Q&A: On the Moral Command
On the Moral Command
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi,
I have been struggling for quite a long time with the question of the moral command. As you have shown many times on the site, if we think morality is something objective, we are committed to the conclusion that God commanded morality.
Recently I heard a serious objection to this philosophical move: whichever way you take it, if God precedes morality, then everything moral is His decision. By the same token, He could have decided on a completely different morality, so why are we obligated to obey the arbitrary morality He chose? And if morality precedes God, then why do we need God at all?
Answer
That is exactly the Euthyphro dilemma.
I’ll answer you according to the two possibilities:
- Assuming God precedes morality: why are we commanded regarding the instructions of Jewish law that are not connected to morality? The very divine command is binding. The same applies to morality.
- Assuming morality comes first: morality defines what is good and what is bad, but what obligates me to do it? God.
Discussion on Answer
Only once God exists is there such a necessary connection. The claim that morality preceded God, as I understand it, speaks only about the moral definition and not about the validity of those commands.
How does this fit with what you wrote in the booklet?
The meaning of the existence of a prohibition is not a neutral fact, but that in practice it is forbidden to do it. In this, ethical claims differ from any other factual claim.
Chaim Perelman, a Belgian philosopher of law, points out that when I tell Reuven not to murder because it is immoral to murder, I have said nothing at all. I have simply repeated the same thing in different words. If he knows that it is immoral to murder, and he also understands what that means, there is no need to add anything further in order to dissuade him from murder.