I think I wasn’t understood. I agree with everything you wrote except for the following sentences:

But the correctness of the values themselves requires… His command. An unbeliever—and let us assume for simplicity that he is a materialist—who decides not to cause suffering to another is not making a moral decision; he is merely deciding that he feels like behaving that way. A moral decision is a response to a command, and there is no command without a commander.

I too think that God is the source of the validity of values. But that still does not show that a moral decision is a response to His command. Since He already created the values, even an atheist can choose to fulfill them, entirely apart from the command. They exist in the world, they are objective, and anyone who wishes may come and fulfill them. Responding to the command is just one more value among the collection of values that God created.
To clarify—for the moment I understand you to be taking the position expressed in the famous story about the rabbi at whose door a poor man knocked to ask for charity, and that rabbi gave him money while stressing: “Know that I am not giving to you because I am sensitive to your suffering. I only want to fulfill God’s command.”

I’ll just note that I did, of course, read the recent columns and also the relevant part in the fourth booklet. If this helps sharpen the point—in the fourth booklet I think your definition of “moral” is narrowed to “only one who chooses the value of obeying a command,” whereas in my opinion a moral person is also one who chooses other values without a consciousness of obedience.

With respect to morality there is no divine command. There is divine legislation. The commands are the commandments, and morality is not included in them (“and you shall do what is upright and good” is not counted among the commandments). What I meant was that God is the moral legislator, and without belief in Him there is no validity to moral norms, and therefore no meaning to moral action either. A person can do good things, but if he does not understand that this is a law of the Holy One, blessed be He, and that this is where its validity comes from, then he is not acting morally. For a person who does not believe, there are no moral norms in his world, only ingrained impulses (which may look good or bad in the eyes of the believer).

As for charity, I take a more complex position: when you give charity, you are supposed to do so also because of the command, but not necessarily only because of the command. You are also allowed to feel compassion, provided that you would have given charity even without the compassion. See the introduction to Eglei Tal regarding joy in Torah study, where he writes something similar.

Well, I have to say I’m not convinced… I’ll repeat my view one last time—an atheist may not be coherent, but he can be moral. There are moral norms in his world. God did not create norms only for those who believe in Him.

Thank you very much for the answers. And more generally—you have helped me a great deal over the last two years with many questions I’ve had. Without a doubt your approach is one of the most honest one can find. Really, thank you 🙂 Sabbath peace

I don’t understand. That is exactly my claim: that he is not coherent. He can be moral, but then he is a disguised believer and not an atheist. He can also be an atheist, but then not be moral (though he can certainly behave well). But he cannot be both.

A disguised believer in what sense? If to be moral one must be coherent, then yes, he is a disguised believer. But why is it impossible to be moral and yet inconsistent? He would be moral in that he chose to help another, and yet he would not know how to explain the source of his values. There is a difference between his motive (say, a general motive—to do good), and the reason such a motive came into being. True, the cause of morality’s existence is God, but God does not have to be the motive for moral action.

It turns out that the atheist acts in accordance with God’s will, since God too wants there to be good, and all this while ignoring God. The atheist in fact “walks in His ways” unconsciously. And walking in God’s path itself is what matters, not the desire to walk in God’s ways.

In the fourth booklet I explained that morality is not a set of correct actions. The motive for doing them is a necessary condition for their value as moral actions. If a person does not believe in a commanding source, then in his world there are no values and commandments outside of what he himself wants. Therefore this is not moral behavior, but at most good and pleasant behavior.
There is room to discuss whether a person who imagines that the Flying Spaghetti Monster commands him to stand on one leg every day because this saves the world—should we judge him to be a moral person? I doubt it, but maybe. According to his view (his delusion), he is responding to a command. So perhaps he is moral, but morally foolish. And what about a person whom the Spaghetti Monster commands to behave morally? Here too the same doubt exists. In terms of outcomes it is certainly better, but in terms of consciousness (his intention) it is very similar. At least Kant, the father of categorical morality, assumes that a moral person—and a person בכלל—is only one who makes decisions rationally and soberly, though I agree there is room to hesitate regarding his morality, and likewise here.
In short, what you are suggesting is that indeed a valid command requires the existence of a commander, but the atheist can make a double mistake and nevertheless do the right thing and perhaps even be moral: 1. Think that there is no commander. 2. Think that nevertheless there is a valid command (that is, that there can be a valid command without a commander). The rule is: always make an even number of mistakes; that way maybe they’ll cancel out and you’ll reach the correct conclusion.
To sum up, even if I accept your assumptions, an atheist can at most be morally foolish, or a pleasant and intelligent person but not moral. Since according to the principle of charity (of Donald Davidson) I assume the most generous assumptions when interpreting a person’s position, I assume he is not foolish. Therefore the conclusion is that he is a hidden believer. You can of course choose the other option—that he is morally foolish—and thus preserve his moral status.

All in all, that is indeed what I meant, but I don’t think an atheist is all that foolish if he thinks this way. I think the gap between us stems from the fact that our conceptual frameworks are different. (I apologize in advance for moving into the linguistic layer, but sometimes that can help too 🙂 You keep using the term “command” in moral contexts, whereas I speak about “choice.” I’ll try to explain.
Let me first define in general what a moral act is—an act that a person does because he thinks it is “proper.”
We identify with intuition what is “proper” in the world, within what “is,” and choose to move toward it, even though we may suffer because of it.
You define (and I dwelled on this subtlety for a long time… I hope I understood correctly) the “proper” as a command. According to your definition, a moral act is an act that a person does because he thinks it is a “command.” We identify with intuition the “command” in the world, within what “is,” and choose to move toward it. If indeed our intuition identifies a command, then of course behind the command there must stand a commander. This is a clear insight, and anyone who does not think so really would have to be foolish.
But if what we identify is the “proper,” I agree that there must be someone behind it who established it, but that is not such a clear insight. A person can certainly identify the “proper” and strive with all his heart to fulfill it, without ever stopping to think where this “proper” came from.
If he thinks in terms of “command,” he really will understand very quickly that there must be a commander.
Still, I’ll note why the difference here is more than semantic. In my opinion, the correct definition of a moral act is an act done according to the “proper” and not according to the “command.” Because in any case, we are the ones who choose to respond to the command. We do not have to do so. So why should we choose at all to respond to the command? For the same reason you mentioned in your column regarding the law about plastic bags in the supermarket. There too you argued that the person is the one who chooses that the law be upheld. Why does he choose that the law be upheld? Because he sees the law as something “proper.” If he did not see the law as something “proper,” he would find a way around it. So here too. A person does not choose to respond to a command simply because he wants to fulfill the command. First he sees the command as “proper,” and only then fulfills it. And if he first sees the command as “proper” and only then fulfills it, then even according to your view a moral act is first and foremost about the “proper.” And if everything has to be “proper,” then one can skip the command and simply claim that it is “proper” to help an old woman. Not because there is a command, but because I see it as proper. You would argue that you see the command as proper and then do the command.
Hope that’s clear… I’m very grateful to you for the effort you keep putting into answering time after time…

Hello Matania. It seems to me that I understood you earlier as well, but I still disagree.
I’ll begin by saying that the category of “proper” must have a source, because as I explained, the proper is not our definition that receives its validity from the fact that we decided so (this is my criticism of Ari Elon’s thesis of the sovereign person). There is an objective definition of what is proper, and only one of us who behaves accordingly (and does so because of that propriety) is a moral person.
But if there is indeed such an objective definition, the question arises: where does it grow from or derive from? After all, in a materialist world (= a collection of atoms) there is no such category. And note carefully: it is not only that one cannot know what is proper—there is no category at all of proper and improper. What there is, is what there is. The materialist world is nothing but a set of neutral facts (in such a world there is no proper, only what exists). On this, in my opinion, atheists neither do nor can have an answer.
What emerges from this picture is that the atheist-materialist creates in his imagination the very category itself (that of the “proper”) out of nothing, when in fact according to his own view it is only a delusion. After that he identifies its content (what that proper is), which is yet another invention with no basis whatsoever according to his worldview (for he is locating the content of a thing that does not exist). And finally he even decides to be committed to it (with no logical reason at all. Pure whim).

To Michi:
With a command, true, you gain the “invention” of the category, and you also gain the “identification” of the content,
but the decision to be committed to it (which is the essence of “morality”) still remains a pure whim—so what have you gained?

Okay, excellent. That is indeed what I mean regarding the atheist.
But earlier another possibility came up as well: that helping a poor person with charity can be called moral only if it is done out of a desire to fulfill God’s command.
And this despite the fact that according to those who do hold that God exists, any value they define as “proper” and choose to act by would make them moral in a completely coherent way. Such a value can also be the value of helping others—anyone who helps another out of a desire to help another is a moral person. And so a person who gives charity can simply want to give charity and not want to fulfill God’s command. That should be enough for him to be moral. For he believes in a God who created values. And one of the values God created is the value of helping others. Anyone who wants to fulfill this value, regardless of obedience to God, would be moral. So I did not understand your view as expressed in the story about the rabbi who gives charity because of a command.

Hello Matania,

From the Rabbi’s words it seems that there is a correlation between performing a commandment and the context/motivation for which it was done, and between a moral act and the context/motivation for which it was done.
If so, for an act of charity done by a believing person, not out of obedience to God but out of motivation to help another, one might suggest the term of a moral action “not for its own sake”… 🙂
Maybe it can still be considered a moral action, but on a lower level???

Israel, you are ignoring the connection among the three levels.
When there is a valid command, the decision to respond to it is not arbitrary. Maybe it cannot be grounded in other principles, but it is logical and reasonable (a kind of logical axiom). By contrast, when the command is not valid, the decision to respond to it is arbitrary.

Matania, I do not understand your question. See also my answer here to Israel (I have a feeling it is connected to the question, but I truly do not understand it).

Questioner, Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings says that if a person performs a commandment because of intellectual determination, he is not among the pious of the nations but among their wise. My translation: that has moral value, not religious value.
But I add that this is only if his moral decision comes from faith. But if it is based on a delusion, then he is not among their wise either, but just a pleasant and nice person.

Understood. Thank you.

Your answer to “Questioner” is what I was trying to say: that there is moral value to a person who performs a commandment because of “intellectual determination.” You say that it has no religious value, and I argue that moral value is precisely the value God desires. So perhaps it is not religious value—that represents “standing before God”—but it is the fulfillment of His will.
And I’ll just return once again to the point about the atheist. In your current answer to Israel I again felt that the “command” in your writing refers to the “proper.” And I think an atheist really thinks in terms of the “proper” and not in terms of command, so one need not be foolish in order to be a moral atheist. Any atheist who has never once wondered about the source of values—a question most human beings have never asked in their lives—can be a moral atheist.

“Questioner,” I don’t think one should rank the moral act done “not for its own sake” lower. Maybe God is not looking for people who will worship Him, but simply for people who will do the good? Maybe God “waives” His honor and agrees that the proper action need not be connected to Him?
And in general, an act done for God and not for man is not moral but religious. Giving charity to a poor person out of a desire to carry out God’s word is a religious act. So the comparison between a moral act “not for its own sake” and a moral act “for its own sake” is really a comparison between a moral act and a religious act. I think both acts are desirable before God, and their ranking on the scale of values has been discussed for years—this is the famous dilemma of religion and morality.
In principle I do not think God would command something that is not moral. Today in Jewish law there are things that are not moral, and therefore we have entered this dilemma. The decision about it will be saved for another discussion…

Hello Matania,
Well, it seems we’re getting into nuances of definition here.
The criterion by which you define an act as “moral” depends only on the motive. The object of the act determines whether the act is “moral” or “religious.”
As opposed to the contrary view, which ties the definition of “moral” also to the source of morality and its validity.
Again, here too I can compare between a commandment and a moral act, and ask: in your opinion, would a non-believer who performs a commandment not from a religious motive but from a social, economic, self-interested, or other motive be considered to have fulfilled a “commandment,” or to have merely performed an act in general?
It seems to me that according to your view, the act would be defined as a commandment.

Matania, if so then we agree completely, except that you are banalizing it. You are saying that the atheist can hit on the truth if he is mistaken elsewhere. Even a complete fool can write down the equations of quantum theory by accident, but that does not mean he knows quantum theory. Maybe he can even solve the equations if he makes an even number of mistakes that cancel each other out. About this our sages already said that even a stopped clock shows the exact time twice a day.
The atheist can be moral so long as he does not understand what he himself thinks, or so long as he is not consistent. That is what I claimed. But consistent and conscious morality is not possible for him.

As for your comment to Questioner: the moral act is not done for God, but because of His command (whose aims are moral). And in that it differs from a regular religious act (whose aims are religious).

Rabbi, I’m glad we reached an understanding… I insisted on showing that in my eyes atheists generally are moral because of the everyday significance of such a view. But this is not really a substantive disagreement.
Your comment to me about Questioner, if I understood correctly, can also be applied to the religious act. We are not really helping God by responding to His command.
Still, I’ll note that דווקא in moral acts I do think there is some dimension of “I and He, please save.” In light of our conception of free choice, which in effect “limits” God, God wants us to do good but cannot intervene. It turns out that we save His will at the moment of moral action. This is of course a psychological insight (which in my opinion gives a rational foundation to a large part of Rabbi A. J. Heschel’s thought), but that too is important.

Questioner, I think the motive needs to be: to do what is proper. If there is a person who thinks that doing what is proper means taking care of himself, or impressing his friends, then he is indeed moral. But if we base morality on intuition—no honest person will reach such a conclusion.
I myself am very torn about the matter of intuition, but again, that is another discussion… The current discussion is being conducted on the assumption that intuition is what guides us.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, in Orot HaKodesh, vol. 2, “Perfection and Becoming,” speaks about how our choices complete Him. This is what the early authorities called “the service of God as a divine need” (we do something for Him that He cannot do—to become perfected).