Thank you very much for this!

What I meant was that even if this reading may fit what the author of the Tanya says in this particular place, still, in the interpretation later given by the other rebbes, it doesn’t seem to fit completely. The other rebbes pointed to several places in the Tanya where we find hints that there is another soul as well (besides the two souls) — the “intellectual soul,” where a person’s choice takes place. In other words, the divine soul wants only Torah and commandments. The animal soul wants natural desires, and the intellectual soul (which resides in the brain) is the one that chooses. (What is the nature of that soul? What is gained by this conception? That is explained below in the article I’ll send.)

The truth is that I’m not fully versed in this topic. I just remember that the “intellectual soul” is the one that chooses, not the divine soul. I once read an article by Rabbi Yechezkel Sofer on this matter. He is considered a well-known Chabad thinker. I’m attaching his article here on the subject. The article is packed with kabbalistic-hasidic jargon, and it’s really not readable or clear (and it’s also full of later Chabad insights). But he’s considered a great expert in these matters, and there he explained the issue at length and what is gained by this approach.

I read it briefly, and I agree only partially.
First, you don’t need quotations and hints in order to understand that there is something or someone that chooses. And if quotations are needed, then what he brought (about there being a “person” who chooses) doesn’t add much, because that too can be explained in the same way.
As for his main point, I completely agree. In my columns on weakness of will (172–3) I explained that there is the choice to choose, and after we choose to choose, we then proceed along the path of free will (and choose values and value-based conduct). And that is necessary for several reasons. Now you can understand that “the intellectual soul” is a label for the part that chooses whether to choose, and from that point the person is conducted under the divine soul that chooses and directs him.
But his words imply that the intellectual soul is identified with the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, and here lies the Hasidic-Chabad view of contraction not in its plain sense. I assume you know that in my view this is nonsense. To be sure, something along these lines is apparently what I wrote at the end of my article “Two Paths of Repentance” on the site (because of the difficulty and strain involved in describing choice), but even there I did not arrive at an identification between man and God and the erasure of contraction.
All the best and much success,

Thank you very much for this!

My main difficulty is that according to the model you described, it comes out that when a person decides, through an intellectual determination, to commit transgressions, then we would have to say that the divine soul chose that (after all, it came from the intellect). On the face of it, that’s hard to say in the Tanya. The divine soul is “a part of God” (however we explain that), and its whole essence is in divinity, Torah, and commandments. Transgressions are completely outside its realm. It is hard to say that everything done under a person’s intellectual supervision is automatically attributed to the divine soul. Something here needs explanation (and it is certainly hard to say this in the Tanya).

I thought perhaps one could say that maybe this really does fit the approach of the Sages: that if a person is intellectual, he will in fact choose Torah and commandments. That really is what reason says (we assume that is the truth). They did not recognize a “secular person” acting out of intellectual considerations. If there is a secular person, we would be forced to say that he is weak-willed or something like that. So perhaps one could say that if a person does not perform commandments, then perforce it begins in the heart; it is not intellectual. It is the animal soul. Except that the animal soul also rationalizes through the person’s intellect (after all, it is fighting for the whole pot). And so it seems to the person that this is the “divine soul.” Maybe he is compelled to think what he thinks. But the Tanya is surely confident that if he truly does some soul-searching, he will see that it comes from the animal soul—is it possible to say something like that?

Thank you for the references to your columns on weakness of will and your article “Two Paths of Repentance” — I’ll look there. More power to you! Much success and all the best!

I don’t understand the claim. When a person chooses freely, he chooses the good. A pure choice of evil is something almost inconceivable (I doubt it even exists). Evil comes through choosing not to choose, and then one is dragged into doing evil, and only for that is a person responsible. And that indeed is conduct of the animal soul, because there is no choice here. As I wrote, it may be that what you called the intellectual soul is the element that chooses whether to choose or not.

Okay, I accept the claim that there is a choice to choose. One could say that this is the “intellectual soul.” I need to think about whether they can be identified with one another.

I’m asking whether it can be said that when a person chooses something evil, that comes from the intellectual soul. That is exactly my question. Is that relevant? And can that be attributed to the intellectual soul?

Have you written about this anywhere? Again, thanks for everything. All the best.

No. My claim is that when a person does something evil, it is not because of a choice of evil but because of a decision not to choose. And once he does not choose, his evil inclination (= the animal soul) takes him into doing something evil. But the decision not to choose can belong to the intellectual soul.

So according to you, it is not really possible to choose evil?

I’ve written several times that I have very serious doubts about how far it is possible for a person to choose evil even though he knows it is evil and without having any inclination toward it.
This reminds me now of something I once saw in the name of Ramchal, who claimed that angels have choice, except that they have no inclination, and therefore they always do the good. The question is how meaningful it is to say that they have choice, and what practical difference it makes. And if it is possible for someone to choose evil without having any inclination toward it, then even in angels choice has significance.

Regarding contraction not in its plain sense, see what the rebbe, author of the responsa Tzemach Tzedek, of blessed saintly memory, wrote in Derekh Mitzvotecha, commandment 8, section 8:
“Now, what we said—that the contraction has some kind of reality—does not pose a difficulty for the statement that ‘all before Him is considered as nothing,’ which seems to imply that it is truly like absolute nothingness. As explained in Likkutei Amarim, part 2, chapter 6, the intention in the explanation of ‘as nothing’ is not that they have no reality at all, for that would be ‘not’ literally, not ‘as nothing,’ with the comparative prefix. And that was before the world was created. Moreover, the explanation of ‘all before Him is considered as nothing’ refers to this physical world, and yet we see that there are inanimate, plant, animal, and speaking beings, stones and houses and dust, etc. So how can it be actual nonexistence? Rather, ‘as nothing’ means that it does not count as having an independent name, like the ray of the sun when it is within the body of the sun itself, where it does not count as having any independent name by which it can be seen as a separate entity, as it appears to our eyes in this world, where the sun’s globe is not present. There only the body of the sun is seen, because the ray is nullified in its existence. The intention is not that it is not found there at all—that is not so, for it certainly is found there even more intensely—but rather that it is nullified. And this is the meaning of ‘as nothing’: so too is the matter of all the worlds after their creation—they do have reality, but before Him they are ‘as nothing,’ like the nullification of the ray, as above, and not absolute nonexistence. And this is sufficient for one who understands.”