Q&A: On Morality and Jewish Law
On Morality and Jewish Law
Question
Hello and blessings,
I work in the area of bioethics and Jewish law, with order of priority / prioritization / triage in the provision of medical treatment as a subtopic. In the Mishnah in Horayot we learn about an order of priorities, and nevertheless this is not practiced accordingly. Do ethical theories (atheistic by definition, as they are defined) influence halakhic judgment?
With respect a0
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Answer
Why do you assume that ethical theories are atheistic? Leibowitz argued that morality is an atheistic category. But that is groundless. I think morality is an extra-halakhic category, but not an extra-Torah one, nor an atheistic one.
When the Sages established the order of priorities, they definitely also used ethical theories, even if they did not formulate this explicitly to themselves or to us. It is true that they also took halakhic considerations into account (for example, who is obligated in more commandments, and whether the value of life is only that it serves as a means for fulfilling commandments or not). But all these are reasoned judgments, and, as is the way of such judgments, they are also saturated with ethical thinking.
Discussion on Answer
This is all nonsense.
It is always embedded in the axioms.
And the number of axioms is like the number of impulses.
I don’t know what one is supposed to do with such general, undefined, and unreasoned declarations.
If Jewish law is theocentric and ethics is anthropocentric a0 a0can the two go together at all?! The order of priorities in the Mishnah is devoid of any ethical foundation, whereas in the modern/postmodern world they tried, with the help of ethical reasoning, to soften the halakhic position of the Sages.