Q&A: Directive or Constitutive
Directive or Constitutive
Question
From things you wrote, I understand that you see the Torah as constitutive. What is the rationale for thinking that?
It seems to me that the Torah is directive:
- This is my own a priori intuition. I do not believe in a Torah and commandments that have no purpose. The idea of a command that is not for some purpose is foreign to me.
- Moses our teacher says several times that listening to God’s voice and keeping the commandments is the path that leads to happiness (also in this world).
- It seems to me that the Sages as well understood the Torah as directive [“that the commandments were given in order to refine human beings through them,” “He looked into the Torah and created the world,” and more. And in Mesillat Yesharim: “And the means that bring a person to this purpose (to delight in God) are the commandments … by means of these means that come his way here, he can reach the place prepared for him… and be sated there with the good that he acquired for himself through these means”].
- The very concept of the intentions of the kabbalists is based on the assumption that the commandments have a direction and a purpose.
- The concept of “reward and punishment” seems puzzling in a picture of a constitutive Torah (and perhaps even childish: is punishment revenge? And why is reward given?). It is not explained the way Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto explained it above (that it is merely the result of our actions). So what is their purpose? Are they too “constitutive”?
I am aware that the sources I brought do not express exactly the same purpose, but from all of them it emerges that the rabbinic view is that the Torah has a purpose—that the Torah came to steer a person toward some goal that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose. Moreover, the goal was also made known to human beings (that is proven by the very fact that the Sages explain it to us).
This discussion has two parts:
- Does the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself have a purpose for which He gave us the Torah? (To me, it is inconceivable that He would not.)
- If we say that He does, then when He gave the Torah, did He only want to impose on us the things needed to reach His goal (and in this role we are no more than robots), or did He seek to include us in His “vision” and its realization (to be partners in the act of Creation)?
Answer
I’ll keep this short.
Where did you get the idea that this is my view? I also agree that the Torah is directed toward certain values/goals; I just do not know what they are.
From our standpoint, perhaps one can say that it is constitutive, because we do not understand what the goals are. But that is only a technical matter. Obviously it has goals.
By the way, the expression constitutive or directive is not precise in this context. The question you are discussing is whether it has reasons, or whether these are arbitrary acts.
Constitutive or directive is a distinction in analytic philosophy between different systems of rules. The question is whether they constitute the domain they deal with (like the rules of chess) or direct it (like traffic laws). In both cases the rules have a purpose (enjoyment, or safety and order).
Discussion on Answer
You understood correctly, and that does not contradict what I said. See the explanation and examples in my previous comment.
1. I cannot say that it is impossible to understand. I do not understand. In the cases I have seen, I have great doubt whether anyone has really offered a reasonable solution for the reasons for the commandments. I do not know of one.
2. I do not know how to say. A synthetic view is of course the direction to take, but as I said, in the case of the Torah I cannot arrive at a reasonable meaning. Maybe that is my weakness (though I doubt it).
On second thought, perhaps the Sages did not rely (mainly) on an a posteriori synthesis of the details of the Torah revealed before them in order to understand the reasons for the commandments and the Torah’s purposes, but rather more on an a priori evaluation of the concepts of religion, Torah, and God.
That is, they defined for themselves what divinity is, and what Torah and religion ought to look like,
and in light of those beliefs they “interpreted” the Torah in all its manifestations, general principles, particulars, and fine details.
[Obviously there are parts of the Sages’ words that stem from reflection on the Torah itself (an extreme example: it seems that Rabbi Yohanan was a master at determining truths based on exegetical readings of verses, as when he called Vespasian “king” on the basis of the exposition of the verse, “and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one”), but regarding the intentions and reasons of the Torah, that seems less possible through synthesis, as you wrote.]
That is, reasons for the commandments that emerge from a synthetic view are “weak beliefs” (in the same sense as weak emergence),
since they are adopted after the fact, on the basis of “empirical” data.
They are generalizations, based on the data revealed to us (“from below upward”).
By contrast, reasons and values adopted a priori are “strong beliefs.”
And they use “interpretation” that “attaches” ideas and beliefs to the findings (“from above downward”).
[I think this distinction is what the kabbalists define with the terms:
“direct light” (from above downward), and “reflected light” (from below upward).]
If this claim is correct, it will be easier for us to understand the rabbinic picture of the Torah if we too try to understand a priori what Torah and religion are, and what place divinity has in human and natural life, and only afterward look into how the Sages dealt with these questions, and how they fitted their beliefs to the empirical data.
(If I understood correctly, the meaning of the concept “constitution” is that it itself creates the goal or value.
Unlike direction, which has no value in itself and is not a goal in itself, but serves only as a means and path for achieving a goal or value external to it.
Arbitrariness, by contrast, takes no internal value into account, and does not even strive toward any goal or value external to it either, right?)
As to the main point:
1. Are you claiming that it is impossible to understand the Torah’s goals, or only that you do not see them?
As I showed, many think they do understand and know. In your view, are they mistaken? If so, in what way?
2. What are the conditions that make it possible to understand (or more accurately, to guess) the general purpose of a given legal system,
or the values underlying it?
Does a synthetic view of the system as a whole show us its general direction?