Q&A: The Benefit of the Commandments
The Benefit of the Commandments
Question
Whenever I used to study tractate Bava Kamma, I took it for granted that the prohibition against causing damage stands on its own—that is, harming another person is simply a wrongful act and not part of a person’s rights. But then I came across Maimonides’ wording in the Guide for the Perplexed, where he says that the purpose of the prohibition of damages is to prevent harm, and that we were made liable for payment so that we would guard our animals. According to my initial understanding, liability for damages negates the harm, admittedly only after the fact, but still, through the payment the damager in a certain sense undoes the act he committed, and so the purpose of the payment is not in order that we should guard them, but because this is simply the right thing to do. My question is: why was it so important to Maimonides to find some general external benefit, instead of saying that the act itself is simply a wrongful act? This bothered me in other areas too—for example, the matter of honoring Torah scholars and books, where Maimonides wrote that the goal is that we should listen to them, because if we did not honor them their value would diminish and people would listen to them less. Why not say that honor is something that is intrinsically called for in relation to that which is worthy of honor? Why does everything need some external benefit? I’d be happy to hear your opinion on the matter.
Thanks in advance
Answer
On the face of it, it’s clear that you are right. Payment for damages is compensation, not a penalty whose purpose is deterrence. But there are several sources that seem to indicate otherwise. For example, Tosafot in several places writes that liability for damages is a novelty of the Torah, something we would not have said on our own. The Talmud and Tosafot at the beginning of Bava Kamma discuss deriving monetary liability by logic with regard to damage payments (as for “your property is like your body,” there is no room to discuss exemption from pure logical derivation).
My daughter Rivka once wrote an article about this—I think I linked to it here in the past—in which she argued that were it not for the Torah, we would have said that damage is “a crooked thing that cannot be made straight,” and therefore we would not have imposed payment. The novelty is that one nevertheless pays, and perhaps this even constitutes a repair of the damage (assuming that damage payments are in the category of restoring the previous state. Ostensibly this relates to the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad regarding damage to land).
As an aside, I’ll add that in general, regarding Maimonides’ reasons in the Guide, almost all of them strike me as weak. I judge him favorably and assume that he thought the perplexed people he was addressing might accept such reasons and that these would ease their distress. I don’t assume any of them were really calmed by those rather funny explanations.
Discussion on Answer
About that I wrote that without the Torah perhaps we would not have known that the damage can be repaired through payment. We would have thought that it is “a crooked thing that cannot be made straight.”
I was claiming more than that: that without the Torah we would not know that a situation of causing harm is, from a legal standpoint, an improper state of affairs vis-à-vis the injured party (but the overall thrust as far as the question goes is the same; this is just a side branch).
First of all, thank you for your remarks. Second, I didn’t mean to say that payment for damages is compensation; rather, its point is what you wrote later on—negating the reality of the harm to the injured party as much as possible after the fact. The dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad is only about the form in which the reality of the damage is cancelled out, but in my opinion the root of the payment is one and the same. Broadly speaking, it is like what the Rabbi quoted in the name of his daughter.
C. The fact that without the Torah we would not know the laws of damage payments is, in my humble opinion, no proof that damage payments do not contain the element of negating the damage itself. For without the Torah we would have said that the reality of the damage is within the rights of the damager—not morally, but halakhically; no one knows that better than you—and the Torah’s novelty is that when a person damages, he is acting with what belongs to his fellow, not with what belongs to himself.
D. In my humble opinion, the Rabbi’s words do not really provide a favorable judgment for Maimonides. Granted, if he wanted to instruct the perplexed, we can say that he brought explanations that were not quite successful; still, when he had the option of offering the simple reasoning—that matters of damages are the reality of a wrongful act, or that honor is something self-evidently called for in itself—why did he not present the simpler possibility?
Thank you very much for these enlightening words.