Answer

“To be obligated” is an expression that belongs to the normative sphere. It is not a feeling and not an urge.

If you do not do what you are obligated to do, then you are simply acting wrongly (and I assume that has problematic consequences / causes damage, but I do not know how to point them out). Maimonides writes at the beginning of chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance that serving out of love means doing the truth because it is truth.
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
I didn’t understand what it means that this is an expression that belongs to the normative sphere.

Wikipedia: “A norm is the mode of behavior expected of groups and individuals in a given society, perceived as proper and accepted according to the values of that culture.”

Is this a social matter?
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Normative means what is proper or fitting (as opposed to what exists—facts). In some usages it describes norms that are derived from a certain culture. But accepted convention is not always the source of obligation. In my view, what is proper is proper in and of itself, not because society decided so. Manners are what society demands, and morality is what is proper in and of itself.
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
With respect, I still don’t understand what it means “to be obligated.” We only moved the question: instead of what “obligation” is, now the question is what “proper” is.

This whole matter of “should,” “must,” “obligated,” “proper” is unclear to me. What is the difference between “I want to eat ice cream” and “I should / must eat ice cream”?
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
A somewhat strange question in my view. In everyday life, do the terms want and must serve you in the same way? Simply put, “must” means being the addressee of an obligation created by an external factor, whereas “want” comes from me myself.
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
In everyday life, “must” serves me in two ways, neither of which fits the definition of religious obligation as it emerges from the Rabbi’s words.
1. Must in the context of law and משפט, where it means that if you don’t do it, they will force you to do what you must or punish you.
2. Must in a personal context, where it is a very strong feeling or urge, a kind of sense that I will not be able to cope if I don’t do what I must. “I must eat,” because otherwise I will suffer and in the end die of hunger.

An external factor will never be significant to me if it does not touch my interests. Therefore, when the Rabbi speaks about religious obligation detached from interests and feelings, that empties the word “must” of content.
Until now I understood religious obligation according to interpretation no. 2: must = a feeling of a very strong urge. And a person, by nature, really does have a strong urge to cleave to the Holy One, blessed be He; he does not always identify that this is his urge, or he does not interpret the urge correctly.
And what Maimonides says, “does the truth because it is truth,” means along these lines—that by nature a person has a strong urge to connect to truth.
Daniel,
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Hello.
This discussion is fascinating to me. At first I was sure we had a philosophical dispute (whether one can be obligated in something regardless of the sanction attached to it or not). But it turns out that at bottom this is a semantic dispute (which may conceal behind it the substantive dispute). I am very interested in whether, after the semantic clarification (in which I think you are simply mistaken), a philosophical change will emerge. There too, in my opinion, you are mistaken, but that is already a matter of opinion and not of facts.
It reminds me of a friend who always thought that the Hebrew word for cucumber meant “from a cucumber,” as though the vegetable’s name were “cumber,” and when one says “did you eat a cucumber,” it means “did you eat from the cucumber.” But there it is a semantic mistake with no philosophical background. Here, of course, it is far more fascinating.
You translate “must” as “I have an interest.” When someone pays you wages for something or gives you a candy, do you also use the term “I must do it”? What is the difference here between reward (positive motivation) and punishment (negative motivation)? This connects to Nozick’s fascinating distinction between an offer (which is legally permitted) and blackmail (which is legally forbidden). An offer is by reward and blackmail is by punishment, but in both cases we are talking about motivation by payoff. So what really is the difference? I discussed this in the third book of the Talmudic Logic series, where I used it to define the difference between positive commandments and prohibitions. But both an offer and blackmail belong to the domain of motivation by payoff. “Must” has nothing to do with that at all.
And what about “proper”? In an earlier message here I suggested the translation that something I must do is something proper to do (as distinct from motivation by interest), and you said that did not solve the problem for you, because now it is not clear to you what proper is. Do you also translate the term “proper” as there will be some payoff (positive or negative) if I do it? That already sounds to me like an even cruder mistake. Here it seems quite clear that this is not the meaning at all.
“Must” in your sense is a borrowed use of the term. It belongs more to the semantic field of being coerced or compelled. Even if it is not literally coercion or compulsion, it is still something of that kind, only softer. But “must” does not belong there at all. It does not speak about the content of my self-interested calculation (reward or punishment), nor about my degree of freedom or necessity (whether I am deterministically compelled or choose to do the thing). It concerns the nature of the act itself. There is a neutral act, meaning one that in itself lacks value, neither positive nor negative. I do it in order to gain something or escape a sanction. But there are acts that in themselves have value, and it is proper to do them regardless of self-interested calculations. About that I say that I “must” do it.
I will bring a few examples here: repaying a debt, helping another person, the prohibition of murder, keeping the Sabbath, obeying the law (!), honoring parents, and the like. All of these have value, and I am not supposed to do them because of a self-interested calculation but because that is what is proper. That is what I call “doing it because I must.” There are moral obligations here, or halakhic obligations, or legal obligations, but they are all obligations in the sense I am discussing.
One implication is that with acts of this type there is an obligation or prohibition even if they are done in secret. The obligation to honor parents exists even if nobody knows about it, including the parents themselves (for example, honoring them after their death). Here there is no self-interested calculation that causes me to do it (see below the claim about acting because of satisfaction or pangs of conscience, which are also a kind of calculation), but only because that is what is proper. I must honor parents. Even if on the halakhic plane one can connect this to reward and punishment (in the World to Come), in the context of morality or law there is no reason in the world to keep them in secret if it is really only about self-interest. There, nobody is going to reward or punish me for hidden acts.
It seems to me that an error like yours is damage that stems from the accepted legal mindset. In the legal world, the conception is that a law that forbids something must always be accompanied by a sanction. Also in the halakhic world (although in some cases the sanction is in the World to Come and not here). But that is for side reasons. On the contrary, the justification for the sanction is that this is what is proper to do even without the sanction. Only because of that is there justification for the legislator or a religious court to punish someone who does not do it.
Maimonides wrote at the beginning of chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance that serving God in that kind of way is “the way of women and children,” and it is not proper to serve God in that way. By the way, in chapter 3, law 6 of the Laws of Idolatry, it emerges from his words that it is also not proper to serve God out of love and fear. Why? Because those too are motives rooted in calculation. Religious service is not supposed to be done out of calculation. The focus is not me but unconditional commitment to the Holy One, blessed be He. This is what he calls there “acceptance of divinity.” A deity is a factor such that the very fact that He commands is sufficient reason for me to feel obligated to do it. That is unlike every other obligation that depends on calculation.
At the margins of my remarks I will add that Maimonides’ words imply that even a calculation rooted in my own motives is a calculation. Thus, for example, some ground moral or religious obligation in the satisfaction it gives me, or in the pangs of conscience I would have if I did not do it. But those too are forms of calculation. That belongs to the plane of the compelled and the coerced (the softer version, unless you are a determinist), not to the plane of the obligated. It is exactly like service out of love or fear.
It seems to me that on the semantic plane it is hard to argue that this is the meaning of “must” or “proper”: an act of this kind is not neutral but “charged,” meaning it has value in and of itself. It motivates action and does not merely describe a fact. When I say that murder is forbidden or that one must give charity, I do not mean merely to describe a kind of act that does something to me (like: scratching my back feels good), but to make a different kind of claim (whose content is not factual). In philosophy this is called a prescriptive statement (= legislating, and perhaps according to what I am saying here also motivating), as distinct from a descriptive one (= describing). When you hear that murder is forbidden, it is not like saying that in some place it is customary to stand on one leg every day. From the listener’s standpoint, it is supposed to motivate him to act or keep him from acting, not merely to convey some factual information. When I say that someone is obligated, it means that he is obligated to do it even in secret, when there is no calculation at all and when he has no feeling of conscience and the like pushing him to do it. Maimonides discusses this distinction at length in the eighth root; see there.
On the philosophical plane, of course, one can argue and refuse to accept the existence of norms in this sense. You can philosophically deny that there are acts that one must do or must not do in this sense, and accept only self-interested calculation. But it seems to me that you should agree that the semantic distinction is like this and is completely clear (even if, in your opinion, it is empty on the practical plane). But perhaps after this semantic clarification its meaning will suddenly become clear to you and you will also be persuaded philosophically. Sometimes the philosophical conclusion comes from failing to distinguish between concepts on the semantic plane, and perhaps that is the case here as well.
——————————————————————————————
Daniel:
In the Rabbi’s opinion, is serving God for the pleasure of closeness to Him and cleaving to Him considered “acceptance of divinity”?
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
If we are talking about pleasure, no matter from what, that is not acceptance of divinity. It is like serving out of love (love of God is a commandment, and still, serving מתוך love of God is not service for its own sake). If it is for cleaving as a value, then of course yes.
——————————————————————————————
Daniel:
That raises for me the question whether a person wants ice cream for the pleasure, or whether the person simply wants the ice cream itself, and when he gives himself what he wants, pleasure arrives?
I do not know whether we can answer such a question at all. Which leads me to think that a person is never capable of knowing, in the depths of his soul, exactly why he does something. Rather, all one can distinguish is whether I want the thing itself or whether I want some external thing that accompanies the thing itself.
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
I am willing to agree that sometimes it is not clear. I do not agree with the sweeping statement that it is never possible to know. For example, with ice cream it is clear to me that I eat for the pleasure, and not that the pleasure is a result of fulfilling my will.
——————————————————————————————
Daniel:
I am not a linguist, and my goal is not to discuss the meaning of words but their actual content. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto writes, “Speech is nothing but the transfer of a mental image from the speaker’s mind to the listener’s mind.” My goal is to understand the mental image, and it does not matter which words we use. We can call obligation A and proper B; that is not the main point.
From observing myself and the people around me, I conclude that all a person wants is to feel certain feelings. A person never wants something that produces no feeling at all. Or, put differently: in everything a person wants there is some positive feeling, and it is impossible to separate the feeling and say that the person wants only the thing without the feeling that accompanies it. So too with observing commandments: I do not think there is anyone who would observe commandments if it did not produce some feeling in him. When a person wants to be moral, it is because being moral creates positive feelings in him (this could be explained psychologically at length). Therefore I think that “must” means a great and significant and essential desire for the fulfillment of the thing. For example, a person must eat, meaning that in order to exist there is a necessity to eat—but it is based on the desire to live and on the pleasure a person has in his very aliveness. If a person does not want to live, he does not have to eat. So too with observing commandments: in order to sustain the spiritual part in a person (which is also the more important part), there is a necessity to observe commandments, and this too is based on the desire to sustain the spiritual part in a person and on the pleasure in its existence. I do not translate must as “I have an interest”; I translate must as “I have a vital interest,” an interest essential to my existence. Therefore, when someone offers me wages or a candy, that is only “I want,” but when someone offers me life (if such a thing could theoretically be offered), that is “I must.”
“Proper,” in my opinion, means something similar to expected. For example, when I say to a man who is not wearing a kippah, “When you enter a synagogue, it is proper that you wear a kippah,” this means that someone expects you to wear a kippah. That someone can be me, or the synagogue community, or God, or even the person himself expects himself to wear a kippah. And each of these possibilities has an emotional effect, so in the end I am appealing to his feelings. If we say that I mean that the synagogue community expects a person entering the synagogue to wear a kippah, the emotional meaning is that with a kippah people will treat you with more respect than without. And so with everything.
Reward and punishment are external payoffs: I do X for Y. In “must,” as I interpret it, I do X for X because I want X itself. All I am arguing is that there is always pleasure in the X that I want.
The concept of “value” also includes pleasure. Stealing creates negative feelings, and being an honest person creates positive feelings (= pleasure), and therefore not stealing is a value.
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Hello Daniel. I did not understand where in my remarks you saw a semantic or linguistic discussion.
We have a disagreement (whether a person acts not on the basis of feelings). You keep repeating your position that the basic motive for action is always feeling, and I can only repeat again that I completely disagree.
Moreover, one who acts that way is simply a deterministic machine, because feelings are produced in us without our control (that is how we are built), and if they are what cause us to act, then each of us is driven to action and does not decide upon it. Therefore such action lacks moral or religious value.
But it seems to me that we have exhausted the issue.
——————————————————————————————
Daniel:
I will just add, regarding the last claim about determinism, that even according to my approach one can still speak of free choice.
1. A person creates a large part of his feelings through thought. Cognitive behavioral therapy, a popular psychological treatment, is based on the approach that a person’s feelings and actions are a product of his thoughts, and when he changes his thinking, his feelings will change. It seems to me that anyone who looks within himself will see that this is so—our interpretation of reality is what creates feelings, and different interpretations create different feelings.
2. Even if a person does not create his own feelings, he still has a choice between feelings. A choice between the pleasure that comes from ice cream and the pleasure of being thin and healthy. And according to my approach, in which obligation speaks of essential and significant pleasure on which a person’s existence depends, there is a choice between low pleasure—insignificant pleasure—and high pleasure—essential and significant pleasure. About this Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto wrote: “Man was created only to delight in God and to derive pleasure from the radiance of His Presence, for this is the true delight and the greatest pleasure of all pleasures that can be found.”
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
This is a misunderstanding. After all, the decision to develop some feeling is also a decision that I made. About that too one may ask: from where does it come, and how did I make it? And once again the same two possibilities arise: either from free choice or from a prior feeling that produced it. And now we are back to the previous situation. You can continue into an infinite regress, but that is a fallacy.
——————————————————————————————
Daniel:
That is what I wrote in the second part. Several feelings are created together, and the choice between the feelings is which feeling to act upon.

——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Choosing between feelings is the ordinary choice. That is what I too am talking about. The decision of which feeling to choose is itself not explained by a feeling, and the question is how you make that decision itself. If you agree that it is not the result of a feeling—then you have come back to conceding my point.
I am repeating myself again and again. It seems to me that we have exhausted the matter.

——————————————————————————————
Daniel:

I know the Rabbi is busy with many matters, and nevertheless the Rabbi devotes time to respond to every questioner, so I greatly appreciate every answer from the Rabbi. When I ask again, it is not because I am trying to convince the Rabbi of my position, but because I truly did not understand the points and I am trying to understand. I do not think the Rabbi is repeating himself again and again, but each time explaining a different point that is unclear to me. It seems to me that this is the nature of give-and-take. I will accept with understanding and respect if the Rabbi writes to me that he cannot continue discussing the matter.

As for the substance of the discussion, I am not arguing that feelings are the motive; I am arguing that feelings are always the goal. And that in everything a person wants there is always a feeling, and the feeling cannot be separated. Therefore, as I understand it, even when a person wants to obey God because of the pleasure in obeying God (not an external pleasure), that is serving God for its own sake. To that the Rabbi told me that he disagrees. Now in the last response the Rabbi apparently wrote that he does agree with this—that choice is always between feelings, and when a person chooses to obey God he is choosing the positive feeling in that (= pleasure).

——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:

Hello Daniel.
It is also permitted to try to persuade, and there is no need to apologize. It is just that I really thought there was nothing new here beyond what was already discussed.

I agreed for the sake of the discussion that one can say there is a choice between feelings as long as that choice itself is not made out of feeling. But then, by the same token, it follows that choice is not driven by feeling.

If I understood your clarification correctly now, you are saying that a person chooses something not because of feelings but in order to reach this feeling or that feeling (the feeling is not the cause but the result/goal), and if so, I indeed do not agree, but I do not see a very fundamental dispute between us. If doing the truth is called a feeling in your language—fine. That is semantics. In my view there may be a feeling that accompanies it, but it is not done for the sake of the feeling, but rather “doing the truth because it is truth” (the language of Maimonides at the beginning of chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance). This of course depends on how one defines feeling (I am not inclined to agree with the definition reflected in your words). If a person performs commandments for the sake of pleasure, no matter pleasure from what, that is service not for its own sake (see Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry 3:6, that acting out of love or fear is not acting for its own sake, and that is not idolatry for which one is liable). And in my opinion there is action that is not aimed at obtaining pleasure of any kind whatsoever. Doing something because it is true. Apparently that is where our dispute lies.

——————————————————————————————
Daniel:

According to the Rabbi’s approach, the sentence “doing the truth because it is truth” is completely unclear to me.
What does it mean “to do the truth”? How does one do truth?
Until now I understood the meaning of the word “truth” to be that the matter is indeed so. For example, it is true that the current year is 5777, and conversely it is not true that the current year is 5774.
But what does action have to do with truth?
Or from another angle: why is putting on tefillin doing the truth, while scratching one’s ear is not doing the truth?

——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
The factual truth of a claim is determined by comparing the claim to the state of affairs in the world. Halakhic truth is determined by comparing a claim to what Jewish law says. Moral truth is determined by comparing what morality says to what I claim about it. Scratching one’s ear is not a halakhic obligation, but keeping the Sabbath is. Therefore I keep the Sabbath but do not scratch my ear. Whoever thinks that scratching one’s ear is a halakhic obligation should do it. I disagree with him.