Let me make sure I understood you correctly: you’re claiming that there is a difference between “Do not steal” and “the prohibition of theft.” The first is a religious prohibition (which rests on the next prohibition), and the second is a legal extra-halakhic/meta-halakhic prohibition against crossing the boundary of my fellow’s rights (except that their practical application is the same, that I am forbidden to benefit from money that is not mine)? The first I obey by force of God’s command, and the second because of rational judgment, right?

Obey. Correct!

First of all, you do not obey; all in all you act emotionally—that is, you avoid the feelings of guilt that would arise in you if you stole. Or the fear that they’ll catch you, with all that that implies.

Decisor, are you claiming that no duty exists (halakhic and moral), or that it does indeed exist but in practice what motivates people is not obedience to duty but avoidance of guilt feelings and punishments?

“Duty” is just a word that describes an emotional state of fear in the face of not doing something.
Those who use the word “duty” in the context under discussion do so in order to portray themselves as robotic human beings who do not act based on emotion.
In other words, duty is not something that exists; what exists is fear.

If God commands, is there no duty to obey Him? Leave aside the psychological question of what motivates people; I’m asking what, in your view, exists in the world.

There is no such thing as commanding.
There is such a thing as speaking and saying words.
And there is such a thing as threatening that if you do not do such-and-such, such-and-such will happen.

We are used to calling that threat a command. But that too, as you understand, has to do with fear.

There’s also no such thing as speaking; there is only such a thing as pushing air through the vocal cords.

I’m talking about the psyche.
Words in an understood language have psychic existence.
The problem is not the words, but the manipulations and the use made of these words by those who imagine themselves to be “rational” human beings by inventing sanitized concepts intended to hide the “dirty laundry”—namely, that they are driven by emotion like everyone else.

From their point of view, that fact is a disaster; it injures their intellectual divinity.

I understand that you are claiming there is a conceptual problem with the concept of duty, meaning that it necessarily does not exist. (If it just happens not to exist, like there also doesn’t happen to be a crystal goblet on my table right now, then how do you know that duty really does not exist?) What leads you to that claim?

In the use that those who imagine themselves to be rational robots (that is, who act only according to reason) make of the concept “duty,” they have uprooted the real root of the concept, which is fear. Then the concept describes something that does not exist, and this is nothing but deception.

I’m asking whether the non-existence of the concept of duty is necessary (that is, it is a concept that cannot exist), or whether in your opinion it could in principle exist, except that in our world, for some reason, you reached the conclusion that it does not exist.

Is there also no distinct mental-experiential state that signifies recognition that a duty exists, but only mental states of fear?

We need to be precise. The concept itself exists. For those same robotic people, it describes something that does not exist—that is, a mental process that does not happen—and therefore it is a concept that was shaped by them to be such, with the aim of misleading.

When a person does something, it is in order to fulfill some need. It makes no difference whether you stick on the motive for an action the label “must” or “want” or any other label.
And when a certain label is attached to an action, you have to ask what need is fulfilled by the very attaching of that label.