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Qitzur Shulchan Arukh - 62:15

Posted: 14 Aug 2009 08:45 AM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Aspaqlaria/~3/2NeBVdrHDaI/qsa-62-15.shtml

טו: מי שנתן אפילו רק מקצת דמים על המקח או שרשם על המקח סימן בפני המוכר, או  
שאמר לו המוכר רשם מקחך, אעפ שהוא בענין שלא קנה בזה, מכל מקום כל החוזר בו,  
בין הלוקח בין המוכר, לא עשה מעשה ישראל וחיב לקבל מי שפרע, דהינו שאוררין  
אותו בבית-דין ואומרים, מי שפרע מאנשי דור המבול ומאנשי דור הפלגה ומאנשי סדום  
ועמורה וממצרים שטבעו בים, הוא יפרע ממי שאינו עומד בדבורו

One who has given even only a little money on a purchase, or has just  
marked the object in the presence of the seller, or the seller said to him:  
Mark your purchase, even though he has not formally bought this object, in  
any event any one who goes back on it, whether the buyer or the seller, has  
not done an act becoming to a Jew, and is obliged to receive a May He who  
took payment. That is, he is cursed in court and they say: May He who took  
payment from [ie: punished] the people of the flood, and from the people of  
disunity [the generation of the Tower of Bavel],  and from the people of  
Sedom and Amorrah, and from the Egyptians whom He drowned in the sea, He  
will take payment from one who does not keep his word.
A continuation of the theme we began two days ago.

62:13 established that it is evil to break the promise of a deal to chase a  
better one. 62:14 continues that someone who serves as a proxy to  
accomplish the deal, so that there is even no deal promised yet, is devious  
in trying to thwart the one who sent him. Here we see that someone who  
someone who took some action to initiate the deal  but again, the sale isnt  
yet complete  who breaks that deal is formally cursed.

Notice the text of the curse explicitly ties the concept of Divine  
Punishment to that of a metaphysical repayment.

Ones word must be binding; and as we noted in 62:13, it does not depend on  
whom that word was given to.



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Divine Command Theory

Posted: 13 Aug 2009 02:36 PM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Aspaqlaria/~3/aBMXT9MZ5K8/divine-command-theory.shtml


Divine Command Theory (DCT) is a model of ethics in which good is defined  
by that which Hashem wants.

To quote my presentation of the Euthyphro Dilemma from an earlier blog  
entry:

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 Hashem 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.

DCT is taking the first horn of the dilemma, defining good as that which  
Hashem desires.

Historically speaking, its hard to find a rishon who actually promoted DCT.  
This need for rationality is something that distinguishes us from our  
daughter religions, and I think that shows up here too.

I think there are three relevant statements by Chazal:

1- The Chazan who praises G-d with the phrase Your Mercy extends to the  
birds nest, referring to the mitzvah of shiluach haqen, sending away the  
mother bird before taking her hatchlings or eggs, is to be deposed from  
leading the service. The mishnah (Megillah 25a) presents this law, and the  
gemara gives two explanations:
a- It arouses jealousy of other animals.

b- Mitzvos are nothing but decrees.

Rashi explains this second answer to mean that shiluach haqen is simply a  
gezeiras hakasuv, a decree from a verse. This would appear to be DCT.  
However, that is not consistent with Rashis position in other places. As we  
will see from other rishonim, this statement isnt as clear cut as it  
initially appears.

The Maharals discussion in Tiferes Yisrael ch. 6 is in three stages. (First  
a caveat: The Maharal is often hard to comprehend. My mind therefore  
sometimes fills in in my comprehension Rorschach Inkblot Test Style.) First  
he addresses the two answers in the gemara, and explains what the Chazan  
said that was so terrible according to each. Then he explains the debate  
between the Rambam and the Ramban we will discuss below, before giving his  
own position on the subject.

The mishnah lists things that a Chazan might say that would imply something  
heretical. Another case in the mishnah is one who says Modim Modim, saying  
Thanks twice. Which sounds like someone who believes in two gods. (Perhaps  
out of fear that he picked up some Zoroastrian thought about a demiurge of  
good and one of evil, as Zoroastianism was more common among the local  
non-Jews of the area before the birth of Islam.) The Maharal explains this  
case in a similar light.

a- According to the first opinion in the gemara, it is because it arouses  
jealousy of other animals. The implication is that G-d doesnt run all of  
the world equally, and thus some species have a reason to be jealous of  
others. It opens room for polytheism or incomplete theism.

b- The second opinion states that mitzvos are nothing but decrees. We can  
not assign attributes to G0d. Hashem chose these mitzvos because of pure  
Will, not because of this middah or that.

It seems that to the Maharal, din (law) is more than a middah in contrast  
to chessed (compassion), since it means our following His Will. It doesnt  
imply a trait of Divine Providence, but rather is closer to G-dhood Itself  
as pure Will. Also, it would seem that the Maharal agrees with the Moreh  
that speaking of Hashems Will doesnt violate Negative Theology (the idea  
that the only thing we can assert about Hashem Himself is what He isnt).

I dont know why the usual answer, that we mean Hashem acts in a manner from  
which we would emulate Rachamim (Mercy), doesnt work. Like Avinu, Av  
haRachaman, racheim aleinu  Our Father, the Merciful Father, have Mercy  
upon us Perhaps, as per the Rambams Guide and the Gra, we could distinguish  
between anthropomorphications made by prophets and crafting ones own. More  
likely in my eyes is that the Maharal feels the gemara is objecting because  
the chazan in question phrased the Middah as a motivator, not the something  
we read into action itself.

An interesting tangent would be what the above says about the Maharals  
understanding of the 10 sefiros. But I am not capable of even guessing at  
that one.

2- In Bereishis Rabba (4:1) is asks whether it matters to G-d whether we  
slaughter an animal from the front of the neck or the back. (This question  
is even more difficult when you realize that in usual shechitah a bird is  
slaughtered from the front of the neck, but meliqah, a sort of slaughtering  
done for qorbanos with the koheins nail was done from the back!)

Again, this appears to be grounds for asserting DCT, that there is no  
objective reason for why shechitah is the way it is, and that proper  
slaughter is simply defined by Hashem commanding us to do it one particular  
way.

Interestly, both quotes divorce the reason of the mitzvah from an obvious  
guess that its about tzaar baalei chaim (needless cruelty to animals)   
whether compassion on the mother bird or to try to minimize the pain of  
slaughter.  This might be significant.

The Rambam (Guide III) uses these two quotes to show that while mitzvos in  
the large have reasons, the details are often arbitrary. We needed a rite  
to elevate how we kill animals, thats more significant than what the rite  
is. If Hashem  said that we should shecht from the back of the neck we  
could ask why not the front? Or had he told us to take a pepper on Sukkos,  
we could ask why not an esrog?

I think there is a leshitaso (an overall unity of position)  there with the  
Rambams position on providence. He understands nature is providence over  
the entire species, not on each individual. The species of lions may be  
protected, but the fate of one particular lion is a not providencial.  
Halakhah too is a set of rules, and therefore it is unsurprising that the  
Rambam too see it also addressing the big picture and not every detail.

The Ramban argues that its a dercree on us because shiluach haqen is about  
developing our compassion, not an expression of Hashems. This is reading  
the Bereishis Rabba, which explicitly says the difference in how one  
slaughters for the sake of our middos, back into the gemara in Megillah. I  
would say the Ramban is also leshitaso. His whole concept of qadeish es  
atzmekha bema shemutar lakh  sanctify yourself with that which is  
[halachically] permitted to you means that there is a definition of  
sanctity that goes beyond that which was specifically commanded. That there  
is an underlying set of values behind halakhah that we are supposed to be  
developing in ourselves.

3- The relevance of this third quote is less obvious. The Zohar (Bereishis  
134a) famously says that Hashem, histaqeil beoraisa uvarei alma  looked  
into the Torah and created the world. The Torah is the blueprint to the  
world, and logically prior to it.

After explaining the Rambam and Ramban, the Maharal (ibid.) then defends  
the Rambans position from this critique, since he assigns desired  
attributes for people. It could be pure Divine Will that we be rachmanim  
(merciful people). But this he objects to as well, even while saving the  
Ramban from being branded by the same heretic label as the hypothetical  
chazan. He objects to the Rambans placement of cart and horse, cause and  
effect.

According to the Maharal, mitzvos are decrees, causeless. Hashem then  
created a universe and people such that derakheha darkhei noam  its ways  
are ways of pleasantness. Its not that Hashem wishes us to be rachanim that  
He told us to send away the mother bird, but rather because He commanded us  
to send her away, Hashem made it so such behavior would have results that  
are neimos (pleasant). Without explicitly invoking the Zohar, the Maharal  
presumes it in his answer.

In terms of the Euthyphro Dilemma (as reformulated for monotheists):

Is an action morally good because G-d commands it, or does G-d command it  
because it is morally good?

The Maharal appears to come down on the side of because G-d commands it,  
and thus of Divine Command Theory.

However, while we cant assign explanations to the will of G-d, the  
commandments arent really arbitrary in the usual sense of the word. In the  
sense that they do correlate to something, actually  to everything: they  
correlate to the world that Hashem created in consequence to His choice of  
commandments and the people whom He commanded.

The only reason why we consider murder inherently immoral is because of how  
people and the worlds were made. HQBH could have created a system in which  
dying is a major tovah to the person.

To put it another way, one can very well use this quote to say that murder  
is immoral because the Torah said so. But unlike straight DCT we would  
add:  and therefore the world was created so that lo sirtzakh  thou shalt  
not murder is what the souls in it prefer as well.

In chasing the link to The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on  
DCT I learned that this resolution is pretty much that proposed by Clark  
and Pootenga (2003) based on Equinas. Except that while they say the two  
fit together, they place the universe as logically prior to the Divine  
Command, rather than the other way around.

Which is pretty much into the resolution I gave in earlier Avodah  
discussions of the Euthyphro, eventually blogged at Hashem and Morality:

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 /reish-ayin-ayin/, 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.

If one says that the Torah is The Human Soul: A Users Manual, my blogged  
answer would be just like the histaqeil beOraisa version, except that HQBH  
created the soul to fit the manual, rather than the other way around.

I suggest reading the whole discussion there, but one point intrigued me.

Robert Adams (1987; also seen in the IEP article) noted that if we phrase  
DCT in the negative, we can avoid the Euthyphro Dilemma. In other words,  
there is no such paradox with the statement: Any action is ethically wrong  
if and only if it is contrary to the commands of a loving God (pg 132). It  
allows one to have a morality that includes everything Hashem requires as  
being moral by definition and yet has room for qedushah bemah shemutar  
lakh  sanctity in that which is permitted to you. AND it has an incredible  
resonance with mah desani lakh  that which is hateful to you, do not do to  
others [Hillel's one-line summary of the entire Torah], also defining duty  
in the negative.



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Qitzur Shulchan Arukh - 62:14

Posted: 13 Aug 2009 01:35 PM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Aspaqlaria/~3/c76wEI9ElA8/qsa-62-14.shtml

יד: הנותן מעות לחברו לקנות לו קרקע או מטלטלין, והלך השליח וקנה את החפץ  
במעותיו בשביל עצמו, הרי זה רמאי. ואם קנאו ממעות של המשלח, מחיב לתנו לו, אעפ  
שקנאו לעצמו

One who gives money to a friend to buy for him land or goods [as his  
agent], and the agent went and bought the object with his own money for  
himself, this one is deceitful. If he bought it with the money he was  
given, he is obliged to give him it, even if he [was trying to] buy it for  
himself.
A continuation of the theme we began yesterday. Committing to a deal is not  
fiscally binding until the deal is complete, but there is a lack of yosheir  
(integrity) in breaking ones word.



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