Q&A: Natural Feeling of Love
Natural Feeling of Love
Question
Hello Rabbi,
It seems to me that you once wrote (if I’m not mistaken, in the column about the special quality of the Jewish people) that you do not see the feeling of love for one’s family as anything more than a fact—that is, it is not a value. You noted that it may perhaps have technical importance for carrying out certain things that ought to be done for their benefit, but that the emotional love itself toward them has no value, and therefore it is not correct to say that one “should love them.” Could the Rabbi explain why? I’m asking because right now I think this is something meaningful—the very feeling of connection and love toward family members—and even if I do “everything that should be done,” even with a cheerful expression, if no feeling of love accompanies it, that seems lacking to me.
Answer
In my view, feelings in and of themselves have no value. They are a fact, and as such there is no point in seeing them as a value.
Perhaps one could see value in a person who works on developing his feelings toward his family members (and not in the mere existence of such a feeling). Though even regarding that, I tend to think that a feeling as such has no value. Actions on their behalf do have value.
Discussion on Answer
Is there a distinction between the mere existence of a high IQ and the mere existence of emotions? Neither of them came from a person’s own advancement through free choice. And I indeed meant the work and development of the emotion (though you disagree even about that).
Do you see a distinction between the mere existence of emotion and the mere existence of intellect? In my opinion, some level of intelligence also has no evaluative significance if it is not the result of a person’s choice and growth (and I understand that you do distinguish between them when they are the result of effort).
In any case, one can see a person who has refined his character traits and is altruistic rather than egoistic—which is essentially the nature of love—as a more elevated and more perfected person.
As I wrote, one certainly can, because that is his own work, but there is no necessity in that. If it is not a fact but the person’s own work, that is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, for the thing to be a value. The question of whether it really is a value or not is something I’m somewhat undecided about, and I tend to think not.
For some reason my response to Harel’s questions does not appear here.????
I wrote to him that there is no value in the existence of a brilliant intellect, since that too is only a fact. But unlike emotion, in my opinion developing the intellect does have value.
Right now I think this is not necessarily a moral value but a human one—self-realization. And based on that, one should reconsider the development of emotion, which may also have value because it too constitutes self-realization (developing another part of the personality that was planted in us and is worthy of development). I don’t know. In any case, even if so, it seems that the value lies in the development itself of that part of the soul/personality (self-realization), and not specifically in the emotion simply by virtue of its being an emotion. That would mean that intensive training in some athletic field is also a value, since that too develops parts of our psyche and body (a high athletic level is not only about the body, of course). And Rabbi Kook’s remarks on this are well known. See, for example, here:
https://www.yeshiva.org.il/midrash/4234
See column 22.