Q&A: The Meaning of Choice
The Meaning of Choice
Question
Hello Rabbi, I saw on the Atsakh forum that you wrote, regarding moral conduct in accordance with the system a person defines for himself, the following:
Choice, without the existence of two paths that are imposed on us and not determined by us, has no value significance.
Example: There are three political election processes:
1. In Syria, every citizen enters the polling station and freely chooses the only ballot that is there, and drops it into the ballot box.
2. In Switzerland, every citizen enters the polling station and freely chooses one of the two ballots that are there. But this choice has no significance at all, since in Switzerland there are no issues on the table. The different choices have no “prices.” The prices are imposed on us from outside and are hardly in our hands, yet they are a condition for the value significance of the choice.
3. In Israel, every citizen enters… and here there are also issues. This is a real choice, with value significance.
There is an illusion as though giving commandments and values that are imposed on us from above limits our freedom and our choice. But that is not so. Not only are these not limitations on choice, they are actually a necessary condition for the value significance of choice. A person who decides for himself what is bad and what is good acts as in Switzerland. That is genuine freedom, but it is valueless. His actions have no prices other than what he himself assigns them. Only the existence of prices, of definitions of good and bad imposed on us, makes possible the value of choice.
I wanted to ask about this:
- If a certain person chose/defined for himself basic humanistic values of equality, liberty, human dignity, etc., why is there no value significance in moral conduct in accordance with those values that he chose?
- You wrote that “only the existence of prices, of definitions of good and bad imposed on us, makes possible the value of choice.” What did you mean by the word “prices” here?
Answer
1. Who said there isn’t? Of course there is. Very much so.
2. By prices, I mean consequences. When we choose a political leader, we bear the consequences (for better or worse), which do not depend on us. If we were the ones determining the consequences, there would be no value to our free choice. Therefore, דווקא the fact that things are not in our handsneither the definition of what is good and what is bad, nor the consequences of good or bad behavioris what gives meaning to our choices. A person who decides for himself what is good and what is bad always comes out right. By definition he is always acting well. So what is the significance of his choosing? He decides what to do, and he also decides by what standard and how he will be judged. So he is always righteous. Only if the standards are not in his hands, but rather he is judged against standards determined from outside, is there significance to his actions and to their judgment.
Questioner:
1. The person I described above (the humanist) defined for himself what is good (equality, liberty, etc.) and what is bad; he decides for himself what is right to do, and he also decides by what and how he is judged (he sets for himself the humanistic standard, because apparently there is no such objective standard), and according to what you wrote in section 2, that conduct is devoid of value significance.
2. Even if there were some absolute external humanistic standard, the very choice of it as a binding standard is itself a choice, and that choice is not judgeable by the humanistic standard itself. So does that mean that the humanist’s very choice of humanistic values is devoid of value significance?
3. I didn’t understand the relevance of the consequences of some behavior to its value significance. After all, the whole idea of serving God for its own sake comes to show that precisely the disconnect between the consequences of our behavior and the behavior itself is what gives value significance to the service of God; otherwise it is just self-interest. (As I recall, Leibowitz distinguishes between needs/consequences and values/desires.)
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Rabbi:
To the same extent, the believing person chooses the religious values and God’s command. This is not a choice in the sense of determining what is right and what is not. Rather, it is a choice to obey the right thing. And that is the difference. The humanist thinks that the right thing is the values of humanism, and in that sense it is exactly like the religious person. There is an external standard by which you are measured. True, in my personal opinion, without some external source there is no validity to an external standard, because without a lawgiver there is no binding law. But that is a different argument.
Behavior always aims at a result. It is true that according to Kant (and also in my own view), the assessment in the end is by intention and not by what actually came out. But beyond that, the consequences I was speaking about here are moral consequences. Was something good done here, or something bad? And that is determined by the external standard.
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Questioner:
So if I understand you correctly, you are describing three levels of value significance, in ascending order:
1. A person who does not choose to obey any right thing whatsoever (goes according to the arbitrariness of his own heart)
2. A person who chooses to obey the right thing, but one that has no binding validity (for example, humanism)
3. A person who chooses to obey the right thing with binding validity (some divine command)
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Rabbi:
No. There are only two levels: 1. One who sets the standards for himself. 2. One who obeys some external standards.
Except that I have an argument with the humanists, because they claim they are in category 2, while I claim that without God (a source of external validity) there is no validity to a system of category 2.
In principle, in both types one can obey or not obey, but in a system that a person arbitrarily sets for himself, this has no practical significance (why shouldn’t he obey himself?).
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Questioner:
So where do you place the humanists, from your point of view? Equivalent to group number 1? Or somewhere in between 1 and 2?
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Rabbi:
From my point of view, they are believing people committed to divine morality as they understand it, that is, type 2. They of course deny this and regard themselves as atheists, but they do not interpret themselves correctly. Commitment to values means implicit faith.
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Questioner:
By the way, on this topic, I wanted to ask whether we really choose to do what is right, or perhaps we are simply compelled to act according to what is right to the best of our understanding, and what holds us back is only “weakness of will.” That is, is the significance of our choice expressed solely in the choice to overcome weakness of will (you could call it the evil inclination)? Or are there perhaps other aspects in which choice is expressed?
In addition, is it possible for a person to choose to act contrary to what he thinks is right to do (to choose evil), freelythat is, without factors inclining him to choose evil, such as various physical urges?
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Rabbi:
I dealt with these matters in my book The Science of Freedom.
There is no clear information, but Libet and other researchers claim that our choice concerns only imposing a veto on urges (not only bad ones)/instincts. I am not at all sure about this (my reasoning tells me that if a veto is possible, then positive choice is possible too).
As for the second question, I find it hard to believe. Weakness of will is usually surrender to impulse. Otherwise why would I act not as I myself think?! True, one can imagine a situation in which act X is good in my eyes, but that is not what I want to do (because I choose evil), and then I will not do X. But I have no way of knowing what is correct regarding this question.
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Questioner:
That is what I meant to ask in the last question:
can there be a free choice of evil (that is, that someone really wants to do something that is evil in his own eyes)?
By the way, I didn’t quite understand what you meant by the words “positive choice.” Do you mean choice even in a theoretical situation where there are no urges at all? And if so, why wouldn’t I do the act that seems right to me if nothing is holding me back? What is the choice here in practice? (There is no other logical alternative.)
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Rabbi:
I understood that that was your intention, and I answered accordingly. There is no principled impediment, but psychologically I do not see why a person would freely choose evil.
The qualification I added concerns the identity between what is good and what seems right for me to do. Perhaps there is a person for whom it seems right not to do good, even though he knows it is not good.
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Questioner:
Following up on this email: if all our choice is expressed in overcoming the inclination, does that mean that since the inclination toward idolatry was abolished, there is no value significance in refraining from idolatry, and as a result there is also no moral flaw in idolatry?
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Rabbi:
Choice is not arbitrary. There is significance to choice, but mainly if you choose the good. If you choose evil, then you are indeed a choosing person, but this is not a complete choice, of course. So clearly every act gets its value from the fact that it was chosen. But all this applies only to good acts. Therefore there is evil in idolatry by virtue of what it is. Only after it is defined as evil is there value in choosing not to engage in it. Just as a person who has no inclination to murder is still not permitted to murder just like that.
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Questioner:
Let’s take, for example, two religions: religion A and religion B. Each religion defines the other as idolatry. Should the members of religion A say that the members of religion B are committing a morally flawed act simply by worshipping in religion B?
Obviously, someone who believes in religion Aif he worships religion B, that would be morally flawed, but there is no logic in doing that without an inclination. So I am saying that unlike the era before idolatry was abolished, when even those who worshipped idolatry understood that they were doing something flawed (for example, Manasseh), in our era, if someone worships idolatry, should he be seen as an unprincipled person?
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Rabbi:
If he truly believes in it, then he is doing a flawed act under compulsion. The act is bad, but there is no guilt.