[Avodah] right/wrong

Micha Berger via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Sun Jun 7 04:06:46 PDT 2015


On Sun, Jun 07, 2015 at 07:46:04AM +0300, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
: comes back to the question of pluralism vs monistic vs tolerant monistic vs
: harmonism.

Or, as R Moshe Halberatal cateogired halachic legal theories: Retrival,
Accumulative, vs Constitutive.

But it only starts there. Here the question is whether
1- any of these positions imply that halakhah is man-made more than the
other positions would; and
2- does any of this conversation reflect on the absolute nature of right
and wrong on a moral plane?

Which also drags in the relationship between halakhah and morality.

Divine Command Theory (morality is that which Hashem commanded) may well
identify the two. But then, we were hard pressed to find an advocate
for DCT, (outside contemporary popularizations).

R/DR Y Leibowitz coms close, by saying we exist to follow halakhah,
and any attempt to map halakhah to some other value system was one step
toward AZ.

Someone else might say that halakhah approximates morality, but since
it's a blanket rule for all people in many situations, it's only an
approximate. That said, once the halakhah is set, preserving it and
the morality of the majority of cases has greater moral weight than one
loses in the exceptional cases.

But getting back to our question, while I consider the two related, I
do not think the evolving nature of halakhah reflects morality being
a human construction.

Rather, I think it's because of two effects:
1- dialectics between concflicting values can yeild different strategies
   for finding balance between them

One therefore finds that a machloqes is resolved by finding one strategy
more appropriate for the culture asking the question than another. And
if it is not resolved with finality, another culture may have the same
question (eg mixes of immigrants with different precdent) and choose a
different strategy.

As I put it last time: choosing different paths up the mountain doesn't
imply that the mountain's altitude is subjective.

But this assumes that the linkage between halakhah and morality is that
halakhah is a means to becoming moral.

2- changes in reality can cause two similar looking situations to have
   different moral outcomes.

I think the vast majority of seemingly reopened questions are really
of this sort. E.g. the categorization of today's dead mutes.

We didn't change our belief that demands cannot be made of someone who
cannot be taught them -- even if it means a consequent loss of priviliges
(if being able to be motzi another is a privilege). The realia of the
life of a cheiresh changed.

(Over Shabbos I read
<http://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/06/003-the-unmodern-jew>
which misses this point, creating a very bloated list of cases where
R' JD Bleich, and most contemporary posqim, allow halakhah to
"evolve".)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is our choices...that show what we truly are,
micha at aishdas.org        far more than our abilities.
http://www.aishdas.org                           - J. K. Rowling
Fax: (270) 514-1507



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