Q&A: On Commandments as a Higher Need
On Commandments as a Higher Need
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Below is a quote from your fifth notebook.
“I will suggest here an argument that seems somewhat troubling, since it involves anthropomorphism, and yet I think it has a certain degree of plausibility. If the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world, it is reasonable to infer that He had some purpose. In essence, this is an application of the principle of causality: if something was done, it was done for some reason or toward some end. Moreover, even if there is such a purpose, it is not clear why it is incumbent on us. Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, not create the world in such a way that this purpose would be achieved on its own (that is, create us or the world perfect from the outset) and leave it to us? The only possibility is that this purpose is specifically connected to our decisions and our choice, meaning that it matters that we do it through our own free decision, and that (and only that) could not have been done without us. Any purpose not connected to our free will could have been achieved directly by Him, and there would have been no need for us at all.
On the other hand, this purpose cannot be the improvement of ourselves, since there is always the possibility that He would simply not create us at all, in which case there is no one to improve (there is no deficiency that requires improvement). Therefore, this purpose must lie outside the created universe. What could that purpose be? Does morality present us with a sufficient goal or purpose? To the best of my judgment, it is not reasonable to say so. Morality is not enough to provide a purpose for creation, because of its instrumental nature. The role of morality is to improve creation and the human society that lives and acts within it. That is, morality is a means for perfecting creation and human society, and therefore it cannot serve as a teleological explanation for their very existence.
The conclusion is that the very fact that we were created means that we too, along with our deeds and choices, are means to something outside us, higher than us. Our actions are supposed to advance other principles as well, which we will now call ‘religious,’ not only morality. Moreover, if such other goals do indeed exist, then morality itself can also be better understood. The purpose of moral behavior is to improve society, and that improvement is a means so that human society can do what it was truly created for (to attain the religious goals).”
According to you, the logic behind the existence of commandments is that the commandments are a higher need. It seems that your argument goes like this:
Premise A: God created (creation and) us as beings with will and choice, but not perfect.
Premise B: If God had wanted, He could have created creation and us perfect, or not created it and us at all.
Premise C: (Therefore) our purpose and the purpose of creation are not found within us or within creation, but outside us and outside creation (divinity, etc.).
Premise D: Religion (Torah) is a system that is (categorically) outside creation and humanity.
Conclusion: Religion (Torah) is the purpose of creation and of human existence.
If I have missed or added something in the argument, I would be happy to be corrected 🙂
And now to the questions:
Regarding Premise A — behind this premise stands an evaluative assumption (sometimes considered trivial) of perfection and imperfection, but why should we agree to that evaluative assumption? What determines what is perfect and what is imperfect? Where is that measuring stick? How can one determine it, and who determined it? One can say that a person is complex, temporary, changing, and mortal; one can say, as Siddhartha claimed, that everything is emptiness — but none of that has anything to do with perfection or imperfection; that is already a personal psychological judgment. Moreover, one could argue the opposite premise: God created the human being and the world in the perfect way for the human being and for the world, and any corruption he causes is not God but man — just as He gave a cell, under certain circumstances, the ability to create a cancerous growth. Beyond that, one could argue that it is more reasonable to assume that the judgment of perfection depends on one’s psychological point of view toward the world and humanity; everything at its beginning is good, and man at his beginning is good, and the judgment of perfection and imperfection is very narrow and in the eye of the cheerful/depressed observer. One could say that from a deeper perspective this psychological judgment loses its value.
And even if one can agree with Premise A, Premise B can be argued about anything — including the upper worlds, and even emanation itself, and really anything at all. And if we say that it is God Himself who is lacking (say, in kabbalistic terminology, the Infinite rather than the emanation from it), then that has a reason too, doesn’t it?
From this it follows that if we go with the circular evaluative argument that “X is not perfect (according to how I perceive perfection), X could have been perfect or not existed = therefore X has no meaning in itself,” then Premise C could apply to anything, and therefore that which is outside creation — the emanation (or God) — also has no purpose or essence at all, but only something beyond them.
And even if we agree with Premises A, B, and C — that it is true to say that creation and the willing human being are not perfect, that human will has no meaning for itself, and that its meaning lies outside it — the fourth premise is the premise about which one can calmly say there are every good reasons to deny it.
Let’s assume we do not enter into the methodological discussion about Torah as revelation versus Torah and development, and we take this premise as an axiom. A. The Torah was given within a culture, to a people living within a culture, and for a people living in that culture. The morality and law of the Torah were 100% relevant to that culture. B. Cultural practice changes, or moral intuition becomes more refined, and the plain meaning of Scripture that was once moral or suited to the culture of the past is not suited to another period. Within the halakhic and interpretive enterprise, the Sages established interpretations to bridge the gap between biblical reality and contemporary reality, and between their view of the Torah as eternal and changing reality. Therefore, the Torah was given as a moral-social document and a practical monotheistic anti-polytheistic protest document dependent on a certain culture, not as a Leibowitzian ascetic and fixed document whose essence lies beyond nature and man.
Premise E is even murkier than Premise D, and it is based on the view that certain Jews (kabbalists) know how the “system of divinity” works. They know what, who, and how God conducts Himself. Where the “bugs” are and how to fix them. It’s simple. There is a complex system of a process of emanation (for which there is no reason at all to think it is correct in any way), and the Torah repairs that process. But there is no reason to think this way. One can think that we think we know God and treat kabbalistic theological speculations with great seriousness, but then our Torah is based on a God that we choose to create and think exists. Kabbalah created this idea of Torah as repair in order to give the Torah and the Jew weight and meaning in exile for bringing redemption; that is psychologically beautiful, but I’m not sure I’d want to base my entire religious world on speculations about divinity and repair.
Thank you very much, and sorry for the length
Answer
Premise D does not exist in my view. That is a conclusion, not a premise. Since there has to be a purpose outside the world, then apparently the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us such a purpose. If He gave a Torah, then apparently that is the purpose.
Beyond that, I did not understand the criticism of the premises. I have only my own way of thinking. I do not know how to think outside of it. One can always cast doubt and say maybe I am mistaken, but that is true of any consideration whatsoever. Premise B I do indeed claim about everything that was created. The purpose is somewhere in the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, or in something uncreated (in the sense familiar to us). Premise D is not correct as I explained. I will only note that there is no premise that Jews know how the Torah works. My premise is that if the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us a Torah, He presumably intends for us to interpret it, and gave it on that understanding.
And finally, not your entire religious framework is based on this consideration. It is one layer that joins many others (such as revelation), and together they create the full picture, as I explained well in the notebook.
Discussion on Answer
A. That is just wordplay. Are there things we cannot do? Then we are not perfect. Are there things we fail at (by our own standards)? Then we are not perfect. Very simple.
B. I claim there are considerations of plausibility that if someone does something, he does it for some purpose. I did not assume anything whatsoever about His purposes except that He has a purpose. That sounds entirely reasonable to me. One can always be skeptical and accept nothing because maybe it is not true. Not only with respect to God.
As for the regress of causality, I explained it in the notebook.
C. If you can explain all this otherwise — good luck.
A. I don’t think it’s wordplay. But it’s not all that relevant to refuting the argument, because the argument can be based on the premise that we could have not existed. So there isn’t much significance to what I wrote.
B. The point is that we have no idea how God works… and why should God be subject to causality if He created it?
Did you speak about a regress of causality regarding God in the fifth notebook? Because I read the notebook and don’t remember it (that’s a question I wanted to ask once), (I remember you dealt with it in the second notebook) and I looked again now and didn’t find it.
C. Thank you. In my opinion that is much more reasonable, simple, and realistic than a frozen Torah from an arbitrary world that repairs it.
Hello Rabbi,
Trying again..
Is there an answer to section B? Because I didn’t find any treatment of it in the notebooks.
Thank you very much
Clarification of the question in section B. 1. It is not clear what caused God to be lacking (causality?), 2. Why should God be subject to considerations from human categories (causality or randomness — which are at the base of your argument) if He Himself created them?
And it is important to stress that I am not a skeptic, and I support the Rabbi’s synthetic system; I just do not understand what takes the assumptions about God out of the realm of speculation when there is no indication for these assumptions. (Unlike, say, the existence of an intelligent designer, where there is an indication — the world. Here we are talking about a human thought, or presumption, to think what God thinks, and I don’t understand that.)
In addition, I did not understand your words. On the one hand, you wrote in the comments that “I did not assume anything whatsoever about His purposes except that He has a purpose” (God’s purpose in creation). On the other hand, in the notebook you explicitly wrote that the purpose in creation is something in God through human choice in religious action (which is separate from human categories).
(By indication I also mean an idea, like morality or aesthetics = the idea of the good or the beautiful). It’s just that here plausibility does not apply, because every such plausibility creates my ideal of God, which I create and think is how it is right and logical for Him to act. But we have no essential capacity to understand what God is, and therefore there is no idea and no plausibility regarding Him, nor is it relevant to claim anything about Him. And that is why I opened the question beyond disagreement over the conception of Torah.)
For some reason, a very similar discussion is taking place in parallel:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%9e%d7%93%d7%90%d7%99%d7%96%d7%9d-%d7%9c%d7%aa%d7%90%d7%99%d7%96%d7%9d-%d7%94%d7%90%d7%a0%d7%a9%d7%aa-%d7%94%d7%90%d7%9c
I think everything is answered there.
I think the answer to the question that is screaming here was not given there (and that is why I am responding here, with your permission). I will sharpen the question based on that thread.
Suppose a carpenter builds a table. The cause of the table is the carpenter. Likewise, the world’s cause is “God.” The meaning of the carpenter building the table is so that objects can be placed on it. And you argue that just as the carpenter has meaning, so too the world has meaning. In my question, (unlike the questioner in that other thread) I was not trying to discuss whether the analogy between meaning in making a table and there being meaning (purpose) to God’s creating a world holds. My question draws on a vague logical leap you made from purpose to cause. You argued that it is reasonable to assume that God has a meaning in creating the world. But then you argued something complicated and vague — that God’s meaning in creating the world is God’s completion and repair (through Torah/religion). And that is where my question arises: if God is lacking, that means there is a reason for that lack, something that caused it (and it is a contradiction to say that a perfect God must create in order to repair something in Himself). There is causality beneath the meaning that you refrain from taking into account in the divine plausibility argument in your position.
Beyond that, even if we agreed to the analogy of meaning for the world, I do not see any plausibility in entering into plausibility considerations about God, because there is no indication of what God is or what His considerations are, if that can even be said. And therefore such plausibility about God is a God that we create, fashion, and believe in. It is also a God whose distance from imagination is not great.
Thank you
It is hard for me to discuss things with such long gaps, especially across two threads. I no longer remember what I wrote and where.
Briefly, I do not know what “meaning” is or what its relation is to the discussion here. So I suggest not bringing that into the discussion here. It is just another minefield we will get stuck in. Here the discussion is about purpose and end.
I do not recall making any leap from purpose to cause. I argue that God’s actions have a purpose and no cause. The purpose is His self-repair. The fact that He is lacking is not a cause of His action, because He decides to complete Himself and is not compelled to do so by any external factor.
Beyond that, I think I already explained that His perfection can be a function of time. He is perfect across the entire timeline, and we do not necessarily measure Him at any given instant. Therefore it is not correct that He was lacking and then became complete. A complete being is one that is built in manner X until moment T and in manner Y after that.
You assume that 1. God is perfect.
But in order to assume that it is rational to claim that God revealed Himself, you assume two more things about God —
2. God is lacking — and the reason for creation is to repair God’s lack. You argue that anything else could have not been created — and therefore its creation has no meaning. Only God is the meaning, and therefore the reason must be something in Him. ***
3. God is repaired by us — through an external system that He gave (religion: Torah) — that is, God changes.
To dissolve the tension between your first assumption and your third assumption, you argue that the change is a function of time (a perfect graph), or that the change is between two states of equal perfection. Therefore change does not contradict perfection.
On the other hand, you do not dissolve the tension between the first assumption and the second, and the contradiction remains —
If you argue that God is perfect, He should not be lacking.
If you argue that there is no lack here — there is only a perfect change on the time graph without lack — then your argument about commandments as a higher need collapses (He does not need repair; He is perfect).
And if you argue that there is a lack here, then God is not perfect. In addition, when you argue that God is lacking — and ignore the reason for the lack — you are basically shooting the causality argument you are using in the foot.
***
(As an aside: I disagree with assumption number 2 — because everything that was created could not have not been created, because it was created. Everything that was created could not have not been created. Therefore the meaning of existence is existence itself. And with man too — his meaning is life itself. In my opinion, your claim about meaningless creation and a lacking God stems from your need to assume that there is a rational basis for the notion of a God who reveals Himself — and that the Torah is a closed, a-cultural system (an assumption there are good enough reasons to deny).)
You moved the question here, and that brings me back to my previous message. I opened it by saying that I have difficulty with these time gaps, and here you went one better and opened a new thread.
As for the matter itself, I do not understand your claims. You are repeating points that I answered explicitly. If you do not accept something, you should clarify what and why. The commandments are part of that same repair that makes Him perfect, so there is no contradiction between commandments as a higher need and His being perfect. That is precisely my main claim here..
Throughout this discussion here I explained הדברים in a detailed and clear way — what and why. You simply repeated your claims without any attempt to re-examine them.
There is also a deep skepticism in me that a lone response of “yet another person asking a question here” would cause you to examine and reconsider your views on an issue that is one of the cornerstones of your doctrine.
Therefore the discussion will end in disagreement.
Neria, I share your impressions.
With all the great respect due to Michi, and with the enormous contribution he has personally made to me in clarifying my thinking, still,
in my feeling he sometimes tends to smear things over for his readers.
To his credit, the dosage of his smearing is lower than that of most other intellectuals I know.
That’s something too, isn’t it?
Hello Rabbi, and thank you for the response,
A. I do not agree with the assumption (trivial in many places in Jewish mysticism and in Christianity) that man and the world are not perfect/repaired (temporariness is not related to perfection or imperfection; temporariness is simply temporariness), because I deny this evaluative assumption, whose source is a human- and feeling-dependent psychological judgment, not a concrete philosophical judgment one can actually address. Even though it is a great marketing tool to tell people “you have a problem and here is the solution,” I deny this basic assumption that there is a problem, at least in the primary, original sense of the creation of man and the world.
B. In my opinion, it is speculation (which Kabbalah very much likes to engage in) to think about what God thinks and what His purposes are. I do not see even a trace of truth in that. You claim one can know what God thinks; I claim that is speculation. Because you claim to know what God thinks, you claim that God has no purpose in creating a world and a human being that could have not existed / are temporary; in my opinion, that is exactly the point: unlike the kabbalistic speculations, we have no idea what or how God thinks or conducts Himself. God could have chosen not to create man and the world because that’s just it — He is not causal. According to you, God must create in order to repair Himself. That is nice, but where do you stop this story of causality? When does the law of causality stop working? There has to be an end to the infinite regress in your argument about God’s causality. And in general, there must be a reason for the fracture in God in order for there to be a repair.
C. On a realist Torah and a transcendent Torah beyond the world. On eternity and temporariness.
If Premise D is not a premise, then it contains within it an assumption that I see every reason in the world to deny: the assumption that the Torah is outside the world. The Torah was given in a culture, to a people living in a specific moral culture, with certain beliefs, and its essence is within the world and for that human world. Every law in the plain meaning of Scripture in the Torah will be understood essentially according to the cultural logic within the world, on the basis of the culture of the ancient Near East. The heart of my argument is that the need to separate morality from Jewish law does not stem from that being how it was created from the outset, but because it was created retroactively. It emerged from the view that the Torah is eternal and from changing culture — those two things caused the Torah to become an extraterrestrial world-repairing force. But that is not what it was originally.
D. Indeed, I accept the other arguments in the notebook (in a certain sense), it’s just that in my opinion the argument about commandments as a higher need is very speculative and based on premises that, to my mind 😉 I see every good reason to deny.