[Avodah] Knowledge of Good and Bad

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, October 19, 2006 9:03 am, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: He pointed out that my whole premise is flawed. Adam and Chava DID
: understand the concept of "good", even prior to eating from the tree.
: This is easily proven from Bereishis 3:6, which clearly says
: that "the woman saw that the tree was 'tov' for food." This concept
: was something that she WAS familiar with. Thus, they did have a basis
: for decision-making.

As you say later: Was she making a moral judgment or an aesthetic judgment? Or
perhaps even a functional judgment -- she ascertained that the fruit was
edible.

In any case, the Rambam discusses bechirah before the eitz hada'as and says
that it was between emes and sheqer. That Adam would naturally only want to do
ratzon Hashem, but would need to distinguish the real tov from the nachash's
sheqer.

And REED discusses the eitz hada'as in terms of the internalization of the
yeitzer. In <http://www.aishdas.org/asp/bereishis.shtml> I suggest that this
works together quite well with the Rambam. (I also discuss the unity of
"Hashem E-lokim" used in the creation of man up to the eitz hada'as, and how
this perception was bifurcated with the cheit.)

The thing is, though, that moral good derives from functional good. A good pen
is one that does the job well, and doesn't leak in my pocket. A good person is
one who does their job well, and doesn't sin very often. Once you posit that
Man was created for a purpose, the two kinds of "good" coincide.

And therefore I would disagree with what you write:
: Then they ate from the tree, and gained a new knowledge. A new
: meaning was added to the word "tov". Not only did they understand the
: difference between good and bad, between tasty and putrid, between
: beautiful and ugly. But now they also understood the difference
: between right and wrong.

But rather, once people gained the ability to pursue goals other than the
purpose for which they were created, they had the ability to be more or less
functional, to be good or bad in a moral sense.

Chavah herself couldn't be more or less tov, without conflicting desires to
pursue. But she could be mistaken as to whether the fruit would advance or
harm the function for which she was created.



Another way of understanding eitz hada'as tov vara is that it gave Man the
knowledge of "good-and-evil", the irbuvya of motives in how we make decisions.
IOW, not just the internalization of evil, but the inability to separate it
from good. Every decision we make is motivated by conflicting drives. Every
act of kindness has some element of personal gain -- be it the ego massage of
getting to convince oneself they are "good people", or fame, or whatnot. And
similarly lehefech.

Tir'u beTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
micha at aishdas.org        brought an offering. But to bring an offering,
http://www.aishdas.org   you must know where to slaughter and what
Fax: (270) 514-1507      parts to offer.        - R' Simcha Zissel Ziv