wants. He cannot change the if-then relations between the things He made. Because those relations are objective; they arise from the nature of the things themselves. The moment you create a world in which there is murder, embedded within it is this idea that murder is evil. You could create a world in which there is no murder, no problem. But if there is murder, or if there is life, then life has value. In that sense, you cannot produce life such that life would have no value. That is not in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He. So I think maybe it is easier to digest this claim in this form—that supposedly the Holy One, blessed be He, is limited, or that there are things binding on Him. There is no fact that is binding on Him. He can do whatever He wants. But a relation between two things is binding on Him. If I go, say, to the question of knowledge and free choice, okay? The Holy One, blessed be He, knows everything in advance and I have free choice. Those two things do not fit together. Okay? And there could be a situation in which He knows everything and I have no free choice. There could be a situation in which I have free choice and He does not know everything. There cannot be a situation in which He knows everything and I also have free choice. Why? Because there is a relation between these two principles. If He knows everything, then there is no free choice. There is a relation between them, and that relation He cannot touch, because it is a necessary relation. Between the two principles, each one separately He could have changed. He could have decided that He Himself would not know things in advance. He could have decided that I would not have free choice. He cannot decide: I will also know things in advance, that person will also have free choice, and both will apply simultaneously. No. Because there is an if-then here that is binding on Him. If You know in advance, I have no free choice. The if-then is binding on Him, not either one of the facts separately. And this is a paradigm for many, many things. A great many things that we are unwilling to accept as binding on the Holy One, blessed be He, are so only because we do not understand that the things we are talking about are matters of if-then. They are not independent facts. Independent facts—the Holy One, blessed be He, can do whatever He wants. But relations between given facts are determined by the content of the facts. You cannot determine the content of one fact, the content of another fact, and also determine that there will be no relation between them. It is a relation between the contents. The moment you determine the contents, you determine that this will be the relation between them. It has nothing to do with His omnipotence. Do you understand what I am arguing? Therefore, there is no need to be troubled by this matter that there are things binding on the Holy One, blessed be He. On the contrary, the fact that He decided to make the facts in this way is what created the moral principle and made it binding on Him. The fact that You decided to make a world like this. If You had made a world in which there were no living creatures, there would be no value of life and no prohibition against murder. True. You cannot make a world in which there is life but there is no value to life. A world in which You know everything and there is also free choice. There is no such thing. The moment You determined that You know everything, You thereby determined that there will be no free choice. You cannot determine that there is both free choice and no free choice. That is basically what you are asking me to do. If I say to Him, You can determine that You will know everything in advance, and You can also determine that a human being will have free choice, what are we really saying? That He can determine both that we will have free choice and that we will not have it, at the same time. That is just nonsense, it is a round triangle. It is nonsense. Okay? Okay, I’ll stop here, because what follows already starts another chapter, another chapter in this matter. I’ll continue from this point next time. If there are questions or comments? Once again I remind you, reach out with any problem, with any issue that comes up, do not hesitate. Even if you know someone else who is in some kind of difficulty and needs help, I would be very glad if you would update me, let me know. Okay? You are of course also welcome to reach out on any subject. You have my phone number also on the institute’s website, and you can contact me on WhatsApp, by phone, by email, whatever you want. Okay?
[Speaker A] Okay, so thank you, goodbye.