Q&A: A Fortiori Inference — A Sign (the Usual Understanding) or a Cause
A Fortiori Inference — A Sign (the Usual Understanding) or a Cause
Question
(An example from Wikipedia:) The Torah commands returning the stray ox of an enemy, and from that they derived by an a fortiori inference that this applies to the ox of a friend as well.
Does the a fortiori inference reveal that in the case of a friend too there is the underlying reason to return it, or does the a fortiori inference reveal nothing at all except that we have a problem being in a kind of quasi-contradictory state of going against the a fortiori inference? A practical difference would be if God were to reveal Himself and cancel the commandment to return an enemy’s ox. Would the commandment to return a friend’s ox remain, or would it disappear?
Answer
Why assume the second option? Clearly an a fortiori inference is based on logic. True, the Briskers like to view it as a scriptural decree; see, for example, in the Haggadah from Beit HaLevi on the “Thirteen Principles,” what he cites from Rabbi Chaim on the a fortiori inference from the grasses. And of course he is mistaken there too. That a fortiori inference was the subject of the first article in Good Measure.
I just read the article about the grasses, which argues that the logic of a fortiori inference is embedded in creation. And elsewhere you explained (if I understood correctly) that its basis is Ockham’s razor, to minimize parameters. I certainly agree that there is logic to it. My question, though a weak one admittedly, was whether that logic is enough to decipher the Torah’s mechanism, or whether only on the practical level of conduct were we given, as a hermeneutic rule, to act according to that logic. The second option is indeed less plausible, and to tell the truth it was mainly intended to complicate the mechanism so as to allow more freedom for hair-splitting pilpul, like that story of the furnished room.