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Q&A: Command and Decision

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This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

Command and Decision

Question

I don’t quite understand the relationship between them. For example, you write in the second chapter of What Makes One Walk, that a command, by its very nature, is binding. But my own decision is still needed in order for me to be obligated. I didn’t understand: if a command is binding by its very nature, that means I am obligated by the very nature of a command. It’s true that I have to decide whether to obey that command, but that’s a trivial claim. Obviously, as a free human being I choose what I want to do, but that doesn’t mean I’m not obligated. It’s exactly like morality: by the very fact that X is immoral, that binds him (= I am obligated to comply with it), but in practice I choose what I do. 
 
And from your writings I felt that it’s not only that I choose what I do, but that I also choose what I am obligated to. And that is exactly the point I didn’t understand.

Answer

The definition of good and evil is objective and imposed on us. But the decision to be committed to that system is ours. The meaning of that decision is as follows: if we obey it without deciding to be committed to it, then the moral value of our action is diminished. Full moral value exists when we fulfill the command of morality out of commitment to morality. See column 457.

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