Q&A: The Source of Moral Details
The Source of Moral Details
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
Rabbi, you argued that morality stems from an intuition that we have.
A. How can one make claims against a person or group whose intuition really tells them otherwise (for example, ISIS, who would claim that it is moral to murder infidel enemies and anyone who disagrees with them)?
B. If we say it goes by the majority, what do we do if the majority claims that in its view a certain act has no moral flaw in it (for example, a late-term abortion or gender reassignment surgery for LGBT people), while we in the minority disagree? Would we say that morality has changed?
I am trying to argue that morality can be defined only by God, and that the details were given to us in the Torah through commands that are not religious in nature—for example, the story of Onan, even before the giving of the Torah, which teaches about the moral defect in that act. Or the statement in Proverbs, “Go to the ant, you sluggard…,” which teaches that laziness is a moral defect.
Answer
A. Morality does not stem from our intuition. It is objective, one, and binding. But our way of arriving at it is through intuition, and that is why there are disputes. As for your question: you can’t. See Column 372.
B. The majority determines nothing. At most, one could argue that the majority hits the truth with a higher probability (and even that is not necessarily true).
Please, write a Torah-based ethics book founded on interpretation of the Bible. Get the agreement of the religious public (there is no chance whatsoever), and then move on to the general public around the world (you’ve got to be kidding me). Good luck. a0
Discussion on Answer
I have no general answer to that. But why is that important to our discussion?
In the end, you do accept that there is a way to decide questions of Jewish law from the Torah—basically the whole field of halakhic rulings. Obviously there are disputes there too, but there are principles for how to decide, especially for someone who doesn’t have time to get into every topic on his own—for example, the local rabbinic authority, or one’s primary rabbi, or a halakhic decisor whom one’s father used to follow…
Why, in morality and other areas, is there nothing to even try to rule from the Torah, in your opinion? Obviously there is less material there to discuss, but still, that’s what there is, and somehow a decision has to be reached.
Sorry for the delay.
Good luck.
Thank you.
So what, in your view, is the way to decide moral disputes?