A Classical Jewish Approach to “The Normative Question”

Abstract

One of the fundamental questions in analytic meta-ethics is what Christine Korsgaard calls “the normative question.” It is a question that typically arises when a moral agent is confronted with a difficult moral obligation, and as a result, asks himself, “Must I really do this? Why must I do it?” In mainstream analytic philosophy, the responses to this question invariably take the form of a philosophical argument that starts from (allegedly) universally compelling premises, and draws from them the conclusion that, therefore, we really must do what morality requires of us—that morality is really binding for us. In this chapter, however, I explore a fundamentally different approach to the “normative question” based on (or inspired by) classical Judaism. First I formulate a parallel “normative question,” as it would arise in a Jewish context, and seek the appropriate classical Jewish response to it. Then, I offer a way of applying it to morality in general.