Q&A: The Value of an Act Not Done Out of Obligation
The Value of an Act Not Done Out of Obligation
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I feel there’s a tension between your approaches.
That is, not an outright contradiction, but approaches that seemingly don’t fit with one another—
because, on the one hand, you tend toward the view that the whole basis of morality is by virtue of the divine command (and not merely morality added on top of the existing, natural morality) (The Commandment Principle, fourth lecture).
On the other hand, you do not attribute value to a “religious” act (settling the Land, socialism, and the like) if it is not done out of commitment to the divine command.
But if the natural moral tendency, and even “contemplation of the ideal of the good,” is in essence the realization of God’s will (and I’m talking about Him as Creator of the world, right? Because from there, if I’m not mistaken, you arrived at the claim that morality is dependent on God), then perhaps a person does not recognize any obligation to the commands of the revelation at Mount Sinai (and perhaps is not even aware at all of its historical existence), but he is still moral out of an intuition of obligation to the Creator of the world (even if he doesn’t grasp that He is the Giver of the Torah. After all, before God gave the Torah, did He not exist?).
Maybe there is no absolute contradiction here, but it seems that the leading approach is different.
Answer
I don’t see any contradiction at all. A religious act has no value unless it comes מתוך conscious commitment to God’s command. A moral act has value if it is done out of moral obligation (and not for the sake of some interest). At the foundation of morality stands God’s command, but that is a philosophical argument, and there is no necessity that the person acting be aware of it. Even if he is not aware, his act still has moral value. Of course, his moral act will not have religious value. A religious person who is aware that morality too is the result of God’s command—when he performs a moral act, it has both moral value and religious value.