Q&A: Morality Without Command or Revelation from the Creator
Morality Without Command or Revelation from the Creator
Question
Hello.
In your view, without the principled statement "and you shall do what is right and good" (assuming this statement refers to the moral imperative), would there still be reason to expect a person to behave morally?
That is: (a) if yes—since a person has intellect, and by means of it we expect him to behave morally—then why, then, was this principled verse written? After all, it does not add a layer of "commandment." There is no command here that enters the count of the commandments, cancellation of a positive commandment, and so on. It is superfluous! One could bring proof of this from God's expectation in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) that people not murder, even though at that time there was no command. (b) if no—because the intellectual system is not a tool for generating a moral act (but only a descriptive one), and in order to generate motivation for action there is a need for a direct command from the Creator—then why did the Creator not command this explicitly (and not only "and you shall do," which does not enter the count of the commandments)? Beyond that, why then did the Creator expect people not to murder, when He had not commanded it, and had not even revealed it that way ("and you shall do")!
Answer
It may be that this comes after the giving of the Torah in order to say that morality still remains in force and was not replaced by Jewish law. This is contrary to certain religious approaches that think that after the giving of the Torah, morality is no longer relevant, at least for Jews. Quite a few even act that way.
Discussion on Answer
I was thinking—maybe the statement "and you shall do" reveals that there is also religious value in being moral.
This needs explaining, but maybe an example for you would be from the topic of "a transgression for its own sake." Meaning, that part of the religious world is also a moral consideration (and not a total separation, a split personality, without "and you shall do"). In other words, moral arguments also take part in shaping the religious act, and that is why we find "a transgression for its own sake."
Needs further study. And it remains difficult.
Personally, it does indeed seem forced to me. But the very fact that many think this way means that there is definitely room for a verse that comes to rule that out.
Beyond that, some understood this as referring to acting beyond the letter of the law, which is a certain kind of moral imperative. In cases of acting beyond the letter of the law, there is a stronger initial assumption that there is no such obligation, since that is exactly what the strict law teaches. For example, returning a lost object after the owner has despaired of recovering it, indirect damages, and so on—there there is definitely an initial assumption that if Jewish law explicitly instructs me that I am exempt, it is thereby telling me to ignore the moral imperative. It replaces it. Therefore the verse is needed to say that although there is a halakhic exemption, the moral imperative is still in force, and one should return a lost object even after despair and pay for indirect damages, and so on.
As for your suggestion, I think that in this sense there are no non-religious values, since all values are grounded in the Holy One, blessed be He. There are non-halakhic values, but "and you shall do what is right and good" is in any case a non-halakhic value (that is, a moral one).
I need to think about your suggestion.
What I meant to say is that without "and you shall do," I might have thought that the moment there is a contradiction between Jewish law and morality, Jewish law will always prevail. "And you shall do"—which is written in the Torah!—teaches that the Torah too recognizes this. Therefore, there is room to take the moral consideration into account when there is a contradiction. And sometimes morality will prevail—"a transgression for its own sake."
Maybe.
Regarding the current discussion—
Why can't one say that just as the commandment "You shall not murder" comes to add a halakhic layer on top of the moral layer (as is well known to be your position on this), so too certainly without the verse "and you shall do what is right and good" a person would still have had to behave morally (just as there was an expectation that human beings would behave that way even before the giving of the Torah), but the command comes to add the halakhic layer. That is, the Creator expects a person to behave morally and that this also has religious value (like the prohibition "You shall not murder")—your view?
Possible, but unlikely. The verse "and you shall do what is right and good" is not Jewish law and is not counted among the commandments. Therefore it does not add a halakhic layer beyond morality. Moreover, morality itself is the will of God, meaning it has religious value in itself even without verses.
A bit forced, no?