Ethics, Faith, and Halakha – Lesson 15 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Great. Okay, so basically what I want to say is that the conclusion from our discussion of the Euthyphro dilemma—that morality exists prior to the Holy One, blessed be He, and is כביכול imposed on Him—and the conclusion from last semester that there is no morality without God, do not contradict one another, even though on the face of it there seems to be a contradiction. The claim is not that there is no morality without God, but that morality has no validity without God. Good and evil exist even without God. But the validity—the reason why I ought to do the good and refrain from doing the evil—that validity does not exist without Him. Meaning, only His command gives force to that obligation. That is what turns a fact, the is, into an obligation, the ought. What am I supposed to do? Ought, right? What am I supposed to do? What turns the is into an ought is the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. And therefore the proof from morality is not a proof from the existence of standards of good and evil, but a proof from the fact that they are valid, from the fact that they obligate us. So that is basically what explains why there is no contradiction between the conclusion from last semester and the conclusion here from the Euthyphro dilemma.

Now the question that comes up here is an interesting one: fine, so before the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, there was good and evil, there were definitions of what is good and what is evil, but they had no force—that is, they did not obligate. So now the question is: then why is the Holy One, blessed be He, obligated to do good? After all, if obligation is born only from His own will, then from His point of view there is no obligation. There is only a definition of what is good and what is evil. So why is God Himself obligated to do good and to obligate doing good? Doesn’t that mean there is something internal within the definition of the good that obligates Him? And then you cannot make the distinction I made earlier between the definition of what is good and what is evil, and the obligation attached to it—to do good and refrain from doing evil.

So what I want to argue is that the Holy One, blessed be He, really is not obligated to the good; He chose to do good. And once He chose to do good and to obligate us to do good, now it became binding. From His point of view it really was not binding. Maybe this is connected to what the Ramchal writes, right? “It is the nature of the good to do good.” The Holy One, blessed be He, who is good by nature, so from that nature arises this desire to bestow good. So He is not compelled; He is not obligated to do the good. In that sense, nothing obligates the Holy One, blessed be He. Morality too does not obligate the Holy One, blessed be He. Because to obligate means that you have another option and I obligate you to do this. That already would be a limitation on the Holy One, blessed be He. Right? When you say to create a world in which murder is good—there simply is no such option. So to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do that is not a limitation. But to be obligated to do good—you can be obligated to do good and you can also not be obligated to do good. The definition of what good is, is an objective definition. You can be obligated to do the good, and you can be not obligated to do the good. And therefore here the Holy One, blessed be He, chooses to be obligated to the good, and by extension to obligate us to do the good. Why does He choose this? There is no prior obligation. Because He is good. And it is the nature of the good to do good. That is perhaps what the Ramchal means when he says, “It is the nature of the good to do good.” Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, is not forced to do the good, but His nature leads Him to do the good. And after all, He has no evil inclination; He is not in a dilemma whether to do the good or not to do the good. So if His nature is good, and the good is defined independently of Him—say, murder is evil, acts of kindness are good—then by His nature He will command us to perform acts of kindness and refrain from murder. That is because it is His nature.

Now with us, that is not necessarily our nature. But once there is a divine command, now we are obligated to do it. Okay? The obligation exists only with us, not with Him. I once saw some conceptual analysis—someone brought something from the Ramchal too, I think—some claim that angels have free choice. He argues that angels have free choice; they just have no evil inclination. So since they have no evil inclination, they will always do the good—but not because they have no free choice. They do have free choice, they just have no dilemma, so they do not use that power of choice. They will always do the good because they have no evil inclination, so why wouldn’t they do the good? In that sense it is like the Holy One, blessed be He. Meaning, it is not true that the Holy One, blessed be He, has no choice whether to create a good world or not to create a good world. He has such a choice. It is just that by virtue of His nature He of course goes and creates a good world.

With us, it does not come from our nature. With us, it comes from responding to the command, the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. With us it is the opposite. In the previous lecture, last semester, I spoke about this: someone who does things only because he has a good nature is not a moral person. If you do it because of your nature, then you are like a sheep. A sheep also helps its companions and does not harm them and is nice and everything is wonderful; nobody would say that a sheep is a moral creature. Why? Because it behaves that way because that is its nature, not because it chose to behave that way. It is not that it had some dilemma and decided in favor of the good. It behaves that way because it is built to behave that way. That is not called being good. Okay? So in that sense, the Holy One, blessed be He, is like a sheep. So the Holy One, blessed be He, is not? By nature He bestows good, but with us there is moral value to actions if we do them out of commitment to the moral principle. If we do it because it is our nature, because that is how we are built, then it has no moral value.

So what you are saying is that in principle the Holy One, blessed be He, is not moral because that is His nature? In the terms we are using, then yes. Only those terms apply to us; they do not apply to Him. With Him, He is not moral in that sense, because He does not overcome an evil inclination in order to decide to do the good. It does not require mental effort from Him, struggles, power, exertion, right? No. His nature is simply to be good. So He is not moral in the sense in which we talk about human beings. No, He is not. In that sense He is similar to a sheep. He is simply good by nature; it is not that He chooses the good in the full sense. He chooses the good—He could theoretically have chosen evil—only He is good, so He chooses good, and He has no evil inclination. So in principle He apparently has the possibility to choose—I am speculating again, it is hard to speak about Him—but by His nature He does the good. With us, we have an evil inclination and we have choice, and precisely for that reason there is value in situations where we choose the good, because we could also have chosen evil, and we had an inclination trying to get us to do that, and we overcame it and chose the good. And only because of that does our action actually have moral value. So in that sense it really is different from the Holy One, blessed be He; with the Holy One, blessed be He, it is not like that.

Rabbi, do moral laws exist even without the laws of physics? Meaning, I am trying—the Rabbi separated them earlier—but presumably for there to be some morality in the world there has to be action in the world. No, for morality to be realized there has to be action, but in order to determine what is right and what is not right, that determination can precede the world. Here is a possible interpretation of what you said earlier, that the Torah preceded the world by 974 generations. It may be that they do not really mean to say that the Torah was created a thousand generations before the world, as some historical statement. What they want to tell you is the idea. The idea is that the Torah, in principle, precedes the world; it does not need a world in order to exist. But that does not mean this is a historical description of the point on the timeline when the Torah was created. I do not think that is the intention, in any case.

Okay, so that is a remark regarding the goodness and morality of the Holy One, blessed be He. Now really, in that sense it is hard to speak about moral laws preceding God. God is primordial, meaning there was never a time when God was not, right? You cannot precede God; He always existed. So there is no such thing as “before God.” When we speak here about “before,” the meaning is independent of God, not before God in the sense of a timeline. Okay? It is independent.

Now more than that: it is not only that on a timeline it cannot be, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is a necessary existent. You cannot even imagine a world in which there is no God, some imaginary world without God. No, because God is a necessary existent. And any imaginary world is also supposed to be what? Why can’t you imagine a world without God? No, I am not making a psychological claim that you cannot imagine a world; this is a philosophical claim. A philosophical claim says that someone who understands what God is should understand that imaginings of a world without God are empty imaginings, like imaginings of a world without logic. No, I understand the claim, I just do not understand how—what is the reason that you cannot imagine a world without God? Are you asking how I know He is a necessary existent? What is the logical process that brings you to necessity? I start—the logical process starts with the fact that He is a necessary existent. Fine. I asked how I know that He is a necessary existent; that is a different discussion. Who says it is a logical process? Fine, so I am asking. I took it from the Torah, forgive me. Tell me that. There is no logical process. So again, if you do not accept that, no problem, everything is fine. I am only saying that even if one does accept it, it raises no problem regarding moral laws. And they do not need to precede the Holy One, blessed be He, in time. Okay? That is not the point. Okay, that is just a clarification.

Now I want to move on. Can we just clarify this issue of time? Did the Holy One, blessed be He, create time at some point? That is a hard question. I do not know how to answer it. It could be that He created time. By the way, I will get to that in my Sunday lectures—philosophy. But once time was created, now I can look backward to minus infinity. And there are claims that time and… say, by Shem-Tov Gefen—have you heard of him? An interesting Jew. He wrote a book called The Dimensions, Prophecy, and Geology. He argues—yes, he argues. He was an ancestor of Aviv Gefen and Yonatan Gefen, from the early 20th century. His son was still alive in Tel Aviv, I think he was a poet or something. In any case, he argued, for example…

Yes, he argued. Kant, after all, says that space and time are forms of our perception. They do not exist in reality itself; they are only forms of our perception. Therefore, he says, that solves the problem of the eternity of the world, which does not fit with our tradition. Why? Because before there was a human being, there was no time. So you cannot say that the world existed such-and-such a number of years before there was a human being. Before there was a human being, there were no years, because the time-axis did not exist. Time and space are forms of human perception. If there are no human beings, there is no space and time. That is his claim. That is how he solves this problem of the age of the world, of the eternity of the world versus the tradition.

Why does that not solve anything? It solves nothing because think for a second. I can talk about the question of when my grandfather was born, right? Even though I did not exist then. So my time-axis, as a form of my perception, was born only when I was born. When my grandfather was born, my time-axis still did not exist. But it is completely obvious that I can still talk about the question of on what date my grandfather was born. Why? Because now that I am equipped with the spectacles of time through which I look at the world, I can also look backward and ask about things that happened a hundred, two hundred years ago. There is no problem at all. The fact that at that time the time-axis did not exist does not prevent me today, when I have a time-axis, from placing past events on the time-axis too.

I did not quite understand how you privatize it and then say it also relates to the general rule. From what I understood from what you said, he is talking about the perception of all human beings. But that is exactly his mistake. What does “the perception of all human beings” mean? The perception of each human being separately, which just happens to be the same for all of us. Fine. But he still says time does not really exist. So where does it exist? In the collective consciousness of humanity? No, it exists in the consciousness of each one of us, which just happens to be the same. Fine. But that is in the consciousness of an individual person, not in the consciousness of… There is no collective consciousness, or at least there is no need to assume the existence of a collective consciousness. I am not really managing to understand why we need these games at all. Time is… It is a physical thing. We have space and time. I did not understand. But still, it is a physical thing, and it can still be only parameters through which I arrange the world of phenomena for myself, while in reality there really is no space and time. Why? What do you mean why? That is what he claims. What is the problem with that claim? Fine, I thought it was strange. That is what Kant claims. I am not saying I agree with him, but there is no principled problem with that claim. Okay.

Now he says, if we adopt Kant’s claim—this is what Shem-Tov Gefen says—if we adopt Kant’s claim, that solves the problem of the age of the world. And I argue that it does not solve it. Because the age of the world is the age of the world from my perspective. Like the age of my grandfather. But today I can still determine what his birth date was. Because today I look at reality through the spectacles of time, and through those spectacles I can also look at the past, and then I map the past, with its years, onto the time-axis. No problem, even though my time-axis still did not exist then. It does not matter.

I got into all this—I do not remember why. Well, in any case, what I do want to say is this. Someone made some remark, an interesting remark, about this thesis. I am getting a bit ahead of myself, but it is important to me in order to complete the picture here. We will still talk about Jewish law and morality later on, okay? And there I will argue that Jewish law and morality are two independent categories. By the way, what you said earlier, Noam, on that point too I do not agree. Meaning, the Torah does not determine morality, and “He looked into the Torah and created the world”—I do not agree with that either, and “the Holy One, blessed be He, looked into the Torah and created the world”—that too is aggadic literature; it does not really say anything about either the Torah or the world. And I also do not agree that the Torah determines morality, absolutely not. But we will still discuss all that.

In any case, I want to argue that Jewish law and morality are two independent categories. Therefore, for example—again, we will discuss all this later—but at the level of principle, I for example am not troubled by conflicts between Jewish law and morality. Killing Amalekite babies, not violating the Sabbath in order to save a non-Jew, a mamzer—a child of a woman who committed adultery—what is the poor child’s fault that you make him a mamzer and he cannot marry? A priest’s wife who was raped has to separate from her husband—patently immoral, what do you want from her? She was raped. Now you are putting her through another trauma? Her and her husband and their children? What is the idea here?

So all these things are halakhic directives that are immoral, and people are very disturbed by them: how do you reconcile Jewish law with morality? There are laws that seemingly clash with moral principles. And what I want to argue—I will do it briefly; we will do it more broadly later—is that there is no principled difficulty here. Jewish law says one thing, morality says another thing, and sometimes there is a conflict between them. Jewish law is not trying to tell me what the Torah’s moral directive is. Jewish law tells me what the halakhic directive is. The moral directive is another directive, and sometimes there will be a clash between them.

Like, yes, I may be—yes, I like eating chocolate, it is very tasty. A doctor comes and tells me, do not eat chocolate because it is unhealthy. Who is right? Both are right, right? Chocolate is tasty—that is true. And that chocolate is unhealthy is also true. Unfortunately those always go together. Okay, so what does that mean? It means that when I say chocolate is tasty and you say chocolate is unhealthy, there is no disagreement between us at all. You are looking through medical spectacles; through medical spectacles, it is not worthwhile to eat chocolate. I am looking through hedonistic spectacles, through the lens of pleasure; through those spectacles, yes, it is worthwhile to eat chocolate. Now is there a contradiction between the two sets of spectacles? No. There is a conflict between the two sets of spectacles. From the standpoint of pleasure it is worthwhile to eat chocolate; from the standpoint of health it is not worthwhile to eat chocolate.

But that raises another question. The Holy One, blessed be He—does He act according to morality and also according to Jewish law? Right, so how? What do you mean how? Sometimes there are conflicts. When a doctor performs surgery, he causes pain to the patient, right? So from the standpoint of causing suffering to another person, the doctor was not okay. But he does it in order to heal him. In that sense he is okay. Many situations in the world require trampling on one value in order to realize another. One overrides the other value; what can you do. But in the end everyone agrees that the doctor’s act is one hundred percent moral. What does moral mean? It is not moral; it is medically beneficial and it causes pain. You are just claiming that medical benefit is preferable to causing pain. I understand, but it still causes pain.

And here too, in conflicts between Jewish law and morality, I say: Jewish law says this child is a mamzer; morality says it is immoral to make him a mamzer. Right, and both things are true. But Jewish law has its reasons why this child is nevertheless determined to be a mamzer. These are not moral reasons; they are other spiritual reasons. And does the Holy One, blessed be He, want us to observe Jewish law? Yes, of course He wants us to observe Jewish law and He also… He wants both this and that, but in reality sometimes they can conflict, and in such a conflict I can preserve only one of the values and I will have to push aside the other. And here too, same thing: a clash between Jewish law and morality. There is a spiritual value here alongside a moral value. In order to uphold the spiritual value, one has to give up the moral value. Or maybe the reverse, it does not matter, but that is called a conflict. A conflict is not a contradiction. A conflict does not raise a principled problem. A conflict raises a practical question. Okay, so we have to decide which takes precedence, what to do in practice. But there is no principled problem here in the sense of a contradiction. No, there is no contradiction here at all. Halakhically, this child is a mamzer; morally, it is not right to make him a mamzer. Right, and both statements are true.

Now if that really is so, then why did the Holy One, blessed be He, establish these laws? Because He has certain spiritual aims. And sometimes that comes at the expense of a moral value. Okay? That is the claim. Now someone asked me whether what I said about moral laws—that they do not depend on the Holy One, blessed be He—I also say about the laws of Jewish law. That desecrating the Sabbath too is something bad—not morally bad, but halakhically bad, spiritually bad. Okay? It is spiritually bad, and it does not depend on the Holy One, blessed be He. And all the Holy One, blessed be He, did was merely give it force—that I am forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath—exactly as I said about moral laws. He asked me whether I would say the same thing about the laws of Jewish law.

Now, at first glance I would say no. And I also told him no. Because the laws of Jewish law somehow seem clearly to be the result of the divine command—that is, without the divine command, why should one do them? Here, for example, the gentiles who were not commanded—there is no problem if they eat pork, right? So clearly it starts with the command. Unlike moral laws, which are supposed to be universal, obligating all of us equally, the laws of Jewish law are particular laws, not universal. They obligate Jews, not gentiles. So if that is so, then my initial inclination was to say that the laws of Jewish law, unlike moral laws, are not imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He; He legislated them in the Torah.

But then that same student told me that this cannot be correct, and I really retracted. Why? Because suppose now the Holy One, blessed be He, comes to create the world. Moral laws are given, imposed on Him. The laws of Jewish law are in His hands, right? Now why would He establish a halakhic law that a child born from adultery is a mamzer? After all, that is an immoral law, right? Now if it is in His hands to establish Jewish law as He wishes, if nothing imposes anything on Him—it is He who determines it—yes, in the Euthyphro dilemma, with Jewish law it is Jewish law because the Holy One, blessed be He, determined it, not that He determined it because that is the Jewish law. Okay? Not like morality.

If that is so, then why would He establish halakhic laws that stand against morality? He is putting us into unnecessary conflicts. After all, there is no real value to the halakhic law; you only need to obey the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. So let Him command us the opposite, in a way that no conflict will arise between Jewish law and morality. Why create a Jewish law that will stand in conflict with morality? What for? After all, it is all in Your hands; You can command whatever You decide. So do it in such a way that conflicts with morality will not arise. We are forced to conclude that I was wrong in what I said before. Jewish law too is imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He. Spiritual good and evil too—not only moral good and evil—were also not determined by the Holy One, blessed be He. If the Holy One, blessed be He, says that a child born from adultery is a mamzer, that means that factually he is a mamzer. And what the Holy One, blessed be He, did was only command us to treat him as a mamzer. He created the force or the obligation to act, but the definition of what is halakhically forbidden and what is halakhically permitted is not in His hands.

You did not leave Him anything. What? You did not leave the Holy One, blessed be He, anything. Right. Nothing essential. Physics remains with Him. Physics, or the scientific realm, the material world, remains with Him. Nothing essential is in His hands. And what does that say about God if the spiritual world is not in His hands? It is in His hands to give force to the spiritual principles. Without His giving them force, they would not obligate. Take gentiles, for example: then the halakhic statement that eating pork is spiritually bad is true regardless of a divine command, but it does not obligate us to any behavior until the Holy One, blessed be He, commands. And He did not command the gentiles. One should ask whether a gentile has any reason to be stringent with himself and refrain from eating pork. It may very well be that yes. He has no obligation. There is no prohibition if he eats pork, but according to this conception there is definitely room to say that there is some point in being stringent and preserving spiritual purity, not only moral purity.

Rabbi, is there a difference, from the standpoint of the Jewish law that is imposed on the Holy One, blessed be He, between what came before the giving of the Torah and what came after the giving of the Torah? What gives me trouble is, say, for example the binding of Isaac, where the command itself is immoral, and in the end the Holy One, blessed be He, restored Isaac to life—what exactly happened there I am not sure—but the halakhic result was moral. There is no halakhic result there; the result is factual. There are no laws there. The command itself—is that not considered Jewish law? I know, you can call it the command given to Abraham. Maybe yes, but that is not what we call Jewish law. But fine, maybe yes; there was a divine command versus morality. Yes. What is the question? Is there a difference between a divine command before the giving of the Torah and after the giving of the Torah? I do not see why there should be a difference. There is a theological difference in the sense that things before the giving of the Torah, Maimonides says at least, do not obligate us. They were said for their time and place and to those to whom they were said, but they do not obligate for future generations. Okay, that is a halakhic principle: the Holy One, blessed be He, tells us that what I commanded before the giving of the Torah does not obligate you. Fine, but He could also have said otherwise. But there too would you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, was constrained by the things He said? No principles were stated there at all. When He commanded Abraham to bind his son, that is not a principle. It is a command given to a very specific situation, to a very specific person in a very specific situation. And that was a choice of the Holy One, blessed be He. A universal principle that exists and obligates for generations, like Jewish law—that was a choice of the Holy One, blessed be He, to command Abraham? Yes, and I assume He did it because He wanted to test him, as the Torah says. Okay? He decided to test Abraham, and He did not establish here some principle, neither moral nor halakhic. So I do not see room for a discussion of whether this principle exists, whether this principle is realist, as I spoke about moral realism. But “the deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children”—we are supposed to learn from this how to behave morally. No, not necessarily morally. In the context of the binding, absolutely do not behave like Abraham on the moral level. In the context of the binding you learn a spiritual principle, not a moral one: that one must obey the Holy One, blessed be He, at any cost, in any situation.

Rabbi, may I make a comment? Yes. The last topic you raised—the logic of it was the easiest for me to accept. Morality I am still somehow undecided about. But with Jewish law I cannot understand at all. Really cannot understand at all. You are saying—correct me if this is not your argument—your argument is like this: morality is imposed on Him, right? So why would He establish a Jewish law that contradicts morality? Now I did not find a reason, therefore Jewish law is also imposed on Him. That seems funny to me. Why should I know His reasons? Maybe He has a reason and I just do not know it. I do not need to know the reasons; that is exactly the point. It is enough that there is a reason. I do not need to know what the reason is. Why is it enough that there is a reason? It is enough for the purpose of my argument. I did not get into the question of what His reason is. I do not know what His reason is. But there are only two possibilities—even regarding the Holy One, blessed be He, there are only two possibilities: either He is free to choose Jewish law as He wishes, or He is not. Agreed? Right. There is no third possibility, right? This is the law of the excluded middle—either yes or no. Okay? Now I am saying, if He could choose Jewish law as He wishes, then there is no constraint. There is no problem, there is no right or wrong here. And morality He wants—that is our given, that is our assumption—so why would He establish a Jewish law that does not fit morality? Unless He has some reason for doing that. That reason—I do not care what the reason is. That reason is what I call the spiritual principle that exists there, and it exists regardless of the Holy One, blessed be He, because it is a reason for which He acts. That reason itself cannot be a result of His will, because then you have gained nothing.

There is something a bit strange to me. For example, keeping the Sabbath. If that is something that existed independently of the Holy One, blessed be He—not before, but not dependent on the Holy One, blessed be He—but the Sabbath itself depends on the Holy One, blessed be He. He is the one who rested. Correct. So how can something be—how can a law that is… That was Noam’s question earlier. Can there be Torah without there being physics? Or morality without there being physics? My answer was yes, there can be, because it determines what ought to happen, but it does not necessarily become realized. When the world is created, it is also realized in practice. Same thing here. The principle of the Sabbath was always true; it could always have been true. If no world had been created and there had been no six days of labor followed by a Sabbath, then maybe it would not have been realized in practice. Okay, so then not. But in the Torah itself too, at least I see certain reasons in the verses for certain commandments, just as Noam said. I did not understand. There is a reason—same thing—because God rested, so we do it as a remembrance of Him. Or because we left Egypt at Passover, so we do it as a remembrance of Passover. So what is the question? So how can that be necessary? Ah. It is necessarily the case that if there is a world created in seven days—in six days—and on the seventh the Holy One, blessed be He, rests, then it is necessary that we rest on the seventh day. That is necessary. Whether it is realized in practice or not depends on whether there will be such a world, created in six days and with the Holy One, blessed be He, resting on the seventh. If there is such a world, then this halakhic principle will be realized. If not, then it remains theoretical. Okay.

I think I mentioned—I do not remember if it was in this series or somewhere else—that there is a very interesting way of looking at logic, morality, and Jewish law, all these principles. Notice: when I say, for example, “All benches have legs; this thing is a bench; therefore this thing has legs”—that is a logical argument, right? Now what, within this whole structure I described here, does logic deal with? It does not deal with the premises of the argument—“all benches have legs” and “this thing is a bench,” right? Those are claims I derive from observation; that has nothing to do with logic. And logic also does not deal with the conclusion, that “therefore this thing has legs.” Logic deals only with one thing: that if the premises are true, then the conclusion is also true. Right? Logic does not deal with the truth of the premises and also not with the truth of the conclusion. It deals solely with the derivation of the conclusion from the premises. All of logic really deals only with implication. Which premises you choose, and as a result which conclusions come out—that is your choice.

Think about geometry. Geometry does not determine that exactly one straight line passes through two points, or that parallels do not meet. That is an axiom. That is not a mathematical determination. The mathematical determination says that if you adopt those axioms, then the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. Only the “if… then.” But what the premises are—it does not speak about your premises. Okay? Meaning, logic deals only with the implication of the conclusion from the premises, with the “if… then,” not with the “if” separately and not with the “then” separately, but with the implication of the conclusion from the premises. Therefore, for example, there can be a logically valid argument whose premises and conclusion are all false. “All frogs have wings; this telephone is a frog; therefore this telephone has wings.” Both premises are false, and the conclusion is also false. But logically this is a valid argument. If you accept the premises, you must also accept the conclusion, right? And that is what logic deals with. Logic deals only with the schema of the derivation of the conclusion from the premise. Logic deals only with the schema of the derivation of the conclusion from the premises, not with the premises and not with the conclusion.

Okay, now morality too, when you look carefully, really deals only with “if… then,” not with the “if” and not with the “then.” I gave this example in the previous lecture. I said, suppose in a world where human beings greatly enjoy torture—you comb a person with iron combs, draw blood from him, injure him, and he jumps with joy and pleasure. That is the thing that gives him the most pleasure, right? A world of masochists. Then there would be no prohibition against injuring people, right? Torturing people. Does that mean morality there is different from ours? No. Morality is the same as ours: if something causes suffering, it is forbidden to do it. In their world and in our world, different things cause suffering and do not cause suffering. There is a factual difference between the worlds. But the moral principle says that it is forbidden to cause suffering, not that it is forbidden to rake a person’s flesh with iron combs. There is no such moral principle. The moral principle only says that one may not cause suffering.

Now what causes suffering? Look at the physiology of the creatures in that world and you will know what causes suffering. So morality too does not really say that it is forbidden to comb your flesh with iron combs. Morality only says that if combing your flesh with iron combs causes you suffering, then it is forbidden to do it. Does it cause you suffering or not? I do not know—look and see. It could be that in another world it would not cause suffering, and there there would be no prohibition. But that does not mean that their morality is different from ours, because the moral rule that one may not cause suffering is true both here and there.

I also talked about the Nazis last time, I think, right? Did the Nazis challenge the prohibition against murder? Absolutely not. They fully subscribed to the prohibition against murder. They just claimed that Jews are not human beings, or Gypsies. It is forbidden to murder human beings; they thought Jews are not human beings. Fine, they were mistaken, that is not important, but they did not challenge the moral principle that forbids murder. They claim that if you are a human being, it is forbidden to murder you. That is the moral principle. Once again, it is “if… then.” But are you a human being or not? That is a determination each person has to make; I do not know how one determines it. Morality does not decide whether you are human or not; that is a fact. Morality says that if that is the fact, this is what follows from it, this is how one should relate to it. It is always “if… then.”

Okay, the same thing—think now, as I return to Jewish law—in Jewish law too it is the same. Jewish law does not determine that one must rest on the seventh day. Jewish law determines that if there is a world created in six days and its Creator rested on the seventh day, then one must rest on the seventh day. Now in our case the world really was created that way, therefore in our case too one must rest on the seventh day. But when you ask yourself what Torah really is, Torah is not the obligation to keep the Sabbath. Torah is the obligation to keep the Sabbath if there were six days of creation and the world was created in six days of labor. And since in our case that is in fact what happened, we can now infer the conclusion immediately. But Torah is really the “if… then,” and that is my claim: it preceded the world. Even before the world was created, this “if… then,” which says that if a world is created in six days and its Creator rests on the seventh day, then all creatures must rest on the seventh day—that “if… then” existed before the world was created; it does not depend on the creation of the world. After the world was created, and it really was created in six days and on the seventh day the Holy One, blessed be He, rested, then the principle of the “if… then” is applied and now the obligation to keep the Sabbath is created. But the Torah in this matter is only the “if… then,” and the “if… then” is not dependent on the existence of a world. That is what I am saying.

Rabbi, I have two questions. First question: how do we know that causing suffering is immoral? And second, from earlier, when the Rabbi spoke about how a triangle cannot be round and vice versa, it reminded me of the midrash about the Tablets of the Covenant, where the letters were floating and also where they could see the Ten Commandments from both sides of the tablet. So my second question is: there, in that example, if it really was that way physically, would that violate the laws of logic or only the laws of physics?

So the answer is twofold. First, I do not know if that really happened, because that too is a midrash, and we said that midrashim do not always describe facts. Midrashim sometimes have certain messages, and they are not necessarily factual claims. But beyond that, any claim that is a claim about the world is already a claim in physics and not in logic. I will give you an example.

When I came to Bar-Ilan to study physics for a master’s degree, they put me in charge of teaching mechanics—mechanics for biology students, to my sorrow. And I began the first recitation session with a philosophical question. I asked the students there, in your opinion, is mathematics—for example arithmetic addition, five plus five equals ten—is that a scientific claim? According to Popper, a scientific claim is a claim that can be falsified. Right? That is Karl Popper’s definition of a scientific claim. What does that mean? It is a claim where you can perform an experiment and put it to a test that could falsify it. If it falsifies it, it falls; if it does not falsify it, then it has been corroborated. A claim that cannot be put to an experimental test is not a scientific claim. The claim that every angel has three wings is not a scientific claim because I have no way to perform an experiment to refute that claim. Right? So that is not a scientific claim. A scientific claim is one for which you can do an experiment that would refute it.

So I asked them whether the claim “five plus five equals ten” is a scientific claim. Or in other words, can one perform an experiment that would refute that claim? So after I helped them a bit, we arrived at the conclusion that apparently yes. Why? Take a big basket. Put five oranges into it. Now add five more oranges. Count how many oranges are in the basket. If you get eight, then you have refuted the claim that five plus five equals ten. But that is because you chose oranges; if you chose sand… What difference does sand make? Take marbles next; what difference does it make? I am doing an experiment that refutes the claim. The claim is that five plus five equals ten always—in sand, in oranges, in anything. I take oranges, I see it does not work, so I have refuted the claim.

But no, that is not true. I have not refuted the claim. Now think about it for a second and you will see: suppose you did such an experiment—would you really give up the claim that five plus five equals ten? Of course not. You would say there was probably a mistake in the experiment. Two oranges rolled away, I do not know, there was a hole in the basket, I do not know exactly what happened, we counted wrong. Obviously we would never give up the fact that five plus five equals ten. Why not? Because the claim that five plus five equals ten is not a scientific claim; it does not stand the test of falsification. It is true with certainty, period. It has nothing to do with experiments and empirical falsification. Is that not our basic assumptions in principle? If we rely on the basic assumption that one plus one equals two, then it will be possible to prove from that that five plus five equals ten. Very good. That is an assumption—that is what I am talking about.

Now I will say more than that. Suppose there really was no mistake in the experiment. I am convinced there was no mistake in the experiment, and all in all there were eight oranges in the basket. What I have refuted is the claim that adding oranges into a basket is described by arithmetic addition. No—it turns out arithmetic addition does not describe it correctly. But that claim is a claim in physics, not in mathematics. The mathematical claim that five plus five equals ten remains standing always. The question whether adding oranges into a basket is modeled by arithmetic addition—that I have refuted. Apparently it is not arithmetic addition. Adding oranges gives five plus five equals eight. So it is not arithmetic plus, it is something else. Do you understand? And that is already a claim in physics, not mathematics. Because I am really saying that the world behaves according to arithmetic addition. That is a claim about the world; it is not a claim in mathematics. A mathematical claim is when I study the arithmetic rules themselves. When I apply that to the world, that is already a claim in physics.

Why did I say this at the beginning of a mechanics course? I said to them: look, I am going to refute for you the claim that five plus five equals ten. Take some body and apply to it a force of five newtons northward. Thank you. Now apply to it another force of five newtons eastward. How much total force is acting on it? Something like seven and a bit newtons in that direction. Five root two—the diagonal of five by five. Right? Not ten. So there, I have refuted the mathematical claim that five plus five equals ten. No, I have not refuted it. In fact we know that addition of forces and velocities and accelerations and all such things in physics is described by vector addition, not arithmetic addition. They are vectors, and therefore their addition—five plus five—is not necessarily ten; it depends on the direction. If it is the same direction, then it is ten. If they are in other directions, here it is zero. Here it is five root two.

And how do we know what the moral laws are? What? And how do we know what the moral laws are? How do we know what the laws of physics or mathematics are? From our reason. And that is not learned by observation. Can you learn observationally that murder is evil? Someone murdered, and what am I supposed to look at in order to know whether it is evil or not? But the Rabbi said it has nothing to do with what human beings think; it depends on the Holy One, blessed be He alone—or not depend, sorry, I no longer know. Right, it does not depend on human beings, agreed. So what is the question? So why should it be according to our reason? Because the wall that exists here also does not depend on me, right? But I will not know it exists unless I look at it with my own eyes. It is not that my eyes are responsible for the existence of the wall, but without eyes I will not see that it exists. How do I know that morality says murder is forbidden? I look at it with the eyes of my mind, with my conscience, and then I become aware of the moral fact that murder is evil. But it is not that I invented that fact; rather, I became aware that it is true, I observed it and saw that it is true. Okay?

So let me return to our line of thought. I basically want to say that moral laws, and also the laws of Jewish law, are probably true regardless of the world and regardless of the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. They are objectively true; they are halakhic facts and ethical facts, moral facts. Now when the Holy One, blessed be He, creates the world, He creates certain circumstances, and given those circumstances I apply the moral and halakhic and logical rules accordingly. Logical rules say that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. But what if there were a world without triangles? The law would still be true. The sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees, but if in practice there were no triangles in our world, then that law would not be realized in practice, right? But that does not mean the law would not be true. Same thing with morality and with Jewish law. These laws are true regardless of what happens here in the world, and they are universal for any world whatsoever. The only thing newly introduced here in the world is that these laws are now realized in practice, that they have consequences for what is morally and halakhically permitted and required. Okay? That is basically the claim.

Now I want to take one more step. Many interpreters of Kant wrestle with a contradiction in his doctrine. What do I mean? The claim is that in one place—even in two places—Kant essentially argues, or let us phrase it differently: in discourse in today’s world, among philosophers and in general, Kant is commonly regarded as the father of secular morality. Autonomous morality, not heteronomous morality. Yes, secular morality, morality without God, morality as an expression of humanity. And therefore the categorical imperative—you have to obey it because you are a human being, and a human being must obey the categorical imperative; you do not need the divine command for that.

Not only that: in The Critique of Pure Reason he also says that there cannot be proofs for the existence of God. He brings three kinds of proofs there and rejects all three. The proof from morality he does not present there, the one I brought earlier. But there are writings—Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, for example, I think there, or Critique of Practical Reason, I think there too—where he does present a proof for the existence of God from morality. He says that without God there is no morality. Now how does that fit with those lofty declarations about secular atheistic morality? Kant is considered the father of morality. Yes, until Kant, the religious always had a whip in their hand, saying: without God there is no morality. If there is no God, “there is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me,” as the moralists say. Meaning, if there is no God, there is no morality. They threaten the secularists: look what kind of world you are going to build. Then Kant saved the secularists. He created a grounded morality without God, atheistic morality, secular morality. That is the accepted perception of Kant’s morality. But people ignore a bit the fact that in two books he presents a proof for the existence of God from the validity of morality. Without God there is no morality.

Now how does that fit with this conception of the categorical imperative, which obligates you as a human being simply insofar as you are a human being, and so on? So I want to argue that the proof for the existence of God is not from the existence of good and evil. Good and evil really do not depend on God. Good and evil exist regardless of God, and in that sense even a completely secular atheist can recognize the existence of good and evil. So what is the proof that requires God in order for morality to have validity? It is to give force to the moral facts. The moral facts of what is good and what is evil are neutral facts. But what creates the obligation or the force to behave well and refrain from behaving badly? That does not exist without God. My claim is that Kant’s proof for the existence of God, the proof from morality, is not a proof from the existence of morality but a proof from the validity of morality. From the fact that morality is binding, that there is an obligation to behave according to it. Because without God there cannot be an obligation to behave this way or that way. But the distinction itself between good and evil exists even without reference to God. Meaning, it does not depend on God, okay? As we said earlier. And therefore the philosophical contradiction in Kant’s doctrine too is resolved if we make the distinction I made earlier between the ethical fact itself—what is good and what is evil—and the obligation to obey the ethical facts, between the is and the ought.

Okay. Now I will begin the next part, but I will not get very far; we do not have all that much time. Rabbi, if possible just to sharpen my understanding a little: we said earlier that if you believe there is valid morality, then necessarily there is God. Does that also have to work in the opposite direction? What? Meaning, if you believe there is God, must there be valid morality? No. In principle there could be an evil God, or simply one who does not command us concerning morality. It only works in this direction. So what does that mean? There cannot be a secular moral person, but there can be a religious immoral person? What would a world without God look like in terms of morality? I said there is no valid morality without God. So there is no valid morality without God, but morality does not depend on God. Am I understanding correctly? Fine. What you just said now is different from what you said before; both are true, but you said something different. Before, you said that there could be a situation where I believe in God and still there is no valid morality in my doctrine. Yes, that could be. But it cannot be that I do not believe in God and there is valid morality in my doctrine. Okay? Yes. Okay.

Now I just want to begin the next section. Look. I also spoke last semester, mainly, about Kant’s categorical imperative and focused on its categorical nature. What does that mean? Kant basically claims that moral behavior is only behavior that stems from commitment to a categorical imperative. A categorical imperative means an imperative that obligates by virtue of being what it is. Okay? An imperative that you follow because it is the imperative. Meaning, you do not do it because it suits you, because you identify with it, because you have an interest in doing it, but only because there is a command. Only behavior like that can count as moral behavior.

By the way, the same is true of religious behavior. I spoke a bit about this last semester too: in religious behavior as well, our actions have religious value only if they are done out of commitment to the divine command. Someone who does these acts because he wants to make the world better, or make himself better, or because he thinks it is very pleasant to perform commandments, and the like, has not fulfilled commandments. He has not fulfilled commandments. Only someone who does it out of commitment to the divine command fulfills commandments. That is Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of The Laws of Kings, and there are other sources. I brought quite a few sources last semester.

Now that is regarding the categorical nature of the imperative. But when we talk about the categorical imperative, in general the moral imperative has to be a categorical imperative. Meaning, it has to be categorical in the sense that it must obligate by virtue of being the moral imperative, not for side reasons. But Kant’s categorical imperative—it is not just “a categorical imperative” of Kant. The categorical imperative of Kant is an imperative that has a specific formulation, and that formulation says the following: you must act only in such a way that you would want your action to become a universal law. Any act that you do—you test it. How do you test whether it is moral or not? Would you want everyone to act that way? That it should be a universal law, that everyone should behave that way. If yes, it is a moral act. If not, then it is not a moral act.

In his categorical imperative, Kant offers a test that will help you determine, with regard to any act, whether it is moral or immoral. And the test is: would you want it to be a universal law, that everyone should behave that way. Now people have a tendency to identify Kant’s categorical imperative—he arrives at it through a complicated philosophical line of reasoning, it does not matter for the moment, and this is the formulation that concludes his philosophical move—with the saying of Hillel the Elder: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” What does that mean? Do not steal, because if you steal then others will steal from you. You hate it when people steal from you? Do not do that to others. So ostensibly Kant’s categorical imperative is basically equivalent to Hillel the Elder’s formulation. In short, Hillel the Elder beat Kant to it by 2,000 years, or something like that, a bit less. But that is not correct. That identification is mistaken. And those who make that identification are doing so because they misunderstand the Kantian principle. And I want to clarify what exactly the Kantian principle says.

Suppose I have an ongoing argument with my son over whether one should go vote in elections. He says there is no point at all; I do not make any difference. Therefore I am not going to waste the half hour it takes to go vote; it is simply pointless, I have no influence whatsoever. Same thing, he says: I have no problem evading 100 shekels in taxes. Because in any case it does not matter to the state treasury whether there is 100 shekels less in the treasury. Okay? Therefore on the level of outcomes I have caused no damage at all. So why should I not do it?

So in my endless arguments with him—and this has already happened dozens of times—I always tell him: yes, but what if everyone did what you do? You hear the categorical imperative. What would happen if this became a universal law? If everyone did that? Hello—if everyone did that, it would be very bad. He says, so you see? Hello, but what I do is not connected to what everyone does. I will evade 100 shekels in taxes; of course I will not tell anyone that I did it, because otherwise I will go to jail. I will not tell anyone that I did it. So the fact that I evade 100 shekels will not cause the others also to evade 100 shekels. Now they can decide on their own to evade 100 shekels. But then they will do it whether I evade or whether I do not evade; in any case it does not depend on what I do. They will decide whatever they decide. So from the standpoint of the state treasury, my 100 shekels will not be missing in any way that matters. One hundred shekels at the level of the state treasury has no effect at all; not one tiny little thing in the way the state functions will be affected by the fact that my 100 shekels are not in the treasury. Nothing. Not even the tiniest little thing, nothing at all. Maybe on one of the computers some digit somewhere after the decimal point will look different, but that is of no interest.

So therefore he always wins the argument. He always wins, because people always explain to him: look, if you do that, then others will do it too. He says, no, no—the others make their own decisions anyway, regardless of me. Therefore I need to make decisions only about what I do. And what I do has no effect at all. So what is the problem? The only claim that can be made against this position—and I am skipping now just to close the circle; we will return to it after Passover, apparently—the only claim that can be made against this position is the Kantian claim. And that is the difference between Kant and Hillel the Elder.

Hillel the Elder says, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow”: if you do it, others will do it to you. That is the claim people always make to my son. But Kant tells him something else. Kant tells him: regardless of what others will do to you, if your act is one that you do not want to become the common property of everyone, that everyone should behave that way, that is an indication that the act is immoral, and therefore do not do it. The problem is not the fear that it will happen in practice. It has nothing to do with whether it will happen in practice. You do not affect whether it will happen in practice; that is irrelevant. Hillel the Elder, simply speaking, talks about the fear that it will happen in practice: if you do it, others will do it too. To that there are good replies: I will do it quietly, not tell anyone, and they will decide what they decide—what does that have to do with me? My act does not cause them to do it or not do it; they will decide however they decide.

Kant says: I am not looking at your influence at all; it is irrelevant. You conduct a purely hypothetical thought experiment. Nobody saw that I evaded taxes. But suppose everyone evaded taxes—would that be a good world? Is that a world you would want to live in? No. If so, then tax evasion is a bad act, so do not evade taxes. Do you understand? It is similar to Hillel the Elder’s claim, but fundamentally different. I am not making a practical claim against him—if you evade, others will evade too. To that he answers correctly: the others will not necessarily evade. I am making a principled claim against him. Suppose everyone did evade—do you agree that that would not be okay? An act such that if everyone did it the world would look bad is an immoral act, and therefore you too, as an individual, should not do that act. That is the Kantian claim. And that claim is different from Hillel the Elder’s claim.

Now the implications and other things we will see after Passover. But that is the content of the categorical imperative. First of all, it is categorical—but what does it say? It says that you should do what you would want to be a universal law. What you would not want, do not do. Okay, let us stop here. Have a kosher and happy holiday, and good news. Again, if there is any problem, you are welcome to reach out on any subject—during Sukkot, in the war, or problems with the Histadrut, in the kollel, in learning, whatever you want, you are welcome to reach out. Yes, did you want to say something?

Just a comment. It is just that when the Rabbi starts talking, at first he sounds very weak, and then as the Rabbi continues talking it gets sorted out. Yonatan, is it like that for you too? Yes, I think it is more connected to the location of the microphone, simply. I do not have a microphone; my microphone is the built-in one in the computer. So just so the Rabbi knows: when the Rabbi starts speaking, for the first second and a half he sounds very weak, and when the Rabbi continues speaking then it sounds perfectly fine. Worth checking. Okay, good, I will ask. I do not know what to do with that, but I will ask. Thank you very much, Rabbi, happy holiday. Thank you, happy holiday, goodbye.