Broad and Specific meanings of Sôphrosunê or Zehiurs – Transcript

The Virtue of Zehirus: Understanding Moderation in Pleasure According to Rambam’s Shemonah Perakim

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study of Virtues in Shemonah Perakim

Instructor: Yeah, this is the shiur [lesson]. Yeah, it’s good. This is the shiur. Shiur is like this. We’re studying the first middah [character trait/virtue]. We’re studying the first middah of the Rambam [Maimonides] mentions here, which is in this book called Shemonah Perakim, Perek Dalet [Chapter Four], remember?

Student: What is it called?

Instructor: The first book in Shemonah Perakim.

Student: No.

Instructor: Perek Daled [Chapter Four].

Rambam has a list. His purpose here is not really to give a list, but he does have a list. His list is like here b’derech agav [incidentally/by the way], which as we’ve discussed, I think, in a previous shiur, maybe in the other ones in the Yiddish series. He’s trying to tell you that the good actions, and therefore good midos [character traits], good what he calls ma’alos [virtues/perfections] are—virtues, right? We call them virtues sometimes.

But anyways, yeah, he says that—what’s the problem?

Student: It’s outside, don’t worry.

Instructor: You should be worried, but it’s fine.

He said he gives us a list of virtues, okay? In this first example is something what’s translated here as the zehirus [caution/carefulness]. I don’t know which translation you people are using. I’m gonna buy you one better translation. There’s various translations, okay? In Arabic it says al-ifa or ifa, and in Rav [Rabbi] Shmuel Ibn Tibbon’s translation it says “zehirus.” And now nobody knows what the zehirus is. We have the sheet already about what the zehirus is, okay?

Student: None of you know?

Instructor: We did. Yeah, we did that. We told you that. And so now we’re going to talk about this more.

Chapter 2: The Linguistic Problem of Translating Virtues

Instructor: This is the—yeah, but do we remember how we got from one place to the other?

Student: Which place to which other?

Instructor: Okay, let’s try to understand something very basic, because I’m saying very basic, okay? We’re doing something like this. We’re studying a book about virtues, okay? In Hebrew, translated as midos tovos [good character traits], middos tovos, which is a kind of weird translation, also a good translation if you’re an Aristotelian. But it’s not of the essence of the virtues to be a measure, right?

Middos means measures. Of course, if you believe that all virtues are measures in the sense of being intermediate, then it makes sense to call them middos, right? But it don’t consist of being a virtue—it’s the correctness, the correct measure of a certain kind of feeling, right? Attraction or aversion basically is what we call a good measure. That’s what middah [measure] is.

So it really should be called something like tichunos tovos [good attributes], like good hexis [Greek: dispositions/states], like the Aristotelians would call them, good attributes of the soul. Their goodness consists in them being the correct middah, right?

That’s also almost—the Rambam calls this thing that they really are a de’os [opinions/dispositions], right? Remember this sheet? That’s why it’s called Hilchos De’os [Laws of Character Traits], not Hilchos Midos, because middos is just of something, and it’s of what? Of de’os. That’s why it says in this first perek [chapter] that you should have the de’os in the correct amount. That’s what makes them good, okay?

Chapter 3: Why We Must Study Individual Virtues

Instructor: But now we’re discussing something called like this, right? Now what we wanted to get to discuss is—and we’re going to begin a little bit for five minutes today because everyone’s tired—we’re going to begin to learn about these specific virtues and vices corresponding to them, obviously, right?

The Rambam here has a very interesting list of nine virtues, and he really—the list is here to show how each of them is an intermediate, how each of them is a middle between the too much and the too little, which are the bad, right? The bad versions of them, the vices that correspond to them.

But I think that, and as Aristotle said, this is the correct way of learning. Since—unlike what you people said—no, since in—since ethics is a practical science, practical science consists of particulars, right? It’s not about knowledge, it’s about doing. And we never do universals. The only thing that does universals is the intellect. Your intellect does universals. That’s what it does. It universalizes. It knows universals.

But your activity, your actions, or your feelings, or your habits, or your attractions are always towards some specific thing, right? Like a doctor doesn’t heal sickness, he heals a sick person. That’s the primary example of a practical science, practical art, really. And since ethics is a practical art, we understand it on the analogy of a doctor, as Rambam said, as we learned all the way back to Socrates, at least, that ethics is about healing of the soul, and probably even earlier than that.

So we understand this. So since ethics is a practical art, it’s not really as useful to talk about it in the abstract in the sense, okay, all good vice—all good virtues, all good measures of feeling and wanting, or appetite, how we call it, is our intermediates. Okay, that’s a very general form of all of them, but it doesn’t help us very much.

So therefore, we have to show this in the particular. We have to go through the list. And Aristotle says we’re going to go through the list. He doesn’t tell us where he got his list from. Did you talk here about a list yet? A little bit? If you may remember, you should tell me. And there are different lists. And we’ve got to show how each of these is an intermediate and understand each of them. So that would be the better way of understanding what a virtue is and also how to have specific virtues.

Let’s explain how to organize virtues, like hierarchically. We discussed that, and we discussed that Rambam doesn’t do that, or at least in this kind of virtues doesn’t do that. He doesn’t have a certain hierarchy of virtues, which is—okay, we’ll talk about this in a second. Okay, we’re not talking about the hierarchy now. We want to talk about individual ones.

Chapter 4: The Case of Zehirus – A Linguistic and Conceptual Puzzle

Instructor: And we want to talk about an individual one called—so now we have this list. Now, I want to talk a little bit from the perspective of an individual one to try to understand what it is and see what kind of problems we get into when we talk about an individual one, when we talk about a virtue or a middah, okay?

So let’s try to understand, and we’re going to explain this from the perspective of a sort of linguistic interpretive problem, right? This is the problem. What is the problem?

That if you read Rav [Rabbi] Shmuel Ibn Tibbon’s translation here, you see it says that there’s a middah called zehirus, a ma’alah [virtue/perfection]—that’s the Rambam’s way of calling them here—a ma’alah called zehirus, and it’s between too much ta’avah [desire/lust] and not feeling pleasure. That’s what it says. That’s literally what it says. And this is showing you how this thing called zehirus, which you probably have known about before, now it gives you a better clarity about its definition or what it is and how to do it, which is that it’s an intermediate middah, an intermediate virtue, or an intermediate attribute or perfection, which is in between these two things, both of which are bad, right? Okay.

Now what is the problem that I have here? The problem is that nobody knows what zehirus is. Does anyone know what it is?

Student: It’s a word that Rabbi Shmuel Ibn Tibbon gave us here, right? We don’t either know what the Arabic word means. In the Mishnah it seems to indicate caution. Does the Mishnah say anything about caution?

Instructor: So let’s—so let’s wait. So very good, very good. So the word—it is—it seems people think it means caution, okay, right? And obviously like you said, it says “hevei zahir b’mitzvah kalah” [be careful/cautious with a minor commandment]. Or what else does it say?

Student: Does it appear—how many times does it say that?

Instructor: Precisely once.

Student: Is that the story?

Instructor: So what is the bigger problem that we have here? You could check now. There is a different word from shining, although you can make drashos [homiletical interpretations] confusing these two things, but it’s different things, okay? All these things mean—first, all the things are verbs, right? Something means something like “be aware,” “be aware,” “be careful,” similar things, right? Or “cautious way,” “be cautious,” okay?

So this middah of cautiousness is between having too much ta’avah and too much pleasure, and too little pleasure, basically liking pleasure too much and liking it too little. That’s what it is.

Student: No, it doesn’t make sense, right?

Instructor: Why doesn’t it make sense?

Student: It’s not that it’s not the traditional kind of contextual definition, is it?

Instructor: And it would be between being too cautious and too little cautious. What’s it got to do with pleasure? How do we get into this concept of pleasure specifically? Why did we pick pleasure? Well, we’re talking about pleasure, obviously. Why is it the word to describe the attenuation of pleasure to what’s good for people? We’re not talking about being too much careful or a little careful. We’re talking specifically about indulgence.

The Problem of Translating Aristotelian Virtue Ethics into Hebrew: Abstract Nouns and the Biblical Lexicon

Chapter 5: Evaluating “Caution” as a Strategic Element in Virtue

Student: I think what he’s describing as a *hit* [virtue/trait] is *zehirut* [caution/carefulness] coming from caution in the sense that engaging in it too much or too little may have unintended consequences, or it may be something that can pull you in further than you intend, or you can overstep a boundary without…

Instructor: Yeah, I get that, but we could sort of say that for everything. Like, *zehirut* should be the intermediate of *kaas* [anger] also, because be careful not to get too much *kaas* or too little *kaas* or something.

Student: No, but is the way that you approach it idealized by caution? Or is the—like, *zehirut* to me also just seems to indicate not just a mean, but also a strategy.

Instructor: Okay, but how is that—I don’t know if that strategy is equally appropriate to *kaas*.

Student: It’s definitely appropriate to a bunch of other things.

Instructor: How many? I don’t know.

Student: Money. Not giving away too much or too little. You’ve got to be careful with your money. People would say that.

Instructor: Yeah, but it’s careful, the strategy. Do you achieve the attainment of that virtue by being cautious?

Student: Oh, we’re not giving… Just to be clear, we’re not giving… I don’t think strategy would be a good interpretation because none of these things are strategies.

Instructor: I know, I know.

Student: I’m saying it’s why he may have chosen *zehirut* is because it contains a certain strategic element to it.

Instructor: Okay, so maybe. Maybe, but I think that there’s always deeper problems here. Okay? Let’s try to give you the deepest problem that you’re worried about.

Chapter 6: The Fundamental Problem of Finding Precedent for Virtue-Language

4.1 Ibn Tibbon’s Project of Cultural Translation

Instructor: You’re worried about this. Okay, very good. You’re already worried about this, so I’m gonna try to make you not worried. What I mean to say is there’s obviously a bigger problem here. Okay? Now what’s the bigger problem? We’ve discussed this already, right? What translations are trying to do, at least explicitly, is doing a cultural translation besides for a literal translation, right? He wants to give us a word that means something in our lexicon.

Student: Yeah, and the lexicon exactly.

Instructor: And he thinks that *zehirut* is something that is in the lexicon but is and is sort of what this virtue means, right? That I—meaning, is there a precedent?

Student: Ah, okay. So there must be a precedent.

Instructor: But what is the problem? What is the issue that we have in finding such a precedent? The issue is more basic, right? And we’re going to have this issue by every other one, I think, also.

6.2 The Torah Speaks in Verbs, Not Abstract Nouns

Instructor: The issue is that there’s little precedent—at least I could qualify this—but the issue is that it’s hard to find the *mitzvah* [commandment] of having good *middot* [character traits] in the Torah, right? What’s the primary issue?

Student: It’s usually speaking in verbs.

Instructor: Because it’s usually speaking of verbs. The Bible doesn’t have nouns of things. It almost doesn’t have nouns. It definitely doesn’t have abstract nouns, right?

Student: Yeah.

Instructor: Abstract nouns is a rabbinic thing. It’s a philosophical thing. This is why I already gave you this—and why the *chachamim* [sages] are philosophers—because they turn everything into forms, everything into abstract nouns, right?

6.3 The Rambam’s Further Abstraction: From Verbal Participles to Pure Nouns

Instructor: I showed you last week in *Lama Tasmil Ochs* [why do you make your ox work]—that I’m doing that one step further then, right? In the Mishnah it says *Lama Tasmil Ochs ha-choresh, ha-zorea* [why do you make your ox work—the plowing one, the sowing one], and so on. And the Rambam says *ha-charisha, ha-zeri’a* [the plowing, the sowing]. But it’s fine. Sorry, this week. Maybe I learned it last week. That’s the kind of thing that the Mishnah does all the time, right? It takes things that say verb form and turns them into noun form—the noun of the verb, right?

Now this concept actually doesn’t do that over here. The Mishnah is still very, very, very verbal—very much a lot of verbs. But this still does a lot of this, right?

6.4 The Conceptual Shift: From Action to Possession of Traits

Instructor: Now you realize that what we’re doing here—this whole concept of what that means to have a *middah* as opposed to doing something—is finding the noun form of that verb. Because what it means to have a *middah* is to belong to your nature, to have a nature, to have a kind of form or kind of attribute, an accident of a form, something that exists in you, which is what we’re really about—what causes the actions.

So if you read the Torah, you probably won’t find even one—not only in the Torah, even in the… I was wondering about this. It’s a good question. There might be. We have to find them. This is a question.

6.5 Searching for Virtue-Language in Biblical Wisdom Literature

Instructor: Maybe some of the Mishnah is—*Pirkei Avot* is wondering about this question. In like *Mishlei* [Proverbs] or *Kohelet* [Ecclesiastes] or other like moral wisdom literature in the Bible, can we find the concept of a virtue in them? You understand what I mean? The concept instead of saying you should be a good person and do many good things, saying you should have good *middot*, right? You should have something that you have instead of something that you do, right?

Student: Yeah, that would be one of the places to play around, but of course—

Instructor: No, the Torah actually says those type of *mitzvot* [commandments], we don’t count as *mitzvot*.

Student: Because he doesn’t understand them as something that you should have. He understands it as telling you you should do everything else.

6.6 The Case of *Kedoshim Tihyu* [You Shall Be Holy]

Instructor: No, because he thinks—for lack of a better word—universal, right?

Student: No, not exactly. He doesn’t say that. You might interpret it that way. He says it because it has a *hoda’ah* [instruction/indication] on the rest of the *mitzvot*. That’s the Rambam’s language, right? It’s a *mussar* [moral instruction], it’s rhetoric about everything else. Because the information content that it contains means do everything that it says. *Kedoshim tihyu* [you shall be holy]—Rambam brings a Midrash that says, *Kedoshim tihyu*, and there isn’t anything to do besides for doing everything else.

You might be right that this is something that—what you become afterwards—but that’s not precise to what Rambam says. It’s a *mitzvah* at least. It might be true also, but it’s not what he says over there.

Chapter 7: The Verb/Noun Gap in Biblical Language

7.1 The Absence of Commands to “Possess” Traits

Instructor: So this is the question: Is there any command or any *mitzvah*—even like I said, even in the wisdom literature, even in places where it’s explicitly giving more moralistic advice—is there any way where it talks about being a kind, becoming a kind of person, owning certain attributes, right? *Kinyanim* [acquisitions/possessions] we call them, right? *Malakāt* in Arabic—things that you own.

There might be. There might be. But of course we have a problem of language, right? We don’t know how to read the Hebrew. Original Hebrew is something that we don’t know, and therefore many people will go around saying, you know—you could hear such—I’m sorry, you can hear some other guy that noticed this and says, “Yeah, because the Jewish way of thinking, the Hebrew way of thinking, is to think in actions because we’re Heraclitians. We don’t believe in any fixed forms.”

But that’s probably nonsense. There isn’t a real reason to think that. All older or more primitive languages speak in verb form mostly, and the Bible, as a representative of an older register in the language, is going to have to speak that way. It doesn’t mean that they don’t have those concepts. It just means that that’s how they speak.

7.2 The Example of *Yirat Shamayim* [Fear of Heaven]

Instructor: It says half a million times—but never have much—but it doesn’t say you should have *yir’ah* [fear]. We speak this way very naturally. Someone has *yirat shamayim* [fear of heaven]. But it doesn’t never say you should have *yir’ah*. It says *leyira* [to fear]—it’s a verb, right? Not to have *yir’ah*. It says *leyira oto* [to fear Him] or God, which is also kind of verb—means I’m doing something. But the verse says you should have—you should have—you should have *yir’ah* or you should have *ahavah* [love]. We talk this very naturally. We talk this way. But it doesn’t say, and the *Chumash* [Five Books of Moses] doesn’t say, and the *Tanakh* [Hebrew Bible] doesn’t say.

7.3 The Bible Does Describe People as Virtuous

Student: I mean, it describes people as virtuous. There are—

Instructor: Okay, very good. Very good. So what? There is—very good. What is the difference? What the difference is—

Student: No, not just in like how you talk. The difference is talking about two different things.

Chapter 8: The Conceptual Distinction Between Action and Character

8.1 Possessing Traits vs. Performing Actions

Instructor: When we say you should have *yir’ah*, we don’t mean you as a person as a kind of thing that is able to have certain *middot*, right? Certain something about you which is what causes you to do things. It’s very distinct from the action. The action causes this and this causes the action, as we keep on discussing. But it’s something distinct, right?

If someone thought you could do good things without being a good person, it’ll slowly make you a good person. But meanwhile, you’re not, right? And you could be a good person without doing good things in a limited way, right?

Student: It’s not coming from your nature.

8.2 The Framework of Human Perfection as Possession

Instructor: Yeah, so there’s a different thing. When we have this idea of the perfect being a perfect human being, which means having all the perfection of human being—that has, of course—having that means…

The Absence of Abstract Virtue-Language in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew

Does the Torah Skip the “Main Step” of Virtue?

Student: So you’re saying that the Torah’s language actually skips the main step?

Instructor: No, it doesn’t skip the main step, the ma’aseh [action]. It skips sort of the result or the cause.

Student: The way you get there.

Instructor: It does have the way you get there. No, it doesn’t, just as, let’s say, l’yira [to fear]. L’yira means to be afraid, not to be someone that has yira [fear]. The opposite—what is that? What being afraid means, what these kind of feeling words in the Torah means, is a different problem. But it doesn’t have—it doesn’t ever say you should have yiras shamayim [fear of heaven]. It says you should be a yerei shamayim [one who fears heaven]. How do you become yerei shamayim? That’s another question. Maybe by doing mitzvos [commandments].

Student: Even the cases where it is, like anchayemis [?].

Instructor: Very good. So what we do have—it’s very rare—we do have things like there are adjectives, right? We do have things that are what kind of person you are. We do have that, like even I think even initially there’s things like ish tzedek [man of righteousness], right? Ish tzedek is a person who has tzedek [righteousness/justice], right? It’s not exactly a person who acts with justice. You become that kind of person, right? It becomes the adjective of the being, of the subject, of the substance, whatever it is.

Biblical Hebrew Describes Persons Through Virtues, Not Virtues as Possessions

To be a person—he is a tzaddik [righteous person], right? He is a chacham [wise person]. He is an eishet chayil [woman of valor], like you said. He is a tov lev [good-hearted person]. It’s not an adnan [?], it’s just a nam [?]. It describes the person through the virtue, not as the virtue belonging to the person.

Student: Exactly, exactly.

Instructor: It describes—it’s very much virtue ethics though. It’s very much about what kind of person you are. But it doesn’t have—what it doesn’t have is the detail, right? What it doesn’t have is speaking of a virtue, a specific virtue, at least that’s something that a person has. We don’t say yesh lo tzidkus [he has the virtue of righteousness]. We don’t say he has the virtue of tzedek or tzidkus. How we would say—we talk about some things like that, but it does say he is a tzaddik, as opposed to he does tzedek, right? A tzaddik is someone who does tzedek. At some point he becomes a tzaddik.

The Case of God’s Attributes

Student: The middos [character traits/attributes] of God are split a little bit in the sense that it’s—most of them, some of them are chanun [gracious], rachum [merciful]—

Instructor: Right, but I guess we don’t have a specific verb, a specific adjective that says virtue ethics as understood.

Student: No, because—yeah, because—because well, some things we don’t have words for that. Like how do we say what’s called—

Student: Nosei avon [one who bears iniquity]?

Instructor: No, that’s—what’s—how do you get—how do you add—okay, there’s not a good word for that. That’s what happens anyway. These kind of things like, yeah, but nosei avon is someone who does nosei avon or whatever that is, and so on. Yeah, might even be an adjective.

The Missing Abstract Noun Forms: The “-ness” Problem

But so that we don’t have that, but we don’t have the discussion of middos as a thing in itself. I don’t think there is in the—and when they’re not an adjective of the person, of the being that’s being described, it may be of God. I don’t think we have that in the biblical language in Tanakh [the Hebrew Bible]. Yeah, like you said ish milchamah [man of war], all of these kind of things. Like we have these verbs connected to a subject. Yeah, things like that, but we don’t have as an object of analysis in itself. We don’t have, like, milchamiut [warlikeness] or chasidus [piety], right? Any of the nisses? Any of the—

Student: Nis, like—do we? What am I thinking of?

Instructor: Yeah, it is, right? Angriness, yeah.

Student: Nis, exactly, nis. Yeah, yeah, I didn’t help what you were saying.

Instructor: Nisses, yeah exactly. There isn’t any nisses that I know of, very good. Or very few. Maybe there are. Whenever I say these things, then I find that I was—I think I’m an artist and I just don’t know the touch of a certain word. But it’s actually interesting that the nis is very similar to is. In other words, in Hebrew it would be chasidis [?].

Student: Yeah, there’s a problem because again, again this could be language. Like in Hebrew there’s very few is. The word is doesn’t exist in Hebrew, right?

[Digression: The Word “Is” in English vs. Hebrew]

Instructor: She, like “it is,” what? That is. But just is—in English we like to put in the word is and everything. Being or is, words like that. Hu [he] means he is. It’s different. But in Hebrew you just say—in English we say things like “he is at home” in English, right? What’s that is doing? He at home. If you talk to people that speak different languages, they always talk like this because English has this random is’s for no reason. “He is at home.” Yeah, he at home. In Hebrew you would say hu babayit [he in his house]—he in his house, at home. We don’t say he—hu nimtza babayit [he is found in the house]. We could say in modern Hebrew you could add nimtza into every sentence. Hu nimtza babayit—he is at home. It’s a little too long for no reason. But in ancient Hebrew and even the Mishnah, there isn’t this random is. So that’s like an exaggeration of how much isness there is.

Student: Yeah, you need to know the definition of is.

Instructor: Yeah. But no, that is totally extra. It doesn’t really do anything. But in any case, there’s this thing. But I think that there is an objective analysis. There is a level of understanding here that you don’t get from simply reading the—I mean, it’s helpful for abstract language because it gives you identification.

Student: Right, right. It makes everything into an abstract sentence.

Instructor: Not everything is really like that. Like me being at home, I’m not being at home. I am at home. Why do I have to have the being here? What is it doing? But maybe English is such a philosophical language that it gets the level of being everywhere. I don’t know.

[End of Digression]

The Core Claim: *Middos* as Abstract Objects Are Absent from Tanakh

In any case, in the ancient languages that we read there isn’t—so what I’m trying to get at is maybe this is a specific case of that. There also isn’t middos. We don’t have middas hakaas [the trait of anger]. We have kaas [anger] and maybe even that—I don’t know if there’s in the Torah—but there are things like that. They’re about attributes, they’re about actions, but there isn’t really like the word middas—whatever work this word middas hakaas is doing, which is something that you could have. “He has a middas hakaas.” We don’t have that language almost ever in the Tanakh that I know of, not in this explicit way. Again, doesn’t mean they didn’t know. Maybe—maybe the language—we could discuss. I’m not convinced that the language proves this. I’m just telling you a level of language, a level of language which is hard to find, which is why you’re going to be hard pressed to find the middos of being a ba’al ta’avah [person of desire/appetite], right? Or something like that in the Bible.

The Rabbis as Philosophers—But Still a Question

Now, in the lashon hachachamim [the language of the Sages], as I said, the rabbis are definitely philosophers. They definitely like finding things like that. But there’s still a question if they have something like what we call virtues or middos. There’s a question. I think the answer has to be yes, but most people don’t know how to read it. But there is a question here. Do the rabbis have nisses?

Greek Virtue Lists vs. Jewish Sources: The Problem of Temperance

If I’m looking for this word for temperance, which is what I’m looking for—sophrosyne [σωφροσύνη] in Greek. The Greeks, at least from some point, at least from the times of Plato, maybe before—there’s similar questions in Greek—have lists of virtues, like the four cardinal virtues that Plato taught us in the Republic, which are these four middos, the four main middos: courage, temperance, wisdom and justice. These are like four good things that people have to have, right? And also of course should be—a just person is called just and so on. Temperate person is called temperate. Someone who has temperance is called temperate. But also we talk about them as objects of analysis in themselves, like “What is temperance?” which has this question besides for just asking “What is a temperate person?” Of course they’re the same question, but we talk about this as something that the person has.

This kind of language—it’s not clear to me where you would find it. There’s a question. You could maybe tell me the answer, but there’s a question of how and where we would find it.

The Problem Applied to *Pirkei Avos*

Student: This kind of analysis of abstraction is done with actions though in a certain way, like Stukke Keitzad [How is it done?] kind of thing, like where we try to find that least ideal action.

Instructor: Yeah, but for example, whatever the question is that leads us to the answer of a good middah is an intermediate—where would we find it? We can find the trail of understanding. If we understand, let’s say, Stukke Keitzad is the most ideal, then we can understand the generosity.

Student: Yeah, but they’re not asking that question.

Instructor: You can understand a lot of things. I’m not saying that they’re not here about being a good person. Nobody ever said that. No, I’m saying is that we are not going to—if you’re trying to make a list, like example for doing something like this, right? If you’re trying to make a list of what are the virtues, right? For example, MacIntyre [Alasdair MacIntyre, contemporary philosopher] thinks that every culture has a different list of virtues that they care about. We sometimes work with that concept, right? Now tell me the list of virtues that the Jews, that the Pirkei Avos [Ethics of the Fathers] cares about.

Student: But every Mishnah is another one of them.

Instructor: But do they have the word middah tovah [good character trait] or ma’alah [virtue/excellence] to work with? They obviously don’t, because you see that the Rambam [Maimonides] has derived a hakdamah [introduction] to give us these concepts, because you don’t immediately get them from the Mishnah. That doesn’t mean that the Mishnah doesn’t have them, it just means that you don’t immediately get them from the Mishnah. That’s why we’re reading this hakdamah to Pirkei Avos with Rambam, because you’re not going to understand Mishnah unless you have these abstract concepts in your head to put the Mishnah into, right?

Concrete Example: *Zehirus* (Carefulness/Vigilance)

So this is a problem. So this is really the real reason when I say, when I start talking about zehirus [carefulness/vigilance], for example, and you say, well, I find something called zahir [careful], to be zahir. Zahir is a verb. You don’t find much zehirus in the Mishnah as a thing to be, right? As a thing that you could have or be. Even an adam zahir [a careful person] would be a title for that person, the adjective for the kind of person who has this. I don’t even know how much we have of that.

Virtue Language in Torah and Chazal: Zehirus and Yirat Chet

The Presence of Virtue Lists in Torah and Rabbinic Literature

Virtue Lists in the Torah

Instructor: So I do think, so two things. I do think that there are, in the Chachamim [the Sages] we definitely do find titles like this, right? And even more of them. Like I said in the Torah you might find five, it could be a Tzaddik [righteous person], a Chocham [wise person], or I don’t know, Toiv Leiv [good-hearted], or Am Shechayim [I don’t know], maybe five things like that. Like we have Am Shechayim, Yireh Elohim [God-fearing], Am… Okay, that’s a nice list of virtues, right? Virtues for a judge, of course, or something like that, or a leader. That’s a nice list of virtues. Not a very long list, but it’s a list.

Expansion in Rabbinic Literature

In the Chachamim, we’re going to find even more virtues. But the Chachamim, they’re not systematic about this, of course. Maybe they shouldn’t be. And we’re going to have a very hard time of connecting those virtues, connecting those kinds of people that they describe to the words that we have. People like the Rambam [Maimonides] who inherit lists of virtues from their Muslim philosophers or inherit them from the Greeks and try to connect them to different things. You’re going to have a hard time identifying them, right?

But we are going to find certain things. So what we’re going to be trying to do is try to find certain things, certain kinds of people or certain virtues or habits or things that people have that the Chachamim talk about that are distinct from the Pasuk [verse], right? The Pasuk doesn’t explicitly talk about things like that or at least not in those words, or maybe even the Pasuk will talk about them in a verb way, and then the Chachamim would give them a noun, and try to connect it to this.

So I can give you now a few pieces of information, okay? And it’s almost 11 o’clock, so I’m not going to go too long about this. Two pieces of information I want to give you about this. Firstly, two pieces of information from the side of the Chachamim, okay?

First Piece of Evidence: The Beraisa of Pinchas ben Yair and Zehirus

Introducing the Concept of Zehirus

Instructor: Okay, so use this word zehirus [carefulness/watchfulness]. Now the word zehirus I think is comes from you know the people over it, comes from, right? No, zehirus.

Student: [inaudible response]

Instructor: Okay, talking about a middah [character trait] of zehirus because we have to remember that hafizor is not going to help us, it’s going to help us in a minute but meanwhile we have to find a word what?

Student: [inaudible response]

Instructor: No, there is a very famous [beraisa] that’s quoted in a few, maybe more than once, in the Talmud Bavli [Babylonian Talmud], and it says, [zehirus mevi’ah lidei zerizus] and so on, right?

The Ladder of Virtues

Now that Mishnah [teaching] is very explicitly, we did a sheet about this, I don’t remember if there was a sheet in Yiddish about this, that this Mishnah is very explicitly a ladder of virtues, right? There’s a whole, I’m making this, but there’s Mishnah as some kind of ladder of virtues, and it’s also very explicitly, maybe the most explicitly, Rambam quoted this in the beginning of Rambam Perush HaMishnayos [Rambam’s Commentary on the Mishnah] to prove his way of thinking this is one of the really important Mishnahs that shows you that at least [the Sages] did think of human progress in terms of becoming a better and better kind of person ultimately the perfect kind of person which is a… remember what the perfect kind of person is called right?

Student: [inaudible response]

Instructor: No, what’s the best kind of person? Because it’s only the second, the best kind of person, the best kind of person is called a Navi [prophet], exactly, who has Ruach HaKodesh [divine inspiration/holy spirit]. Maybe you could have said that. That’s the best kind of person, right?

Natural Causality in Spiritual Growth

So it depends whether you’re held [hold] like me and the Rambam, that the Baal Ruach HaKodesh [possessor of divine inspiration] is just the best kind of person. Nothing to do with God, not nothing to do, but not some magic thing that God pops into your head. You can see this maybe in the Ruach HaKodesh. That’s what he said. Mevi l’dei [leads to] means there’s a natural causality here going on, right? A causality of growing, some kind of growing, which we could discuss in a different time exactly how to describe it. Some kind of being this kind of person allows you to become or maybe makes you become at the next stage the even better kind of person. Right?

The Language of Middos

And it means that you very explicitly doesn’t say Adam Zahir, Naseh, Adam Zahir [a careful person becomes a careful person] and so on, which would be the regular, the standard way of people to talk in the Chachamim he explicitly talks about Middos [character traits] right? He explicitly talks about attributes that this person would have he gives this level of analysis exactly he talks about Zehirus [carefulness], bringing to Zerizus [alacrity] bringing to Anuvah [humility] and Yirushas [inheritance/fear] and all kinds of words like that, right? And Chachamim obviously have a lot of words like that: Anuvah, Yirushas, Chassidus [piety], Tahara [purity], Kedusha [holiness], all these kinds of words specifically talking about the Middos right?

So that’s number one now that means by your what did he mean when he said the hero says a very important question right okay this is one piece of information okay.

Second Piece of Evidence: The Novel Concept of Yirat Chet

Background: Yirat Elokim in the Torah

Instructor: Second piece of information is a new word called… very interesting there’s a word called… and the Chachamim new word that doesn’t say in the Torah okay what’s the new word? The Torah says you should be a yirei [God-fearing person] to Him okay you should be fear God very nice it has already in Bereishis [Genesis] in Sefer Bereishis [the Book of Genesis] it’s about Avimelech [Abimelech] right even in Goyim [non-Jews] it has to be a yirei right? Avram [Abraham] told Avimelech that there’s no Yirah [fear] in this place and therefore they’re going to kill him and take away his wife so Yirah is kind of a kind of person almost already in that question whatever exactly it means okay but it’s not a yirei…

Student: [inaudible response]

Instructor: No no exactly it’s Yirah the opposite. Avram when he talks about this this middah called Yiras Elokim [fear of God]. He definitely does give you a noun. There is not Yiras Shamayim [fear of Heaven], Yiras Elokim in this place. He doesn’t say that, well, of course, he’s talking about the people not being Yiras Elokim, but he does talk about it in this, exactly in this language, right?

The New Rabbinic Term: Yirat Chet

In the Chachamim, there’s a new word called, a new word called, a new thing, Yiras Chet [fear of sin]. Did you ever hear of it?

Student: [inaudible response]

Instructor: You think that means being afraid of [sins]? They’re not scary how would you be afraid of them but there’s such a new word being a… I don’t know but maybe it seems to be right I’m not sure I don’t really like this word I don’t really like this word caution but I’ll see about it caution, reservation or at least okay, awareness…

Student: Awareness.

Instructor: Awareness is a better word beware sounds better anyways for now wait, I didn’t say I don’t know, he said I don’t know, there’s such a kind of… a kind of person called a yirei chet [one who fears sin] okay, not manien [I don’t know] what would it mean what would it mean to be a yirei chet anyways?

Student: He’s wary.

Analyzing Yirat Chet as a Middah

Instructor: Like, one thing that it means is that there’s such a kind of person, right? This is what I’m trying to get at. There’s a… beside, it doesn’t say in the Torah, let’s say it like this. You have to be Yiras Elokim, everyone understands you’ve got to be afraid of God. Maybe it means in action, maybe it means also just to be afraid and feeling or something like that. You understand the point of that, right? But Yiras Chet, like, where would he get this idea from? Why would anyone be a yirei chet? Like, you know very nice you know how to do them I get that shouldn’t be doing that but why would I be afraid of them what’s the point of that there’s no… here escalate where’s the key to be right?

Student: Yeah I think it describes a certain understanding of how the nature of certain physical activities that what it describes…

Instructor: I think what it describes is precisely something that we call a middah as distinct from an action right? Saying you should not just be a person that doesn’t do chataim [sins] you should be the kind of person that doesn’t do chataim. Now how do we express that as we keep on explaining a middah just means a love or a hate. Yirei chet means you hate chet right? You have an aversion to it. The word fear I think is kind of a misnomer it doesn’t mean being afraid in the sense of like the chet is going to eat you it means like I said being aware of or being having an aversion from?

Student: Hating, okay?

Instructor: Yirei chet would be maybe a better… Yeah, that’s why I think Yirah [fear] describes a certain kind of… You may fire, right? Exactly. Caution, Yirah doesn’t always mean fear. It could mean caution or something like that.

Student: Yeah, but that’s also describing an approach.

Instructor: Yes, it’s describing an internal thing, not an external, not an action, but an internal state of the person, something that a person has or is. I don’t like the word weariness because we don’t want to explain you why but when you say weariness you talk about like a general… I’m going to get to this in a second no not yet right and like a general attitude of being like a guy with an attitude…

Student: Suspicious?

Distinguishing Yirat Chet from Mere Righteousness

Instructor: No no what I’m talking about is someone that doesn’t like to sin understand like that. Rambam’s exact definition of the difference between someone who has the ma’alas hamiddos [excellence of character traits] and someone who just does the correct things. Someone who doesn’t does the correct things he likes to sin he just doesn’t sin like the efshi [I desire] guy. The efshi was the classic… Yirei chet is precisely not an efshi be-chet [I desire to sin] guy, right? He’s afraid of chet, so he’s not an efshi be-chet, right? That’s the difference between yirei chet and lo chotei [one who doesn’t sin]. Lo chotei is just a tzaddik [righteous person]. Yirei chet is something different than a tzaddik, something that doesn’t like sinning, right? He’s against it by himself.

So here we have something, I think, very clearly.

The Virtue of Temperance in Jewish Sources: Identifying *Yere Chet*, *Zehirus*, and *Nefesh Shefalah*

Distinguishing *Yere Chet* from Fear of Heaven

Instructor: I mean, *Yere Selehi* [fear of sin], maybe it does. We could think about this, but *Pashtos* [the plain meaning] doesn’t mean that. Although, *Kim Leireh* [however you want to understand it], whatever, we have to talk about this. But *Yere Chet* [fear of sin] explicitly is talking about *Chet* [sin]. It’s saying he’s against *Chet*. It’s not saying, *Yire Shamayim* [fear of Heaven] is not against the *Shamayim* [Heaven]. It’s something slightly different than that, at least.

But all I’m getting from this *Yere Chet* word is that there’s something being against *Chet*. We’re getting into something called *Chet*. Now, I want to go further with this, but I want to give you another piece of information.

First Piece of Evidence: The Rambam’s Translation

Okay, that’s two pieces of information. Now, you’ll notice that the Holy Rambam [Maimonides], whenever it says—he translates it as the same word that we translate as—the Rambam translates for *Zehirus* [caution/awareness]. And in Perek Beis [Chapter Two], where the Rambam gave another version of the list of virtues, says—did I ever tell you this already? *Yire Chet* is the—Rambam, Rambam understood like me. We’re still missing a step, but the Rambam understood that *Yire Chet* is whatever the same thing called *Sophrosyne* [σωφροσύνη: the Greek virtue of temperance/self-control] in Greek, okay? Or *al-iffa* [العفة: the Arabic term for chastity/temperance] in Arabic. That’s how we translate it.

And this makes sense, like I just told you. At least it makes sense that *Yire Chet* is not being afraid of sinning because you’re afraid of God or something like that. It means having an aversion to sin, an eternal aversion to sin. Now, which sins? I think we’re missing that part. But at least we get this, okay?

So that’s two pieces of information we have. These two words—the *Yire* [fear/aversion] which probably means something similar—at least the Rav Shmuel ibn Tibbon [Samuel ibn Tibbon, the Hebrew translator of Maimonides’ works] and maybe people before that understood that it’s not the verb of “be *yere*” [be afraid]. It’s a kind of attribute of being something relative to something, being *yere* relative to some things. We’ll talk about in a minute what.

And same thing the word *Yire Chet*. There’s other words I think also we could make connected with this. And a third word is—I could give you a third word that Rambam gave.

Second Piece of Evidence: *Nefesh Shefalah* in Pirkei Avot

Another third piece of information: In *Perek Hei* [Chapter Five] in Mishnah [the Mishnaic tractate Pirkei Avot], it says there’s *talmidei Avraham Avinu* [students of Abraham our father] and *talmidei Bilam HaRasha* [students of Balaam the wicked]. What did the *talmidei Avraham Avinu* have? What *middah* [character trait], which *middah* did the *talmidei Avraham Avinu* have? They have a different kind of soul, right?

The *talmidei Bilam* have a *nefesh rechavah* [expansive/greedy soul]. *Amitil ni bolakum le b’es ha-kesav as well* [they inherit Gehinnom and descend to the pit of destruction]. The *talmidei Avraham Avinu* have a *nefesh shefalah* [lowly/limited soul]. What’s the difference between a *nefesh rechavah* and a *nefesh shefalah*?

The Rambam says that *nefesh shefalah* is *Zehirus* [caution/temperance]—another word for the same thing, okay? So we already have three words in the Mishnah for this virtue. And again, by the way, that Mishnah of *Nefesh Shefalah* is again a very explicit Mishnah talking about a kind of soul, right? It’s not saying “don’t do certain things.” It’s saying that they have the kind of soul that is more limited, right?

*Nefesh Shefalah* doesn’t mean “low”—more limited.

Student: No, I’m not worried. It sounds very much like worried and not worried. *Rechavah* is like—

Instructor: No, no, no, that’s not what it means. *Rechavah* means *baal ta’avah* [a person of excessive desire]. He wants a lot. He wants a lot. And the *talmidei Avraham*, we want less. They’re not worried. They’re more limited. They have a certain self-control, you could say, or self-limiting. They’re not—it’s not about being worried. The word “worry” is a very bad word that doesn’t come into this whole conversation. They’re self-limited. They’re restrained. They’re temperate. Those are good translations. But it’s a kind of soul that is smaller, right? And that’s the image that the Mishnah uses: *Nefesh Shefalah*.

I think I even had more words for the same thing, but I forgot right now. So that are three words at least.

Complication: The Rambam in Hilchos De’os

Now I have to tell you something very interesting, okay? Now there is another piece of information that we could have. The Rambam in the *Yad* [Mishneh Torah]—what did he call the *ta’avah* [desire]?

Student: Oh, so the Rambam—

Instructor: Oh, that’s what I meant. In *Sefer HaYad*, in *Mishneh Torah*, in the *Hilchos De’os* [Laws of Character Traits], in Perek Aleph [Chapter One], the Rambam has more words for this thing. *Ta’avah* [desire], *guf* [body], he calls—no, that’s the *beynonim* [intermediate], the intermediate. He calls—and this is another—he says something very good. He says—yes, no, sorry, I think that’s the translation, the version that I have. Yeah, but *Nefesh El Chovot* [Duties of the Heart] uses something else over here, so it’s a little more complicated, okay?

For money, what does he—he skips—he skips *Nefesh El Chovot* over here. The Rambam calls this *baal ta’avah* [master of desire], the *ketzoniyut* [extremity]. But the middle—what’s the middle one? It says that there is actually a middle, *beynonit* [intermediate], and it says *lo ye’sa’aveh ela l’dvarim she’ha’guf tzrichem* [he only desires things that the body needs].

Oh, there’s problems here. I’m not going to be able to get to that. He has the *middos* [character traits]. He has the *middos*, but he doesn’t talk about the middle *tovah* [good]. He only talks about the bad *middos*. You have to remember, in *Perek Aleph*, you don’t get names for the middle *beynonit* of anything. You only get names for the—

Student: Yeah, very good. But the good and the bad are the too much, the too much, that’s too much, *baal ta’avah*.

Instructor: Oh, he just calls it *baal ta’avah*?

Student: Yeah.

Instructor: He doesn’t call it—

Student: No, he calls it *baal ta’avah*.

Instructor: Yeah.

Student: He has *nefesh rechavah* over there also, but he interprets that as part of the money, not regarding the—

Instructor: *Mefazez* [squanderer].

Student: Not *mefazez*. Wanting too much money. *Mefazez*, not giving away enough money. Giving away too much money.

Instructor: So there’s some more regarding that third Mishnah that I told you in *Pirkei Avot*. There seems to be a different interpretation in *Hilchos De’os*, so we have to think of—

The Puzzle of *Zehirus* as a Word

My piece of information, my other piece of the puzzle that I wanted to give you is something like this: You have noticed that this *Zehirus* thing is somewhat weird. Why is it somewhat weird? Because it doesn’t seem to mean what I’m trying to get it to mean, right?

*Meshpubaya zahiris* [the word *zehirus*] means awareness. What does awareness got to do with—it’s very clear to anyone that reads this *perek* [chapter], this definition here, even the whole *perek*, that the *middah* of *Zehirus* is specifically about physical pleasures, okay? Basically food and sex. If you know of another physical pleasure, you can tell me and we’ll think about it. But that’s the one that they talk about most of the time.

And it doesn’t seem to be a good translation for any of these words, right? Some people translate *prishus* [separation/abstinence]—this is another word that in the *Chachamim* [Sages], *prishus*. By the way, I have a third word, *tzniut* [modesty]. I have a whole another long list of words that we have to think of here.

The Greek Background: *Sophrosyne* and Its Original Broad Meaning

So what I want to say is like this. I want to tell you a piece of information that the *Yevanim* [Greeks], they believed in this list of virtues that we discussed. Now one of their virtues is called, like I said, *sophrosyne*. *Sophrosyne* is translated in English, or from Latin, as temperance. That’s one of the translations that gets handed down to us. There’s other translations also.

Now, there’s a *machloket* [dispute]—maybe it’s not *machloket*, maybe it’s more like a development. There’s a *machloket*: What is this *middah*?

So it seems like, originally, this *middah*, *hanikra sophrosyne* [called *sophrosyne*], meant something very broad. Plato—Plato has a dialogue called the *Charmides*, and in this dialogue, it talks about some young man that claims to have this *middah*. And he goes through four or five different definitions of them, and basically none of them have anything to do with physical pleasures. They’re all about being a *mentch* [decent person], all kinds of very, very broad things.

Like he says having the correct modesty—that’s one word, one thing that he has. It’s about—he says about not running very quickly in the street, one of these funny definitions that he gives. And he says, “What do you mean? What’s wrong with going quickly? Why do you have to go slowly?” But some kind of *yishuv ha-da’at* [settledness of mind], *edelkeit* [nobility/refinement], right?

And there’s all these very—and then he says maybe it means minding your own business. So like nothing—and they put you to cover. Maybe it means being self-controlled in all ways. He goes through all these definitions for the word *sophrosyne*. That is one of the one shtick [piece] of Plato.

So it seems over there—and he says, like, everyone says that you’re the most *sophron* [possessing *sophrosyne*] because the Greeks, the *ba’al middah* [master of the trait], the *gans* [completely] of wealth. But you don’t know what it is, or can’t be. This is Socrates’ standard way with young people, like—

In any case, it seems like—and if you could look at earlier sources and so on—it seems like it originally meant something very broad, okay? Something in this area of like being self-controlled, of being—that we say *eidel* [refined/noble], of being this *eidel* is one of the words, by the way.

I gave a sheet here—no, there wasn’t enough sheet over here about this whole subject. But there was a sheet once about how there are certain virtues that only exist in English, like courtesy, that nobody knows how to say courtesy in Yiddish—

The Untranslatability of “Adel” and the Restriction of Sophrosyne: From Plato’s General Self-Control to Aristotle’s Specific Physical Temperance

The Problem of Translating “Adel”

Instructor: No, nobody knows. “Refined” only works for people that know what “adel” [Yiddish/Hebrew term for a refined character quality] is and they say “refined.” But go try to write it on Reddit: “I’m refined. He’s refined. Give information by shidduch [matchmaking]. He’s a refined guy.” What in the world does it mean? He likes fine art. He appreciates fancy cars, not just like the fat cars. I think “refined” is just people using it.

No, they don’t know that it means that. You can say “refined” and it makes sense in your head that that’s a translation of “adel.” No, “adel” is not “well-mannered.”

Student: No, maybe I just… not “refined,” this maybe?

Instructor: Yeah, that’s not the same thing.

Student: Okay, very good, exactly.

Instructor: So the word, maybe the correct translation is “refined,” but it doesn’t… you don’t understand what I’m talking about. You have to see one. He’s an “adel-er” guy. You know what it means. Okay, it’s one of the… I forgot my list of shidduchim [matchmaking qualities]. I read about, I’ve noticed about this recently. I said that there’s a list of ma’alos [positive qualities] that you have in your shidduchim, but this is also one of them: “adel.” This is interesting. Interesting middah [character trait] that we believe in, for both genders.

Return to Sophrosyne: Plato’s Three-Part Soul and the Cardinal Virtues

Instructor: Anyways, to get back to my point, sophrosyne [σωφροσύνη: Greek term for temperance/self-control] in Greek originally means something very general. And then Plato in his very famous *Republic* says, even after he does his very famous division of the virtues by the four parts of the soul, three parts of the soul—remember? Remember the three parts of the soul called the appetitive part, the ta’avah [תאוה: desire], hamilkecha ta’avah [the desiring part], and thumos [θυμός: Greek term for spirited part], anger or inspiration, spirit, and intellect.

And then, of course, intellect has the virtue of wisdom. Spirit has the virtue of courage. And then many people say—I’m not sure, like I think there’s two ways of reading this really—but people, you often say, or maybe later people for sure say, that appetite has the virtue of temperance.

But later [Plato] explicitly says—and that temperance is not really, if not properly, a virtue of… after… after doesn’t have virtues. I still might be disagreeing with this.

Student: No, it’s the virtue of… it’s a political virtue.

Instructor: Temperance means that the appetite of part has the correct relation, is submissive to the spirited part and to the intellect.

Student: Isn’t that what all the virtues are?

Instructor: No, not all of them. This one… wisdom is just wisdom.

Student: No, wisdom isn’t, but are not…

Instructor: No, a spirit is having courage. There’s nothing to do. Courage is having courage. This is the only one that’s like this. Justice is having everything in proportion, which is different.

Student: I think that it means regulation by the intellect.

Instructor: No, the only thing that means regulation by the intellect is sophrosyne, according to the *Republic*, precisely. And all of its descendant virtues.

Student: All of this?

Instructor: I mean, all the virtues that would follow from…

Student: Not everything, nothing follows from this.

Instructor: This is a virtue. This is like one of the big virtues, and this is what it is.

Sophrosyne as Relational Rather Than Intrinsic

Instructor: So it’s still very general in the sense of not… it doesn’t… it doesn’t really belong to the appetite part. It doesn’t belong to your will—not your will, sorry—to your appetite, to your desire. It belongs… it’s that desire listens to the mind or to the spirit even. That’s what it is. So it’s a very general thing.

It’s something like we call interesting: the kovesh yitzro [כובש יצרו: subduing one’s inclination] has an image of courage, an image of war. We have this idea of… this has to do with… we discussed this already. It has to do with Plato’s idea that the way to fight with your appetite is by fighting, by having courage, by having spirit.

The Aristotelian Alternative: Training Desire Rather Than Controlling It

Instructor: Aristotle doesn’t really have this idea. Aristotle thinks you could train… see, Aristotle thinks for something different, exactly. Aristotle doesn’t believe in Plato’s… the *Republic* at least is always stuck in the… Plato himself has other accounts, but the *Republic* account is the milchemes hayetzer [מלחמת היצר: war against the inclination] account, right? You have, your appetite wants one thing, and you’re going to sort of subdue it, or by the spirit guided by the intellect.

Student: Yeah, yeah, that’s what it’s meant for. It’s meant for absolving that. That’s why he has three souls, explicitly.

Instructor: Aristotle doesn’t believe in that, and Aristotle thinks that you could train the appetite itself. You could train the non-rational parts. Remember Aristotle said, “I don’t really believe in the three-part soul. I believe in a two-part soul, which is like the rational part and the irrational part. But there’s two kinds of irrational parts. One is totally irrational, like the nutritive part. And the other one is semi-rational because it can be taught. It can be habituated.” And that’s what middos [character traits] are about.

Student: So what you’re habituating is semi-rational?

Instructor: Yes, because it can be taught. You’re never habituating down to the appetite of love.

Student: No, no, no, there’s no point. Of course not. Not the appetite.

Instructor: No, no, no. It’s never a virtue of the appetite. No, what Aristotle calls appetite and Plato calls appetite is not the nutritive part. Nobody is talking about that.

Student: Right, right, right. It’s the will, the desire.

Instructor: Not will, desire.

Sophrosyne Remains General in Plato But Gets Restricted in Aristotle

Instructor: So according to the high-legged Plato, then still, because of his view of how the things work—like we’ll explain this in a second now—but still this sophrosyne, zehirus [זהירות: carefulness/temperance], is what people think zehirus is: some kind of self-control, being in control or limiting yourself or things like that.

Student: It’s not like aversion?

Instructor: No, not aversion. That’s what I’m saying. It’s not aversion. It’s because there isn’t a training of the appetite. There is controlling your appetite by your mind or by your shame, even by your sense of shame, by all kinds of different… there’s a lot of ways of controlling your appetite: by shame, by courage, by other things. But it’s having it under control, having it… how do we call it? Regulated. Or I have a better word that I forgot. That’s what it is.

That’s what would be something like the Yiddish in the broader sense that people think. The Banu Arstal [Aristotle], who the Rambam [Maimonides] follows, doesn’t hold like this. The Banu Arstal thinks that, like we just said, that you can train your… you can train… you could be a yirei chet [יראי חטא: one who fears sin]. You could actually hate bad things and not like things that are not really good for you and so on, right? And that’s what, or that’s what moral training, ethical training is about.

Plato also believes this, but let’s not get into the story.

Aristotle’s Restriction of Sophrosyne to Physical Pleasures

Instructor: And that, therefore, he also does something, and because of this and for other reasons that we already discussed a little bit, his virtues are a lot more finely split up than Plato’s. Aristotle has a list of 9, 10, 11, 12—nobody knows how to count—virtues, and that doesn’t believe in the four cardinal virtues, because those four cardinal virtues are based on this model of the three-part, three plus four, or however you want to divide the soul.

Aristotle thinks we should not divide virtues by the soul. We should divide virtues by their object of desire, since all virtues are about desire or about social relations. So the virtues for Aristotle consist in that relation or in that desire, in the power of the soul or in the way in which you desire that. But it’s always going to be divided by the object of it, not by the part of the soul.

And therefore Aristotle says that that, what we call sophrosyne, should be restricted greatly. And it doesn’t mean just being self-controlled. He has a virtue… he doesn’t even entirely have a virtue of self-control, because remember, self-control is when you don’t have a virtue, right? When you’re enkratic [ἐγκρατής: self-controlled], not akratic [ἀκρατής: lacking self-control], but enkratic, kratos [κράτος: control], in control.

And Aristotle thinks being in control is only on the way to virtues. When you have virtues, you’re not in control. You’re fully controlled, you could say something like that, but it’s not what it consists of. It consists of the training of this.

Sophrosyne Specifically About Physical Pleasure

Instructor: Yeah, so he says that at… um… zehirus, sophrosyne, is explicitly about having… liking the right things, and specifically not only liking the right things in the… in the area of physical pleasure. That’s all it’s about. That’s his restriction: great restriction of… of sophrosyne to a very specific part of moral life, very specific part of life.

And to understand exactly how he… how he decides it, we have to talk about separately. But in any case, the Rambam is following this interpretation of the word.

The Rambam’s Reading: Zehirus as Yirat Chet

Instructor: That’s why for the Rambam, zehirus means precisely zehirus relative. That’s why he reads it as yirat chet [יראת חטא: fear of sin].

Now, you understand that when he says chet [חטא: sin], it doesn’t mean sin in the sense of like, “sleep with your wife, but not when she’s in niddah [נדה: menstrual separation], because that’s just chet.” What he means is the attraction to chet, right? Like, and this is true for Chazal [חז״ל: the Sages].

When Chazal talks about lit’om ta’am chet [לטעום טעם חטא: to taste the taste of sin], they mean the pleasure of it. They don’t mean the sinning of it, like being over and against the law of it. Chet doesn’t mean going against the law. In this context, in the context of yirat chet, it usually means someone who is self-controlled. He controls his yetzer [יצר: inclination], controls his desire for physical pleasures, mostly for sexual pleasures in Chazal. Chet, in general, in Chazal, means sexual sins.

So, and this is why the Rambam… this is the Rambam’s restricted reading of zehirus, zehirus chet.

Contrast with the Ramchal’s Platonist Reading

Instructor: And unlike, like, for example, Ramchal [Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto] is a Platonist in this sense, and for him, zehirus means just generally being aware and self-controlled. But for the Rambam, that’s not what it means, because the Rambam follows Aristotle.

And the word, the same halacha [הלכה: Jewish law/ruling] that happens for sophrosyne, for the Greek word, which is zehirus, happens for the Jewish term zehirus, which is more or less a translation of that.

Related Terms to Be Explored

Instructor: I have more words like tznius [צניעות: modesty], boshes panim [בושת פנים: shame-facedness], that all seem to mean similar things but pick up different aspects of this virtue. And you’ll have to see them in the Rambam also. I’ll talk about that at a different time.

And everyone should have a good night and shine.