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Ethics and Morality
 
Posted: 15 May 2007 06:00 AM CDT
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2007/05/ethics-and-morality.shtml

(Post written 27-Jul-2006, updated 15-May-2007. Further explanation was added to the conclusion. Reference was made to the newly posted Introduction to Shaarei Yosher to further explain this entrys thesis in light of others.)

Everyone else in the frum blogosphere is dealing with the questions Richard Dawkins raises in his book The God Delusion, and whether morality is possible without religion. So why shouldnt I?

I want to introduce a few distinctions that in my humble opinion are necessary for having a clear conversation of the subject.

Morality vs. Ethics



Morality is defined in term of conduct. Its from the Latin moralis, meaning custom or manner. It is therefore possible to be moral just because one is doing the right thing.

Ethics is from the Greek ethos, which describes a persons character. A person can only be ethical if he believes he was created for a higher purpose, and aspires to live for that higher calling.

(An interesting tangent is what this says about Greek culture vs. Roman.)

The contemporary atheist, like Dawkins, believes their higher calling is merely that a particular kind of self-replicating molecule replicates well with all the baggage of producing a Dawkins to provide the right soup.

What then is the purpose of ones life? To do anything possible to make your genes, those molecules, propagate. But if one tries to turn that purpose into a calling, the result is paradoxical: The higher calling, mans attempt to do more than merely live is itself life, the thing it is supposed to be higher than!

Is vs. Ought

Hume introduced something called the is-ought fallacy which I think is unavoidable without the concept of a purposive creation of man. People tend to confuse the is with the ought. They are different in kind. How does one define what ought to be from observations of evidence of what is?

I suggested in an earlier blog entry that it takes the notion of our existence to have a purpose and a goal in order to avoid Euthyphros Paradox. (To convert the paradox to Jewish terms: Is being good an arbitrary choice of Hashem, and therefore of no inherent meaning? Or are we saying that Hashem is subject to an externally imposed morality?)

My resolution (which I recommend reading in full, rather than relying on this excerpt) was:

I would argue that HQBH created the world with a tachlis, a purpose, He placed each of us in it with a tachlis, and what is righteous is righteous because it is in accordance with furthering that tachlis. This fits Rav Hirsch’s etymology for “ra“, being related to /רעע/, to shatter. It also explains why the word “tov” means both good in the moral sense (not evil) as well as in the functional sense (not ineffective, as in “a good toothpaste prevents cavities”).  Moral tov derives from the functional tov. Hashem chose “Do not steal” over “Take whatever makes you happy” because that’s what makes us better receptacles.

So yes, HQBH did choose good vs evil without being subject to external constraint, and yet still the choice was not arbitrary. Socrates gave Euthyphro a false dichotomy — there was a third choice. Hashem has a reason, but that reason wasn’t conforming to a preexisting morality.

Here the same issue holds. Without asserting that mans existence is for a purpose, one can not define an ethic.

Being Ethical vs. Having a Reason for Being EthicalAnd yet There have been atheists who died to defend their nation or their civilization. That requires a motivation for such extreme moral behavior; someone wouldnt sacrifice so much without a noble motivation. Where would it come from?

Perhaps this question is only because everything above presumed that everything man does is reasoned. In other words, all I have argued is that man can not define an ethic, he can not explain why he would be moral. But many people do things they can not justify intellectually, or for which they have an imperfect line of reasoning. Someone could value freedom or democracy because they enjoy having them, not because they have a logical reason why their DNA should be provided one environment rather than the other, or even why replication of a particular variant of DNA has any value over any other chemical reaction (to refer back to the is-ought fallacy.

Where does this moral drive come from? Freud saw choice as being between the Id, the desires with which we are born, and the Super-Ego, recordings of all the rules our parents and society have placed upon us. But in Jewish thought, there is a soul. Its not only repression of natural desire to conform to a higher calling, its also the satisfaction of an equally innate human need, the desires of the soul. Not believing in it doesnt mean one cant hear its call.

Map vs. Terrain - Personal Ethical Guidelines vs. Hashems Objective Absolute Values

Perhaps this ties in to the answer Hillel gave one of the people who approached him to convert. In the post  the Rest is Commentary I discuss his answer to the impatient convert (which again I recommend reading in full):

What you hate, do not do to your peer: that is the whole Torah, the rest is the commentary. Go and learn it.

Is there a natural morality, an innate sense of right and wrong? Somehow all of humanity labels theft and murder as evil. Everyone has a yeitzer hatov calling him to good and yeitzer hara pulling the other way.

Natural morality is based on empathy. “What you hate, do not do to your peer.” In a somewhat flawed way, it drives the Notzri Golden Rule, as well as the Hindu concept of Karma. I know something is wrong because I wouldn’t like it — and I am aware of another’s pain when I do it to them.

But that morality from empathy is limited. It gives general guidelines, but no tools for navigating the grey areas and the questions that involve conflicting values and priorities. Therefore one needs commentary to explain further. And that commentary one must “go and learn”. It goes beyond the innate.

The Torah is therefore in agreement with the general thrust of innate morality, even to those who deny the former and have no explanation for the existence of the latter. But the steps between the first principles innately known and the dictates of the Torah often make it impossible to deduce the terrain of morality without following the map Hashem gave us.

We therefore have two notions of morality: In this entry I am suggesting it means doing what we were made for. However, in that earlier entry (which was also expanded moments before this one) I wrote that being moral is all an elaboration of what is hateful to you, do not do to your peer and that even halakhah is only necessary because of the complexity that arises from applying a simple rule to a complex universe.

As to why the two would refer to the same notion of morality, see the first paragraph of the introduction to Shaarei Yosher:

BLESSED SHALL BE the Creator, and exalted shall be the Maker, Who created us in His “Image” and in the likeness of His “Structure”, and planted eternal life within us, so that our greatest desire should be to do good to others, to individuals and to the masses, now and in the future, in imitation of the Creator (as it were). For everything He created and formed was according to His Will (may it be blessed), [that is] only to be good to the creations. So too His Will is that we walk in His ways. As it says “and you shall walk in His Ways” – that we, the select of what He made – should constantly hold as our purpose to sanctify our physical and spiritual powers for the good of the many, according to our abilities.

Hashem created us only for our needs, not for His; He lacks nothing. We, being in His image, are therefore also designed to give to others. Thus we were designed to be able to share in His task, to give to others just as He provides for me.

 
This posting includes a media file: http://www.aishdas.org/asp/ShaareiYosher.pdf

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 The rest is commentary
 
Posted: 15 May 2007 05:40 AM CDT
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2007/05/rest-is-commentary.shtml

(Post written 27-Jul-2006, updated 15-May-2007. Further explanation was added.)
There is a famous story in the gemara (Shabbos 31a) about three prospective converts who each came to Shammai saying that they want to convert but only if he meets some absurd condition. In all three cases, Shammai turns them away, they go to Hillel, who accepts them, they convert and they drop their requirement. The gemara describes the second one as follows:



Again it happened that a non-Jew came before Shammai and said to him, Make me a proselyte, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot. Thereupon he pushed him away with the builders ammah-stick which was in his hand. When he went before Hillel, he said to him, What you hate, do not do to your peer: that is the whole Torah, the rest is the commentary. Go and learn it.

There is much to be said about the story. For example, the prospective convert uses the idiom while I stand on one leg, rather than saying summarize. And Hillels reply is to establish the whole Torah on one leg, on one principle. Perhaps Shammais response is that Torah is about the measures and sizes, and cant be explained without all the details of the halakhah. That the Torah is about the legal structure that Hashem and the Jewish people build in a redemptive partnership (to describe it in terminology from Ish haHalakhah).

But the point that hit me this morning that motivated this post was something else.

Is there a natural morality, an innate sense of right and wrong? Somehow all of humanity labels theft and murder as evil. Everyone has a yeitzer hatov calling him to good and yeitzer hara pulling the other way. And yet, a tinoq shenishba, a child raised in a home devoid of Torah values, is judged more leniently because of that experience. We do not assume its innate in him as well.

Rav Soloveitchik notes on a number of occasions that every mitzvah in the Torah has an element of choq, of incomprehensible law followed purely because G-d said so  the opposite of a natural morality. For example, without the revelation of halakhah, would we know whether the concept of murder should or shouldnt include abortion? What about euthanasia? At what point is a person already dead? Do you endanger many to save one life? Halakhah gives us the tools to make determinations that innate morality is not equipped to answer.

However, in other cases the halakhah is simply to do whats right. Be holy, for I Am holy, which the Ramban famously explains as a prohibition against being disgusting with [what would otherwise be] the permission of the Torah. How does one define menuval, someone who is disgusting? And you shall do the good and the straight. It is presumed we have an innate definition of holiness, good, and rectitude that the Torah is commanding us to follow that extends beyond the other, more legally styled, mitzvos.

Natural morality is based on empathy. What you hate, do not do to your peer. In a somewhat flawed way, it drives the Notzri Golden Rule, as well as the Hindu concept of Karma. (The Golden Rule, by the way, would require my giving away all I own to the next person I meet, wait hand on foot on others, etc Taken at its word, the creed is un-livable.) I know something is wrong because I wouldnt like it  and I am aware of anothers pain when I do it to them.

But that morality from empathy is limited, as we pointed out above. Even though there is a simple underlying morality, it is being applied to a complex world. Results are often surprising and counterintuitive. And so, Hashem gave us a book and a process to help explicate the problem. Rather than trying to deduce behavior through that complex mapping of effects and side-effects, on impacts of things we cant fully understand like our minds and souls, Hashem gives us a law, a set of applications.The relationship between halakhah and natural morality is that between quantum mechanics and endocrynology. It is theoretically possible to deduce endocrynology by studying the problem in terms of subatomic particles and the four basic fources. In practice, no one is up to the task, and an attempt to do is bound to occasionally lead to mistakes that are the direct opposite of reality. It is easier and more reliable to treat a diabetic by studying endocrynology directly.

Empathy gives general guidelines, but no tools for navigating the gray areas and the questions that involve conflicting values and priorities. Therefore one needs commentary to explain further. And that commentary one must go and learn. It goes beyond the innate.

 

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Hashem and Morality
 
Posted: 15 May 2007 04:36 AM CDT
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2007/05/hashem-and-morality.shtml

(Post written 27-Jul-2006, updated 15-May-2007. Further explanation was added.)

In his essay Euthyphro, Plato has Socrates ask a young student named Euthyphro, Is what is righteous righteous because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is righteous?The Jewish spin would be to ask: Is an act good because HQBH chose to make it a mitzvah, or did Hashem command us to do it because it is good? What is the Source of morality?
The problem is that if you say that an act is good solely because Hashem commanded it, then He had no moral reason to tell us to do one set of things and not another. Can mitzvos be the product of Divine whim, the decision between Thou shalt murder and Thou shalt not entirely without any reason on His part? On the other hand, if there is an overarching definition of good and evil that Hashem conformed to, then we placed something over Him, something that even He is subject to.I would argue that HQBH created the world with a tachlis, a purpose, He placed each of us in it with a tachlis, and what is righteous is righteous because it is in accordance with furthering that tachlis. This fits Rav Hirschs etymology for ra, being related to /רעע/, to shatter. It also explains why the word tov means both good in the moral sense (not evil) as well as in the functional sense (not ineffective, as in a good toothpaste prevents cavities). To prepare the menorahs lamps is called hatavas haneiros  causing the functional usability of the lamps. Moral tov derives from the functional tov. Hashem chose Do not steal over Take whatever makes you happy because thats what makes us better receptacles. We might have remained with two definitions of tov (and of good)  functional and moral. According to this line of reasoning, good at its job is the underlying meaning of tov in the moral sense of the word as well.

So yes, HQBH did choose good vs evil without being subject to external constraint, and yet still the choice was not arbitrary. Socrates gave Euthyphro a false dichotomy  there was a third choice. Hashem has a reason, but that reason wasnt conforming to a preexisting morality.G-d created us because He could only bestow good if there is someone to receive that good. That is our individual purpose, to make ourselves into utensils, receptacles for emanations of Divine Good. (I once suggested to Avodah that Qabbalah isnt to be translated as that which was received, but rather the art of reception.) Given that personal purpose, the definition of tov feeds directly into a spiritual health model of reward and punishment. Oneshim are the product of not being proper keilim for shefa, and therefore one is incapable of receiving the sechar. Its not that the sechar is being withheld  the problem is with the reception.

This makes following the tzavah (command) of the Melech a derivative  learning to be a good subject is part of what it takes to be a good keli. Perhaps this is why they are called mitzvos (that which were commanded) rather than tzavos (commands).

This means that of the Rambams ikkarei emunah, perhaps the last three are the most critical. Without an eschatology, without a final state, we have no way of defining which acts advance us to that goal, and which are ra, shattering that which was already built.

One last issue: Why should I follow the purpose for which I was created? What changes G-ds motivation into my moral imperative?

We can prove the two are identical logically. In order for my moral choice to have any meaning, I must assume my actions have value. Otherwise, what difference does it make which actions I choose to perform? If I believe my actions have value, I am assuming my existence has value, since it makes those actions possible. And thus, presumed in the very quest for morality is the notion that the purpose for which I was created imparts value.

See also Bemachashavah Techilah for Ki Seitzei for an essay on Euthyphros dilemma and the concept of toeivah.


R. Yitzchak Blau has an article in the Torah U-Madda Journal titled Ivan Karamazov Revisited: The Moral Argument for Religious Belief.Much of his argument is phrased pragmatically, IOW, R Blau is more likely to speak of the problems the Moral Argument (MA) leads to more than whether its inherently valid. The moral argument is most often used in educating youth and kiruv projects, and RYB assesses them in that light.Rabbi Blau  initially argues that MA is likely to lead to one of two opposite errors:1- It makes religion a handmaiden to ethics, as religion then become about being the Divinely given morality. Or

2- By identifying religion with ethics, one makes the ethical merely an expression of religion, which which respect to Judaism means saying there is no ethic beyond the G-d-given din. Do we want to teach a Judaism that has no barrier to geneivas akum and the like?After proving that geonim and rishonim assert the existence of a natural ethic (citing R Nissim Gaon, Ramban, Chizquni and Rav Saadia) he ends up revamping MA to be about supplementing natural ethics with

the more refined Divine ethic. For example, one can argue the need for a Divine ethic not on the grounds of Thou shalt not murder but on the impossibility of natural ethic dealing with abortion, euthanasia, and the other borderline cases in any deterministic way. (This ties back to an entry written earlier this week.)

I think the paper is fundamentally flawed by a lack of a basic distinction.

There are two distinct issues:

- The source of morality. Can all human beings agree that there is a concept of morality (even if we disagree about much of what morality includes) if G-d didnt create humans with the concept of morality?

- The source of information about what morality consists of.

I would assert that MA is about the first, not the latter. Therefore, we could rely on the Torah to know what morality consists of, while still using the existence of morality as a concept to imply the existence of a religious world.

I find it interesting that RYB has a discussion of why we should obey G-d in the context of If all ethic is from G-d, isnt ethic arbitrary? and using John Stuart Mill, Hobbes, Geach (the latter two saying follow G-d or hell beat you up!  far from moral imperative!), but not Platos Euthyphro which is this very dilemma!
 
This posting includes a media file: http://www.aishdas.org/mesukim/5764/kiSeitzei.pdf

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