I want for the moment to ignore the question of benefit, which seems to me less philosophically interesting.

The value of morality lies in its being universal, and if you’ll allow me I’ll add that genuine universality (the kind that is logically valid and not, for example, grounded in “humanism”) can stem only from a source outside the world — that is, from God.

If I am right in that last sentence, then it follows that any “genuine” universal moral system is more important than the Torah. Therefore, a Jew who wants to be intellectually honest with himself must create the following norm for himself: he must subordinate the Torah (and in my opinion that means first and foremost the Five Books of Moses) to morality.

On the face of it, the Torah sharply rejects this norm that I’ve proposed, but in that a philosophical problem is created, in my view.

Your opinion?

From universal morality it follows that anyone who doesn’t think like me deserves death, since he endangers the universal morality that only I know about.
So if you are a moral person, you should kill yourself, because it’s pretty clear from what you write that you’re naive and don’t think like me.

The Last Decisor,
I didn’t quite grasp the depth of your latest point.
Try issuing a ruling again.

Doron, I didn’t understand the argument. Why is morality preferable to the Torah? So what if it is universal and the Torah is not? Why does that determine priority?

Before I answer you, I want to understand something. In your view, is there no clear priority for a universal system of values (or laws) over a particularistic system? Priority in both the theoretical and practical sense.

Not necessarily. For example, a commandment imposed only on priests is not necessarily less important than a commandment imposed on all Jews or on all human beings. And likewise regarding the Noahide commandments versus the commandments imposed on Jews.

I want to focus the discussion.
The philosophical question we are dealing with here concerns first and foremost the side of the message being conveyed (laws, etc.), and perhaps also the identity of the sender (in this case an absolute and necessary sender — God).
In other words: what is the logical structure of the message as such?
In my eyes, the question of who the target audience of the message is, or what its concrete contents are (the details of the commandments), is less important philosophically.

In the end, the issue is the authenticity of the message, and in order to decide that question, the principled formal discussion has priority.

Chinese. I didn’t understand a word.

So I’ve become as far away as China? I’ll try to bring the distant closer for your sake.

1. Rational philosophical discussion strives to clarify the validity of values/laws. As long as it does not pretend to attain certainty, such a discussion stands on relatively safe ground.
Agree/disagree?

2. Rational philosophical discussion strives to identify the most universal laws.
In principle, the higher the level of generalization, the more “worthy” and successful the philosophical discussion is — that is, the more rational it is.
Agree/disagree?

3. Universality is indeed measured also in terms of the size of the population to which those laws are directed, meaning the public actually required to observe those laws (for example: the Jewish people, the priests, the Chinese people, all humanity, etc.).
Agree/disagree?

4. However, the degree of universality (and therefore also the degree of rationality) is measured קודם all by the logical structure of the law, with no connection to the question of what audience it is intended for (a broad or narrow audience).
For example: one can formulate Law A as “Love your fellow as yourself” and offer it to one single person in the world, and at the same time one can formulate a competing Law B (“Do everything to preserve the rule of the emperor”) and offer it to the entire Chinese people.
Even though Law A addresses an “audience” of just one single person, from an essential (logical) standpoint it can be expanded much more significantly than Law B (which addresses some one and a half billion people). The first law can serve every person (even if in practice it does not), whereas the second law is bound to the interests and values of a particular people.
Hence it is דווקא Law A that is more universal.
Agree/disagree?

5. The laws of Jewish law cannot be significantly expanded; that is, they have difficulty undergoing universalization. The less important reason is, as stated, that they address a relatively narrow population (Jews only). The more important reason is that they concern human actions more (and by extension what happens to him “within” history) and not his beliefs, thoughts, and intentions of the heart. In Bachler’s language: Jewish law prefers addressing the actual and concrete rather than the potential and abstract.
Agree/disagree?

6. From this it follows that even if Jewish law is valid, that is only as a second story built on top of more universal values.
Agree/disagree?

7. Jewish law / the Torah does not agree to accept the authority of a system of laws separate from it (even if it is more universal). Therefore, even if Jewish law allows legal systems parallel to it, it still claims primacy for itself.
Agree/disagree?

8. Jewish law is mistaken on this point, because it ought to give priority to values more universal than itself. Jewish law is not rational (in this sense alone).
Agree/disagree?

1–4. Despite the inaccuracies and lack of clarity, I’ll agree for the sake of the discussion.
5. Just don’t drag us back into Bachler again.
6. Agree.
7. Disagree.
8. Even if my answer to 7 had been yes, I wouldn’t agree with this.

Regarding 5: you didn’t answer me whether you agree/disagree.
Why don’t you agree with 7?
Why don’t you agree with 8?

5. I don’t agree with the “important” reason.
7. I didn’t understand. You made a claim. You prove it. I claim that Jewish law does not claim primacy for itself, as explained in the passage about a transgression for the sake of Heaven, for example.
8. What exactly am I supposed to justify? Again, you made an unfounded declaration, and now the burden of proof is on me?!

A. For the moment I’ll address only number 5.

B. I’ll sharpen my use of the terms. I wrote several times “Jewish law / the Torah.” Following our discussion, I sinned by turning to your article “On a Transgression for the Sake of Heaven,” and following that I’ll sharpen my words further. From now on I’ll use only the term “Torah” (= the Five Books of Moses).

C. Here is the “corrected” section 5:
The laws of the Torah cannot be significantly expanded; that is, they have difficulty undergoing universalization. The less important reason is, as stated, that they address a relatively narrow population (Jews only).

D. In my opinion, it is enough that I have shown that the Torah designates itself from the outset for a narrow public only (the Jewish people) in order to show that it is not sufficiently universal, and therefore there is no rational reason to accept it as the most fundamental religious truth (one may of course still accept it, but as a secondary religious truth).

E. Note well: I am not saying that a divine Torah (any divine Torah) cannot be given only to a narrow public. Such a state of affairs is certainly philosophically conceivable. What I am saying is that if such an exclusive Torah is given to someone, it must qualify that exclusivity clearly and explicitly.

F. And nevertheless I will also address what I called “the more important reason” why there is a deep irrational element in the view of the Torah as that foundational truth: the Torah presents itself as the supreme authority from the human point of view. From its perspective, it is the main channel (and perhaps even the only one) for the connection between us and God. In other words: the Torah’s central norm does not allow a person to turn to more direct and higher sources of cognition (intellectual intuition) that are outside the text (= language). Therefore I argued above that the Torah is “pulling an Esau” when it claims a birthright that is not its own.

G. By refraining from positing the correct norm (philosophically-rationally speaking), the Torah creates an arbitrary “upper barrier” to the degree of its own universality. I once formulated that position through the idea that the Torah is, from its own side, necessary in all possible worlds, and therefore it is “imposed” on God (God is contingent upon it).

H. You like to use the concept of “burden of proof.” In this context it is incumbent upon you — if you think I am wrong, you need to show me that in the Torah, meaning in the text, there is another central norm that places a direct channel of cognition above the text.
For example, if you can show me that there is a central norm in the Five Books of Moses according to which we are to abandon the text if a contradiction arises between it and our intuitions, then I may be convinced that this problem does not exist.

I. In the past I gave you several times a concrete example of a philosophical and theological way of dealing with this problem of over-sanctifying the text. As far as I remember, you did not bother to address that example, even though it is relevant to the subject, at least in my opinion (I explained why it is relevant, and if you think it is not, you need to explain that). The example I gave (the New Testament) hits the mark for two reasons: first, it exposes a “logical” solution to the problem the Torah of Israel runs into (the text that appears in the New Testament certainly does not make God contingent upon it); second, this model was realized in concrete historical reality, namely in the Christian Church (which also testifies to its vitality and its suitability to this world and to man).
In your own terminology, I would say that the model of the Torah of Israel is analytic, whereas the model of the New Testament is synthetic.

J. I wanted to finish with a tenth point as a symbolic gesture to the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately I couldn’t find one.

I hope I’ll be forgiven for not creating Ten Commandments.
I disagree with the entire first part, A–E, and I already explained that. The narrower can be more important than the broader and more basic. There are very many examples of this (some of which I gave). I don’t see any point in repeating the discussion again.
The same goes for all the rest:
F. The Torah does not deny any form of cognition and connection to God besides itself. On the contrary, it is commonly said in the Talmud: “Why do I need a verse? It is logical?!”
G–J. All the rest is not clear to me. A collection of assumptions, most of which I do not understand, and some of which seem bizarre to me, and I don’t know what to do with them.

1. I really do not understand your remark that “the narrower can be more important than the broader.” Do you mean to say that in philosophy there are situations in which one can reduce universal principles to narrower and less abstract principles?
Philosophy looks for what is most universal — that is a basic rule in its methodology, and that is what I tried to do in this discussion. Therefore, even if there is no philosophical flaw in a religious or moral Torah that designates itself from the outset for a narrow public (and therefore “compromises” on the degree of its universality), all this is conditional on that Torah’s self-qualification. That specific qualification is not found in the Torah of Israel, certainly not as a central norm.

2. I did not say that the Torah denies alternative forms of cognition and connection with God. This is what I wrote, this time and on many previous occasions:

“The Torah presents itself as the supreme authority from the human point of view. From its perspective, it is the main channel (and perhaps even the only one) for the connection between us and God.”

It says here explicitly that from the Torah’s side there may perhaps be alternative forms of cognition.

3. My claim was that this is not enough. The Torah — or for that matter any other body of “religious-divine” knowledge — must stand under the criticism of reason. To do that, it must positively establish a central norm according to which the main forms of our “encounter” with God are not in the text itself (that is, not in it).

4. The Torah does not do this, certainly not as a central norm.

4. Your claim that “on the contrary, it is commonly said in the Talmud…” is even more puzzling (with all due respect).
What does the Talmud, which was written hundreds of years after the Five Books of Moses and comes to explain it (not the other way around), have to do with our discussion? From the outset I made clear that I am dealing with the Five Books of Moses (or mainly with it).

5. I do not know why you refuse to address the model of the New Testament. It is a very simple logical and historical model that presents itself as a competitor to the model of the Torah of Israel. As far as our discussion is concerned, there is here a competing philosophical proposal, and in light of it the rational person is required to weigh the two, decide, and finally also choose.
In any case, the point is that I did not content myself with exposing the flaw in the Torah’s conception (as merely criticism and negation on my part), but pointed positively to an alternative test case.

6. I again allow myself the liberty, within this excellent hostelry of yours, to ask additional readers of this debate (if there are any at all…) to clarify for me where I am mistaken.
Y.D., where are you?