Q&A: Free Choice
Free Choice
Question
Hello Rabbi, in one of your articles you wrote that: “A first remark is that the libertarian does not claim that a person is not influenced by various factors, external or internal. His claim is that a person is not always influenced by them, or that this influence is not complete. In other words, he is not determined by them, but at most influenced by them. Second, even the libertarian agrees that sometimes a person acts under the influence of impulses that cannot be overcome, and then he is not choosing. Third, he agrees that sometimes a person acts in a routine or random way without making a choice or decision, and then again he is not choosing.”
So:
1. Does a person have a choice about what to be influenced by? (For example, if a friend speaks to me in a nasty way, can I choose to ignore it and move on?)
2. What are impulses that cannot be overcome?
Thank you very much
Answer
Hello Sivan.
- A person does not have a choice about what influences him. He does have a choice about what to do with that influence. If someone provokes me, I have no choice about whether to get angry. I do have a choice about what to do with that anger and how to respond.
- I did not understand the question. If a person has an impulse that he cannot overcome, that is what is called an impulse that cannot be overcome.
2. This reminds me of something in the responsa of Yeshayahu Leibowitz that I wanted to ask you about, regarding homosexuals. Someone asked him, and he answered at length (of course he did not permit this severe prohibition) and concluded roughly as follows:
“If the fear does not leave your heart that you may not withstand the trial and may stumble into transgression out of weakness in the difficult struggle in which you find yourself—I place before you the profound words of one of my teachers of Hasidism (even though the world of Hasidic thought is generally very foreign to my spirit):
‘Sometimes a person faces such a great trial that it is impossible for him not to sin… and in this he is considered completely coerced, for the Merciful One exempts one who is under compulsion; and even when the evil inclination incites with overwhelming force that cannot be defeated, compulsion applies… There is such a powerful inclination that a person cannot subdue it, and that is complete compulsion, and there is no punishment in this even though he committed a prohibition, since he was coerced. But the person himself cannot testify about himself in this matter, for perhaps he still had the strength to subdue the inclination…’
(Tzidkat HaTzadik by Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin, sec. 43)
I understand and feel your soul’s anguish on the one hand, and your pure intention on the other, and I can only strengthen your hands with a warm blessing.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz”