Q&A: A Question About a Mere Debate
A Question About a Mere Debate
Question
With God’s help.
Peace and blessings to Rabbi Michi, beloved by most of the world. When I watched the debate you had with Prof. Enoch, a few points came to mind and I wanted to ask you a question.
First, I felt that you didn’t maximize yourself. In the sense that you weren’t the one managing the discussion, but rather participated as a neutral player. And if you had been running it, surely you would have steered the discussion more sharply toward the places where the root of the dispute lay, and been more effective in using the philosophical method to get to the points actually needed for the discussion and nothing more. (Unlike your impressive interlocutor, who at every opportunity drifted off and spoke more generally.)
Second—and this is my question—is it possible that it was so hard for you to resolve the dispute (after all, each of you stated his arguments and the other barely even blinked), because you didn’t properly define morality before the debate? After all, you are morally Kantian. And you accept as moral only an act that comes from a rational place that respects the “law.”
And Prof. Enoch, by contrast, disagrees with you and accepts morality not necessarily in the form of its “law.” In his view it is like a scientific fact. It comes from within the human being and not from outside him. Morality is not some external law that needs to be validated. And the justification for that? Intuition. Just as I accept the principle of causality by virtue of intuition, so too with accepting morality. There is no need to reduce it.
He suspected you of trying to make a metaphysical reduction of morality, and so in my opinion he became rhetorically rigid. But that isn’t so [!]: you weren’t trying to make a reduction, but merely to give validity to the moral axioms. The debate was really being conducted on two entirely different planes.
In short, I felt it took you a long time until this point became sharpened—which is the source of the dispute—and by then the wave of questions had already begun; so it was hard to focus on this fundamental point: what is “morality”.
I’d be glad to hear whether you agree with your student: was this lack of synchronization what led to the failure to resolve the doubt?
Answer
Greetings.
As I wrote here, I am currently writing a column that will complete the argument and present it in a more systematic way (something that format did not allow). And indeed I anticipated in advance that our dispute would not be fully clarified, because a considerable part is agreed upon. Therefore I wanted a preliminary discussion, but the organizers did not want that (because they thought everything should be done in front of the audience). I really do not see any connection between our dispute and Kantianism. In my opinion Enoch is also Kantian; he simply presented things a bit differently from me (and not correctly either, of course).
You understand that if we had gone even further back and tried to define what morality is (in my book I did this, because that really is the first step), then we would not even have reached the beginning of the dispute. But in my opinion that clarification is not connected to the dispute between us. In my opinion it was clarified there after all (albeit in flashes and not systematically), and in my opinion he presented no alternative at all. But as I said, I will explain this in the column.
You
Discussion on Answer
In my view, if the Rabbi had spoken about morality as a value (in the Leibowitzian sense), the professor would have gotten confused. Because he tried to say that morality doesn’t need a reason, and God is only there to fill the gap of why one should observe morality. As I understand it, he thought that the Rabbi’s God was meant to get away from the idea that morality is a Leibowitzian value (a value without a rationale). But Rabbi Michael Abraham’s argument is that while it’s true there is no purpose, there is still a source, a cause. Did I understand correctly?
Can this debate be watched online?
What does “a Leibowitzian value” mean? That commitment to morality has no purpose outside itself? That is certainly true, since it is true of every value. I wasn’t under the impression that Enoch misunderstood me on this point.
Rivka, see here under video lectures. I think it’s the last one.
Yes, that’s what I meant when I wrote “a Leibowitzian value.”
Prof. Enoch kept coming back to the point that one doesn’t need the Holy One, blessed be He, if I understood him correctly, because one need not ask at all, “Why am I obligated to morality?” And I think he doesn’t make the distinction between why = what is the source, and why = toward what purpose. And in his view, because there is no need to ask “why be moral” (in the sense of purpose), he rejects the question entirely; or as he put it: “That is a false question.”
This is my attempt to analyze what he said, because otherwise it’s hard for me to understand what he said that contradicts the idea that there needs to be an objective source that legislates morality (even though in the end he said that if God is only the source of the moral command, then one should not call it God but rather the objectivity of morality—and in that he also believes, only heaven forbid to call it God).
There is another difference beyond the question of whether to call it God or not. Is this an intentional entity (one with intentions and desires), or merely an indifferent and mute fact? I’ll clarify everything in the next column.
Thank you very much for your answer, Rabbi. It sounds like an interesting column; I’m waiting for it eagerly.