Q&A: Is Morality Itself Revelation?
Is Morality Itself Revelation?
Question
Dear Rabbi,
I would like to relate to the fifth notebook, and more precisely to the plausibility that God did in fact reveal Himself in the past.
Suppose God were to reveal Himself to us today and say that the entirety of our obligation is morality alone (that is, even though morality may perhaps seem instrumental, it is nevertheless the purpose of creation for some reason).
Would we then continue to take the revelation at Mount Sinai seriously? After all, the contents of these two revelations differ from one another, and at times (though rarely) are even opposed to one another. And in addition, a revelation that we experience ourselves is not comparable to a revelation transmitted through tradition for thousands of years.
It seems to me that in that case we would rely on the later revelation and abandon the first one, which we ourselves did not experience.
So then, why should we not regard our intuition about the truth of moral values as that very revelation we should expect from God according to your proposal? I believe (and this also seems to emerge from your words) that most of us quite naturally accept both the existence of God and the truth of the moral values that God “injected” into us. It is clear, then, that we should not suppress or push aside that feeling, but on the contrary act in accordance with it.
By contrast, we (or at least most of us) do not feel such a feeling regarding the event at Mount Sinai. In order to believe in it, we have to use more complex and less reliable tools based only on plausibility.
And so I ask: after all, God also does in fact reveal His will to us every single day through the moral values He places within us. If He wants to instruct us with other messages, why should He not reveal them to us in the same way that He reveals moral values to us? Why expect us to go searching for them—if not beyond the sea, then across the generations? And what is the meaning of God’s silence in religious messages (at least in our time) as opposed to the constant broadcast of moral messages?
With respect,
Answer
Hello Pedahzur.
First, there is a logical leap in what you say. The fact that there is a moral feeling within us does not mean that this feeling tells us that only morality is binding. The moral “revelation” only tells us that moral values are binding. As for everything else, we have no feeling about it, and so it remains open. I do not think it is correct to say that there is a positive feeling that everything else is wrong and non-binding. At most, we do not understand it.
Second, I think a hypothetical discussion of what we would do if there were a revelation is unnecessary, and in fact impossible to conduct. I’ll give you an example. Some commentators claim that Abraham failed the test of the Binding of Isaac, because he should have refused (morally and rationally). Others argue that he could have claimed it was an illusion or deception (Descartes’ deceiving demon), since it contradicted morality and the Holy One, blessed be He’s promises (“for through Isaac shall your seed be called”).
Beyond the fact that this is an interpretation that does not fit what emerges from the verses, I think it rests on a mistaken assumption. As long as I have not experienced divine revelation, I have no way of understanding its significance and whether it is binding or not—whether it can be interpreted as an illusion or not. Think of a blind person arguing with a sighted person: why do you trust your eyes? After all, perhaps all of this is an illusion. Especially if the sighted person is seeing something improbable, the blind person will immediately suggest interpreting it as some sort of visual illusion. But the sighted person will refuse to do so, because he experiences sight and it is clear to him that it correctly reflects reality. He cannot explain this to the blind person, and yet it is still clear to him that it is true. So too, a person cannot judge someone who is in a situation entirely unfamiliar to him, when he himself has never experienced anything like it. In my article here I elaborated on this claim (and also brought the example of the Binding of Isaac):