Q&A: The Podcast with Raz Zauber
The Podcast with Raz Zauber
Question
Good afternoon,
In the podcast with Raz Zauber you said that in your view, morality that does not have divine authority behind it is seemingly morality without an anchor, since the moment a person establishes his own values and is not committed to some external objective standard, morality can become flexible and basically end up anywhere.
You gave the example of normalizing incest.
Two questions about this:
1.
Seemingly, even according to your approach, morality is not something learned from the Torah, and it is a system separate from the Torah. So if so, then even according to your approach, a person is basically the one who reflects on his own and searches for morality, and can in practice interpret and think endlessly about it.
Where is your anchor?
2.
Another point:
According to the approach of Professor David Enoch, although there is no God behind morality, there are ideas that serve as the external objective standard (I know that you disagree with him that this is not enough for a binding command), but his morality is just as flexible and refined as yours, and it does not have the problem of deterioration, right?
Since it is backed by an external objective standard.
?
Answer
A very good question. Unfortunately, in our conversation I started to explain my position but did not finish. What I meant to go on and say was that without an objective basis for the validity of morality, there is no certainty at all about being obligated by it, and there is no philosophical basis for obligation. The point that the content of morality is also flexible is indeed not the essential issue. And you are right that this exists to some extent in my approach as well. Still, there is a difference, because in my approach I do interpret divine morality, but not every gut feeling I have becomes a moral principle. For me, morality is a divine command, and I am only interpreting it. Therefore I distinguish between emotion and interpretive intuition. In contrast, those who do not believe in an objective basis for morality will easily follow random emotions and will not bother to distinguish between emotion and an interpretive intuition.
You are absolutely right that in this sense Enoch is similar to me, according to his approach. It is just that I do not think he is right.
Discussion on Answer
If you see something in the Torah that differs from your morality, doesn’t that indicate a problem? (I do agree that you are forced to be committed to both, so you arrive at different thoughts.)
Not at all. See column 456.
Got it. I understand. Life is beautiful.