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Chapter Five Suspending the Ethical 1. The Rationalist's Dilemma From Plato to Cohen, the crux of the rationalist's understanding of God is that the relation between God and humans is never immediate. The possibility of the particular standing above the universal does not exist. All judgments about particulars presuppose universal criteria. In order to know whether the voice we hear is God's, we must first ask whether it is worthy of the respect owed a perfect being. But in order to do that, we must compare the content of the message we receive to our idea of perfection. Until such a comparison is made, the voice is nothing but an auditory representation which may originate with God as easily as with Moloch. According to Kant: If God should really speak to man, men could still never know that it was God speaking. It is quite impossible for man to apprehend the infinite by his senses, distinguish it from sensible beings, and recognize it as such. But in some cases man can be sure that the voice he hears is not God's; for if the voice commands him to do something contrary to the moral law, then no matter how majestic the apparition may be, and no matter how it may seem to surpass the whole of nature, he must consider it an illusion.1 To the rationalist, the only way to answer the question "God or Moloch ?" is to appeal to moral criteria. There is nothing in the auditory representation itself which can supply the answer. The appeal to criteria has at least one important consequence. If the voice commands something for which no rational justification can be found, we have no grounds for thinking the voice is God's. In other words, the rationalist assumes that God never acts in an arbitrary fashion. The only authentic commands are those for which reason can discern some purpose. Thus Kant rejects as superstitious 119 120 JEWISH PHILOSOPHY IN A SECULAR AGE any attempt to please God through acts of worship which circumvent the moral law.2 It is a corruption of true religion-what Kant terms "self-incurred perversity"-to think that God can be reached through expiations that imply no improvement in character. Although not as extreme as Kant, Maimonides advocates a similar position. At Guide 3.31 (cf. 3.26), he deems it a sickness to think that some commandments have nothing to recommend them but divine decree: There is a group of human beings who consider it a grievous thing that causes should be given for any law; what would please them most is that the intellect would not find a meaning for the commandments and prohibitions. What compels them to feel thus is a sickness that they find in their souls, a sickness to which they are unable to give utterance and of which they cannot furnish a satisfactory account. For they think that if those laws were useful in this existence and had been given to us for this or that reason, it would be as if they derived from the reflection and the understanding of some intelligent being. If, however, there is a thing for which the intellect could not find any meaning at all and that does not lead to something useful, it indubitably derives from God; for the reflection of man would not lead to such a thing. It is as if, according to these people of weak intellects, man were more perfect than his Maker; for man speaks and acts in a manner that leads to some intended end, whereas the deity does not act thus, but commands us to do things that are not useful to us and forbids us to do things that are not harmful to us. But He is far exalted above this; the contrary is the case-the whole purpose consisting in what is useful for us, as we have explained on the basis of its dictum: For our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is at this day. And it says: Which shall hear all these statutes [hukkiml and say: surely this great community is a wise and understanding people. Thus it states explicitly that even all the statutes [hukkiml will show to all the nations that they have been given with wisdom and understanding. Now if there is a thing for which no reason is known and that does not either procure something useful or ward off...

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