[Avodah] Subjectivity-from the OU

[Zev Sero]

On 6/1/23 08:52, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Any overarching insights into when we look at the individual (as here) 
> and when we say batla daato (we ignore his individual circumstances) and 
> go by your average Yossi?

This doesn't seem difficult to me.   Had the Torah said "Don't do 
disgusting things", then we could and probably would say that the issur 
is on things that are objectively disgusting, and it's irrelevant 
whether they disgust you. (And since "objectively disgusting" is a 
contradiction in terms, we would resolve it as things that disgust most 
people in your culture, and then we would discuss how one determines 
that, and what do we mean by "your culture", and we'd get lost in the 
woods and never come out, just as in many other halachos.)

But the Torah doesn't say that.  It says "don't disgust *yourselves*. 
Thus it seems to me that the Torah explicitly says that your own 
subjective sensibility is the standard.  If it disgusts you, don't force 
yourself to do it, e.g. on a dare, or because you're hungry and there's 
nothing else, or because everyone else is doing it and you don't want to 
stand out.  But if it doesn't disgust you, then the fact that it 
disgusts everyone else around you is irrelevant.  Thus we find the 
gemara saying that "nefesh hayafa", which counterintuitively seems to 
the *in*sensitive soul, may do things that a person of normal 
sensitivity may not.


-- 
Zev Sero            “Were we directed from Washington when to sow
zev at sero.name       and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
		    –Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821.