The Betrayal of Intellect



Once upon a time, I believed in the Rule of Law. That in a democracy, it was a stable fidelity to law that reigned supreme, while partisan politics simply sold newspapers. Maybe it was more of a hope than a belief. Whatever it was, it lulled me into a sense of security and confidence, that the system we had engineered was reliable and safe.

The Kavanaugh saga has dashed this hope. A fascinating question emerged – an essentially intellectual question – as to how allegations of misconduct and the nebulous notion of public confidence should impact on the election of a senior judge. The answer, evidenced in a Senate vote which divided along party lines, was “it depends on your pre-existing political views.”

When it comes to values in general society, the Torah charges the Jewish people to influence humanity towards observance of the Noahide laws. A most interesting caveat on their observance is made by Maimonides in his magnum opus where he writes that the observance of these essentially rational laws must be rooted in the fact that “the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed [the Jewish nation] through Moses, our teacher, that Noah's descendants had been commanded to fulfil them previously.” He continues, “However, if fulfilled out of intellectual conviction… neither are they of the pious among the gentiles, nor of their wise men.”*

Intellect is a servant – it either serves the lowest base-line, defending ones emotional predisposition and resulting in confirmation bias, or it serves the highest, a transcendent ethic which comes from beyond the human faculties, such as the authority of Revelation at Sinai. The Jew is challenged to model an intellect which serves an eternal spiritual ethic, and thus influence general society to use intellect as a servant of spirituality, rather than a slave of self. For, even when the correct conclusions are arrived at, but their driver is an emotional one, the process is neither pious nor wise.

What does your intellect serve?

Based on Lekkutei Sichot vol 15 pp 58-62

* Maimonides, Laws of Kings 8:11 - there are variants in the text (some of them say "rather of their wise men" instead of "nor of their wise men"). The variant selected is the dominant one.

Comments

  1. Rabbi Zalman Kastel AMOctober 7, 2018 at 2:13 PM

    Yasher koach. I agree with you concern about the way political affiliation is so dominant in our consideration of justice.

    ReplyDelete

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