Sins of the eyes or of the sense of touch using eyes – Transcript

Temperance and the Limits of Intellectual Knowledge: Precision in Virtue Ethics and the Critique of Emotional Arousal Methods

Chapter 1: Continuing the Investigation of Temperance – The Need for Precise Definition

Instructor: Okay, yeah, so this is a class continuing the question of enjoying life, *Chazashon* [enjoying life], because life is a much greater thing than this. But about the specific kind of pleasures having to do with bodily pleasures, which the virtue called temperance deals with, according to Rabbi Aristotle. According to other rabbis, temperance is a broader thing, as we have discussed in earlier classes, did we?

Student: Yeah.

The Methodological Imperative: Precise Cuts Within the Subject Matter

Instructor: So what we have to get at is just this clarity of very specifically which exact kind of pleasure this temperance is about, because that’s the whole methodology here – doing these very precise cuts within the area, within the matter of what we’re talking about. So know exactly what kind of thing temperance is concerned with, and then what kind of thing temperance is, and therefore will understand correctly – since we already know that all virtues are a median, a middle term, we call it a middle or a correct path between, or there are always the too much and the too little, the excess and the shortfall.

So if we will understand what this is about and what it is, we’ll be able to define exactly what the excess in it is and what the shortfall in it is and what the correct one, the correct middle path in it is.

And as I think I’ve explained, this kind of precision helps us, I think, do the kind of work – maybe I’ll think about this – helps us do the kind of work that relates to this specific thing. So remember, you get what I’m saying?

Chapter 2: The Limited But Real Value of Philosophical Knowledge

Knowledge Goes Only So Far

Instructor: Remember that the big deal here is that knowledge, wisdom, understanding, philosophy – all they go so far. That’s the big deal. It does help in some sense, because otherwise we wouldn’t be reading this book. We would just be doing nothing. It would just be doing things, not learning anything. So it does help in some sense, maybe in more senses than Aristotle will admit in this sense, but it does help in the sense of human beings being rational beings and even the irrational parts of us somehow being given to reason – you could talk to it, you could teach it, even if it can’t understand on its own.

And therefore, knowing exactly what to talk about is very helpful. But even more than that, knowing exactly what to talk about will also tell you exactly what to do.

The Paradox of Virtue: Practice Before Perfection

Instructor: And you’ll remember that the point, the way in which people achieve good habits or achieve virtues is not by being born with something, not by having some general tendency towards being good or following rules or things like that, right? All of those things are ways, but they’re not what virtue that we’re talking about is. But people, human beings, achieve virtue by practicing the actions that would have resulted from those virtues, right? That’s the paradox from Book 2 [Aristotle’s *Nicomachean Ethics*, Book II] or from the Rambam [Maimonides] beginning of Chapter 4 here, in the previous series of classes or one of the previous series of classes that was focused on that.

Why Precision Matters for Action

Instructor: But what this means is that you have to know exactly which action pertains to this. You understand what I’m saying? Because the world of action is divided by areas. The world of action is not the world of will. If someone says virtue consists of you having the right wills or the right attitude or the right meaning, like meaning well – how do you say? He means well. Attitudes? Intentions?

Then that’s a very general thing, or even if you could talk about temperance even in the very general sense of something like one person would say temperance is about loving the soul or the mind and not the body at all, or it’s about keeping control over the body’s urges or the body’s thoughts of what is good, things like that – those would be very general things which in some sense pertain to the whole soul, to the whole person as he is, right? Then we wouldn’t really need this kind of detail.

But if we talk about temperance in a more practical sense, and since we believe that ethics is achieved in practice and not in theory and not even in a general…

Chapter 3: The Ramchal’s Mussar Program and Its Limitations

The Problem: Knowledge Doesn’t Lead to Action

Instructor: Like what the Apostle Salam [unclear reference, possibly Ramchal/Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto] thought that Mussar [Jewish ethical/character development literature] was going to be helped by learning Mussar. And I think that that was mostly a mistake or very limited use, right? Is that what I’m saying? Because the Apostle Salam is very famous in his very famous letter called the *Gersa Mussar* [possibly *Mesillat Yesharim* or another work on Mussar study], explained his basic program for learning Mussar. And it goes sort of, at least the beginning of it goes, that he realized that the problem is that learning doesn’t help. Study, understanding doesn’t help because of this interesting thing that people – basically the problem of the weakness of the will, what we call the weakness of the will – the problem of people being good or thinking that they’re good or knowing what is good and not doing it. And that shows him in his view that we can have the correct knowledge but it doesn’t help us become good.

We discussed what we think about this.

The Proposed Solution: Emotional Arousal

Instructor: And therefore he’s going to have a solution, and his solution was emotions, right? What is called the *hispa’alus* [emotional arousal/inspiration], right? *Limud Mussar b’hispa’alus* [studying Mussar with emotional intensity], just with burning lips. How do you say this in Spanish?

Student: Yeah.

Instructor: Burning lips. Sounds like something, I don’t know what. Burning lips. Like a band name, the Burning Lips.

And by that, he theorized that what a person is actually controlled with is what people now call my heart, my emotions, my emotional resonance with things, my emotional attraction towards things. And therefore, if he’ll be able to move the learning, or at least make this part of learning, which will be not about intellectual learning, but about brainwashing yourself – sorry, not brainwashing yourself, but like arousing the kind of emotions in yourself towards what is good and to hate what is bad. Basically, that’s what you can do when you learn Mussar, then you will solve this problem and in that sense learning Mussar will help you become a better person.

The Critique: Limited Effectiveness

Instructor: Now this is true to a very, very limited extent, as I think the next week people discovered after he opened his Mussar house, *Beis Mussar* [house of Mussar study], I think people discovered that you could actually learn Mussar with a *hispa’alus* and be very emotional and still be a horrible guy. I think that we know those people too.

So it’s actually not entirely enough to – it has – *hispa’alus* is actually less useful. I don’t even know why it was so – not the world thought it was useful. Like, did you – hmm. Now I’m thinking, like did this solve anything for anyone ever? Like, yeah, the problem was that the learning thing came coldly. Yeah, I wonder. And just in another step, self-dissonance. Yeah, I think, I don’t know.

Chapter 4: Digression on Inspirational Speeches and Rhetoric

The Contemporary Parallel: Inspirational Speeches

Instructor: I guess we keep on – we’re still doing this. Like we have the inspirational speeches. Like what’s the difference between *hispa’alus* and an inspirational speech? It gives you a different service, it inspires you, turns you on, and then you go home and you were inspired, basically for the most part.

Student: Yeah.

Instructor: Oh, you could be on status. Is that true? I think it’s like a social currency almost, like it’s like cheaper fund.

Student: Yeah, I wonder.

Instructor: But okay, maybe he didn’t mean something that cheap, but still, like I wonder if the student also have the same idea. They have this idea that the *davening* [prayer] is one of the jobs of *davening* is to arouse yourself and like loving God and hating evil things like that. And if you read *Tanya* [foundational text of Chabad Chassidus] ever, which everyone should, somewhere reading list, there’s a virtual English to my hand, and it says you should read better than inspirational – inspirational speeches.

Student: Yeah, it’s better, but you know, you’re not getting inspired, you just –

Instructor: Well, I think people do get inspired and like for the next two days do something differently.

Student: For one day.

Instructor: Sometimes for one day. When you’re younger it works for a day. When you’re older it doesn’t even work for five minutes.

Student: Okay, but the old inspirational speeches are for older people, not for kids.

Instructor: Oh, the kids, they only have inspirational speeches. You go to school and that’s what you hear all day. Maybe that’s why it works. Maybe they don’t market it as inspirational.

Student: Yeah, but the kind of inspirational speech that you see now feel more like indoctrination speeches.

Instructor: Yeah.

Student: Also just rhetoric. Not just indoctrination speeches. Just like maintaining status quo.

Instructor: I mean, she’d be here all the indoctrination speeches.

Rhetoric vs. Demonstration

Student: So rhetoric, using the *pathos* [emotional appeal], like what Aristotle called rhetoric.

Instructor: Yeah, it’s for the people and then – okay, and that’s supposed to work, but that’s like so – so then you’re talking about as it does work, but not as like a self-improvement, as a fake kind of convention. I know, as a fake kind of convincing instead of as convincing instead of showing or proving or teaching.

Student: Yeah, yeah.

Instructor: Okay, but does it actually really – it’s just persuasion, persuasion. But isn’t it persuasion? Sometimes I feel like instead of demonstrating, like openly, you know, he’s not serious, like the motivational speaker. Like, oh, when they talk about things like – because they don’t like – they don’t leave – because they don’t believe themselves that it works.

Student: Yeah, they don’t really believe it. The guy who’s listening doesn’t believe it either. I think the whole thing is just a social – I think it’s all just a social –

Instructor: No, my inspirational speeches are true and they work. Hello?

The Problem of Akrasia: Why Emotion and Knowledge Are Insufficient for Ethical Action

Chapter 1: The Tanya’s Model and Its Fundamental Problem

Maybe because there’s a certain sincerity or a claim being made. If you look at your average WhatsApp status, the guy doesn’t actually mean what he says.

Okay, okay, okay. We’re not interested in this. In this level of social criticism, we’re not even interested. It’s precious. Everyone that opens my sheet already knows this. We don’t have to talk about that. It’s a waste of time.

What I want to talk about is the ideal. I’m getting back to where I am. But what would be interesting if we talked about is this ideal. Even if it’s not this ideal, even if, like I said, if you read Tanya, you see that there’s this ideal that you have this very, what is it called? It’s like a subconscious love of God, let’s say. And then what you do by *davening* [prayer] is you think about it or you play around with your emotions. You use emotional appeals, basically, I guess, to make it alive, to make the love be felt.

And then the rest of the Tanya is about how come the moment I close my *Siddur* [prayer book], I’m the same guy. And because of this problem, the Tanya invented all kinds of fancy explanations and justifications of what’s going on. And there’s more going on there.

Aristotle and Rambam’s Critique: Playing the Wrong Game

But what Aristotle, what Rambam would tell you is that you were playing the wrong game to begin with. At least in the sense that, as long as we’re talking about practical ethics, if you’re talking about the love of God, there’s more complications. But as long as you’re talking about, like, I learned *mussar* [ethical teachings], and I really felt like it’s the best thing to learn all day, but then I didn’t learn even one minute more because of that, or whatever kinds of *mussar* learning in *shiva* [yeshiva].

What Aristotle would tell you, what Rambam would tell you, is that you are talking to the wrong guy. Like the drunk part of the soul, right? Who ever convinced you that loving—it was not like thought, okay, so that knowing is not enough, so maybe loving is going to be enough. Well, it turns out that loving is not enough either.

It might be important, just like knowing is important, and loving is important. I don’t think you can have just a cold intellectual knowledge that has no attraction in it. I don’t think that anyways exists, but that’s a different discussion. But like we say, there’s a certain attraction towards the good. You see something as good. Okay, but that’s still not enough because seeing something as the good doesn’t make you actually do it.

Chapter 2: Habituation as the True Path to Virtue

The Practice of Habituation Over Emotional Arousal

What makes you actually do it is the practice, right? It’s the habituation, the habit. So he would tell you if you want to become a master, the solution is to start learning a little and even though you don’t love it, it’s the opposite, right? He’s working the opposite direction as well as he says, education works from bottom up, not from top down, not from inner to outer, but from outer to inner, right?

It works from doing it to starting to love it. It could be that the starting to love it has something added, it’s not just an external thing, you do end up with a real love. But in any case, the problem that we’re talking about, the problem of *akrasia* [weakness of will], the problem of weakness of the will, the problem of what’s called in *mussar*, *moach v’lev* [mind and heart], is not really a problem of *moach v’lev*. It’s a problem of *lev u’ma’aseh* [heart and action]. I hope what I’m saying.

Reframing the Traditional Mussar Problem

This whole that I’m so against, that whenever I hear someone telling me that he has a *mu’an* [understanding] in his head, just not in his heart, I’d ask him to tell me a story of a *mu’an* that he probably has so worked out in his head, because he claims that his problem is only his heart. That’s one thing.

And second thing is that I would tell him that why do you think that the heart is enough? Like, where did you get that from? Definitely not from the Torah, anyways. But why would you think that the heart controls the person in that sense? When I say the heart, I mean sense of emotions.

You could be very emotional about something and then do nothing. I could even have great love for someone or great empathy for someone and then not help him. Empathy doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t do nothing. It might call you to action. It might drive you. It might inspire you to do something. I’m not saying the correct action is the one that is inspired. It is the one that has the love in it. But the practice of getting there is not the arousing the emotions, it’s the habitually doing.

Is this correct? I think this is correct. Am I wrong?

Student: Yeah, but we spoke about this.

Yeah, yeah, I’m repeating it again.

Student: To initiate habituation.

Because you’ve got to habituate yourself.

The Order of Education Versus the Order of Being

Student: To initiate habituation is, I think, really still a question of knowledge. By imitation or by following someone else, the answer is sort of by following someone else, or by following your own mind as someone else, not without internalization.

Internalization comes after the practice in the order of education, not in reality. Like in the order of the soul, in the order of being, the love is before the habituation. But in the order of practice, habituation is before practice is before love. Like this is the opposite of any contemporary like that tells you you have to make your kids love things. You don’t make your kids love things. You make them do things and then by doing them they start loving them.

That doesn’t mean you should be a *litphag* [someone who acts mechanically without feeling] and just do things without loving them, right? It means that you should do it and then love them. I think—no, I just realized this because I keep, I keep on criticizing Rav Salanter [Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the Mussar movement] for his imagining this great conflict between the heart and the mind and so on.

A Refined Critique of Rav Salanter

But now I’m realizing that I never—maybe I did say this enough times but I’m—it became clear to me this week in this sense that it seems like he forgets and most I think most people that talk too much forget about this, that the action is in the habituation. The action is in the action. The action is not in the feelings.

Student: Yeah, I think so. I do think that they did realize this. Like, later, *Ba’alei Mussar* [masters of the Mussar movement], they did do a lot of practical work and tried to think of ways to do practical work because of this. You can have concepts of habituation.

Yeah, they figured out all kinds of concepts that are about habituation, yeah.

That’s the bigger practical question.

Chapter 3: The Importance of Particulars in Ethical Practice

Why Detailed Study Matters for Actual Virtue Acquisition

Now, back to where I am, I think this is why particulars are so important, right? This is not what I think, it has to be fetished. This is why particulars are so important, but I also think it. What’s better, to think it or to know that someone else said it?

I think this is why, right? Because when I get into this whole detail and I’m trying to get it, I think that there’s a lot of value in realizing this. I think that when we talk about it, we learn about it enough, we might actually become better at the areas we’re talking about. This is my great hope. And I think that it works.

Like it’s not just like, we’re not going to end up with just a big theory of what Aristotle thought about temperance, and what the Rambam thought, and what the Riza’i [likely referring to a medieval Jewish philosopher] thought, and what the rabbi thought and so on. We might end up with actually having some of it.

The Hindrance of False Beliefs About Practice

And that is because I think that a big problem, a big hindrance to us practicing it is the belief that it’s not a practice and the lack of very, very specific activities of what we’re talking about and what you can do. And since the world of action is the world of particulars, right? The world of mind is the world of absolute universal. The world of love is the world of imaginal universals.

Three Levels: Universal Concepts, Imaginal Universals, and Particulars

So I just made up that term but you understand what I’m talking about, right? Like you could—you understand the concept of humanity. You love humanity but through a story, through a kind of story, through a kind of not a concept but some kind of vision or some kind of image that you have of it. Maybe sometimes mediated through a specific particular person, but your love is not really directed toward that particular person, right?

Like when you watch a movie that makes you emotional, you don’t really care about—in general you don’t really care about that guy in the story, but it turns on this general feeling, right? That’s the sense in which theater is universal. That’s what Aristotle explains in his talk on the theater, right, about the art. It’s not exactly about that person and that’s all not about becoming a good person because the person—

Student: Yeah, yeah, like but only you’re not focused on the abstract idea or the true existence of the concept, but you’re focused on the image of the crying child.

Right, but there’s the crying child in your head, in your imagination, but it’s not that crying child. It’s like a symbolization of the crying child, the archetype of the crying child that you’re crying about, right? This is, yeah.

Chapter 4: Emotion, Empathy, and the Limits of Imaginal Experience

The Role of Emotion in Complete Human Experience

So that’s what emotion does. And I guess in a certain sense we say, someone that never gets emotional from watching a sad movie or happy from a happy movie, if there’s such a thing nowadays, and so on, is something wrong with him. It’s part of being a complete human being to have those emotions and have those thoughts.

Why Empathy Is Not Enough

But you still don’t get called to be a good person for that, right? I think that many people think of themselves as good people because of that, and they’re not. Feeling empathy and emotion is not enough, it’s not interesting, and what makes you good is that you actually go out and help that crying child, right?

The Problem of Real Particularity: The Dirty Diaper

Now, the problem with that is that that is a particular crying child and they have a dirty pamper and there’s something blocking your empathy. Like on screen, the big trick with screens is that they don’t have any smells ever. So they’re lacking a certain real reality, like I said.

Temperance and the Specificity of Virtue: The Problem of Subject Matter and Practical Habituation

Chapter 1: The Necessity of Specificity in Virtue Practice and the Conflict of Criteria

The Inevitable Imperfection of Particulars

They don’t even have three dimensions. I’m not even talking about that. I was going to say, ultimately, every particular is going to be, has some blemish from the universal, even worse from the universal example. It’s even worse than the universal example. There’s always a reason, you could say something like this, there’s always a reason why this guy should not be helped. I know I have great empathy with humanity and with human suffering, but this guy, tried to help him, look. And it’s true, by the way, some guys you shouldn’t help, even if you have universal empathy. This is a real consideration.

But the practice of helping others, or the practice of temperance relative to pleasures, whatever, is going to always be about a particular plate of food, or a particular person. That’s where the practice is going to have to be. Even if we want to talk about practice, we’re not going all the way down to particular, in the sense of the last particular thing, because we are saying that we’re habituating a mida [middah: character trait/virtue], we’re habituating a virtue of kindness, or we’re talking about temperance. You are habituating that as a general tendency in you. But we still need to know if you want to work on that, if you want to get people to have that, if you want to train people that, you’re going to have to pick out the exact area of human activity that that has to do with.

Why Vague Generalizations Are Useless

And you can’t give these great wishy-washy or generalizations, feel-good generalizations of don’t love things of the body. That’s not useful at all. We’re going to have to get into extreme level of detail and give specific examples, and not only examples, examples of an habituation of do this and don’t do that, and that people will actually do this and not do that, and they’ll do it enough times, they start to be able to see what makes it good and be able to know what to do in other situations and so on. So, this is why the extreme specificity here is very useful.

The Problem: Conflicting Criteria

And we went through a bunch of things to make it tighter. We went through a bunch of things to make it tighter, and some of them conflict with each other. And this is where we’re getting stuck a little. I don’t know if you people remember where we’re getting stuck. Some of the criteria, the cuts here seem to conflict with each other, or seem to end up with different sides. Different sides of the cuts seem to end up on different sides of the moral discussion, and they flip flipping between each other and these are as follows.

First the subject matter, so there’s two questions. As I said, I think there’s two different questions. One is about the subject matter and the second is about the, yeah, the definition or the form of the mida [middah: character trait/virtue], medium, excess and too little itself. Those are the two different things. There’s what it’s about and is what it is.

Tightening the Subject Matter: From All Pleasures to Bodily Pleasures

So, regarding what it’s about, and I think maybe this might solve the big problem that I’ve been having, but maybe not. I’ll try. So, regarding what it’s about, we went through this thing to tighten it all the way to saying it’s about pleasures of touch only. Now, this distinction, this tightening, is somewhat hard to understand, and it’s extreme. It’s somewhat easy to understand when we’re talking in general. We say people, there’s, well, with the cut sort of when there’s all kinds of pleasures, there’s pleasures of the soul. If dysfunction with regards to sex is about…

Student: No, yeah, I’m getting to… Wait. I’m going to get to this. Let me complete the story.

Instructor: So we can easily understand the general cuts of there’s all kinds of pleasures but it would be a mistake to identify that the virtue of temperance with pleasure per se. That’s the first important move and we discussed that. This is what solves the question of well what if being a good person is a pleasure for you. Well there’s a question, a separate question to what extent the pleasures what makes it good or is the pleasure something added to it, but that what makes it good those are different questions. But the virtue of temperance is not about that. It’s not about pleasure per se. It’s about bodily pleasures specifically. It’s not about all kinds of human pleasures, but about bodily pleasures. So it has to be things that use the body, that are about the body, things like that.

The Proof: Linguistic and Social Evidence

And the proof for that is that we don’t mean that. I think that’s the first proof. How do I know that it’s not about non-sensual pleasures? The proof that Aristotle uses at least, is linguistic proof, social proof. We don’t use it this way. When we say temperance, if you ask someone what it means, again, people can be confused and can be dumb. You could do the Socratic street [method] to them and make them think that they mean all pleasure. But if you sort of realize how we talk about it, how we talk about it in literature, how they talk about it and so on, you’ll realize that they’re almost never talking about non-physical pleasures, non-bodily pleasures. That’s the kind of proof. It doesn’t give a reason for it. We don’t know why it wouldn’t be, what would split these two things?

A Possible Explanation: Perhaps “Pleasure” Is Misleading

But I think I did explain it in my way in the sense that it’s not about the question of pleasure per se, that’s a different question. There is a different question here, which is the question of bodily pleasures. In other words, it could be that the pleasure isn’t really even the issue, although we’re talking about it as pleasure. But maybe the, I’m not sure about this but maybe the word pleasure is even a little bit misleading here because it’s not about the question of pleasure. It’s about the question of certain things that are pleasurable. Maybe they’re done because they’re pleasurable. I guess they’re done because they’re pleasurable and I guess that’s where the ethics comes in when you do it because they’re pleasurable. As long as it’s just done because it’s healthy or something like that maybe it’s not even an ethical question. But maybe, maybe yes, maybe there’s always pleasure involved with them. So there’s always going to be a question of the pleasure, something like that. That’s got it. There’s always pleasure involved even on the narrative.

Student: Wait, wait, I’m not getting to that yet. I didn’t get to anything about that yet.

Instructor: Okay.

There’s anything about the narrative versus, I’m talking about the bodily pleasure versus soul pleasure first.

Soul Pleasures Are Not the Domain of Temperance

Then we do, like even things, when I say soul pleasure, I don’t necessarily mean good soul pleasures. Even the pleasure of honor or of talking too much, things like that. Someone that talks too much is not a ba’al ta’avah [ba’al taavah: one who is ruled by excessive desire/gluttony]. He has a different bad mida [middah: character trait]. There’s different bad midos [middot: character traits]. It’s not useful, like I said, it’s not useful to work on both of them in the same way because you’re confusing areas of activity. By talking less with your friends, you’re not going to become better at eating less.

Chapter 2: The Practical Independence of Virtues During Habituation

I think that’s very important. I guess this is one of the ways in which we see that there is different virtues, that being good at one doesn’t necessarily make you good at the other, although this is the problem of the unity of the virtues. It should be whatever. But in reality, learning is a slight imperfection, and one could result in a large discrepancy in the other. If they’re all 100% complete, they…

Student: Yeah, maybe if you would have one in an entirely fully complete way, exactly, in the full complete way, I think all virtues imply each other, but in…

Instructor: Only at the highest level of actualization.

Student: Yeah, something like that, but as long as they’re not fully complete, or at least that’s what I’m saying, as long as we’re talking about education, instead of talking about having the complete virtue. If we’re talking about having a complete virtue, since having a complete virtue means having knowledge, then in some sense you have to have all practical knowledge, and you have to know what to do in every situation, and every kind of thing. But as long as we’re talking about habituating yourself which means you don’t entirely have the knowledge yet then I think there’s for sure a difference and that’s why I said I think it’s not useful to try to, you’re not going to work on that. Perfect temperance means having perfect knowledge of temperance which means having which means…

Student: Right, right. But to not have it which means you’re working on it which is where we are for the most part and which means working on your temperance with food, you’re not going to manage working on your temperance…

Instructor: I feel the question…

Student: The question is practical knowledge is the only way to address it.

Instructor: Yes, yes, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. But my point is, maybe it matters, I don’t know. What I’m saying is just that if we’re talking about working on it, which is, I think, the purpose of this, this level of specificity is about being able to click it out because actions happen there. Of course, you could say the actions happen there, so it’s important to talk about in general, because the result of having the virtues is also actions. That’s also true. But that’s less important than just the question of knowing the things correctly.

Why General Habituation Is Meaningless

But if we’re talking about trying to get to them, we have to discover the kinds of activities, the kinds of habituations that are going to lead you to have that virtue. And there isn’t general habituations, like habituate yourself to be a good person in the most general sense. What does that even mean? There’s only going to be habituations for specific virtues. And in that sense, like I said, if you’re going to make this mistake, if you’re going to think, for example, I think that many people make this mistake. If you know of them, I think most of them are making mistakes like this.

A Common Practical Error: Confusing Domains of Self-Improvement

Like people trying to work on themselves, or often making these kind of mistakes, like, oh, since, what is ta’avat achilah [taavat achilah: gluttony/excessive desire for food]? It’s some kind of selfishness. Okay, I’m not saying that’s wrong, in a very general sense. Therefore, in order to work on my ta’avat achilah [taavat achilah: gluttony], I’ll work on my selfishness. I’ll try to be less selfish in some other way, and this is going to make me eat less.

Student: Yes.

Instructor: Turns out it doesn’t. Again, unless you’re talking the most abstract sense and you become entirely a soul or a mind without a body that doesn’t think of itself, then you’re dead. As long as we’re not dead, or a philosopher that’s dead or whatever, then it’s not going to help. And people, I think, get very frustrated from questions like this, I think a big part of…

Temperance and the Senses: Aristotelian vs. Kabbalistic Frameworks for Understanding Bodily Pleasure

Chapter 1: The Specificity of Virtue and the Problem of Temperance (Continued)

The Principle of Specific Practices in Specific Areas

Instructor: There isn’t like a general practice of being a good person, there’s specific practices in specific areas. So even like, that’s the *nefesh habehamis* [nefesh habehamis: the animal soul], that’s why we say, I’m telling you, ah, so maybe it’s bad to chase honor too much, okay. Okay, but that’s not a problem of temperance.

That’s also why you would see people that have great temperance and too much love of honor and vice versa. Or like speaking too much, too much of a title is bad. Okay, maybe, but that’s not a question of temperance, even though it is of the body, I guess. Somewhat of the body, I don’t know exactly. I think he [Aristotle] has it on the side of the things that are not on the body. But in any case, this is not the problem, okay?

Now, I think this helps us, at least in this sense, of getting rid of the very general question of pleasure, all kinds of other pleasures. Now we have this more specific, even more specific, I think the second step, you’ll see, and by me it’s page three, I already ruined my pages here.

Second Step: Distinctions Within Bodily Pleasure

Anyways, it says, it’s in the first chapter here, in chapter 10, where it talks about distinctions within the body, within bodily pleasure. I think that the second step is where we’re getting more stuck. So this itself is divided into two steps, okay?

First Sub-Step: Cutting Off Hearing, Seeing, and Smell

The first step being the cutting of the different pleasures of different senses, okay? So sort of the framework that it’s working with here is that there’s five senses, each of the senses have distinct pleasures, and we’re thinking which of those senses have pleasures that are relevant to temperance, okay?

And we cut off hearing, seeing, and smell. Number one, we say, okay, then this is important step and I’ll try to explain it. We cut off hearing, seeing, and smell. How do we cut off hearing, seeing, and smell? Because we say that again someone might have too much pleasure, take too much pleasure in seeing certain things or might like seeing the wrong things and so on. But that deficiency or that excess, whatever it is, is not a deficiency that is relevant to temperance. It’s a deficiency in some other *midda* [midda: character trait] which has to do with what you see.

And I want to make a very important distinction because I think that you’re thinking of a problem now. And the same is with hearing, people that love music or listening to the theater or whatever too much. Same thing there might, there might be a correct amount of that, it might be a correct *midda* of that, but that’s, we don’t talk about it as inherent. And the same thing with smell.

Evidence: Linguistic Usage and Categories of Vice

Now here like there’s like two kinds of evidence. There’s the evidence of what it says you’re not spoken of, right? We don’t talk about someone, and I think this is true for us also, we don’t say about someone that likes to watch movies too much that is about *ta’avah* [ta’avah: appetite/desire], except in a second, if you do accept, we don’t say that, we say something else. There’s a *bittul Torah* [bittul Torah: wasting time that should be spent studying Torah], *chavayis nesheh* [unclear term], *moshav leitzim* [moshav leitzim: sitting in frivolous company], there’s different *ta’vairahs* [unclear term] in that. But not *ta’vairah*, I’m thinking about *ta’av* [ta’av: desire/appetite].

Except, so this is the proof that we don’t mean that, like we say, we’re talking about something else. Except that there’s a difference, and when we give this difference, we can bring in the reason, really, why the temperance only pertains to specific senses, and then to specific parts of those senses.

The Complication: The Jewish Objection from *Shmiras Ha-Einayim*

And the qualification or the complication here is like this. If I say, and I’m going to give you a Jewish example, because this is what we’re doing, translating into Yiddish. So if I tell you, the eyes have no *ta’aveh* [ta’aveh: desire/appetite], right? There’s no question of *medes ha-ta’aveh* [medes ha-ta’aveh: the character trait of appetite/desire] in your eyes. So any *chassidishe yingerman* [chassidishe yingerman: Chassidic young man] is going to come and tell me, what are you talking about? Have you never heard of *shmiras ha-einayim* [shmiras ha-einayim: guarding the eyes]? Which is about your eyes.

And you know that you could read, it’s very interesting. And now I’m thinking, I think maybe there’s a question here.

Chapter 2: Digression on Body-Part Organization of Mitzvos and the Soul-Body Problem

Sefer Charedim and the Kabbalistic Framework

Instructor: If you read books like *Sefer Charedim* [Sefer Charedim: a 16th-century work organizing mitzvos by body parts]. *Sefer Charedim* is a book, it’s a kind of Mussar [Mussar: Jewish ethical literature], sort of an ethical work, and it’s also about *mitzvos* [mitzvos: commandments]. So, of course, there’s a *Mekubal* [Mekubal: Kabbalist] that thinks that *mitzvos* and ethics are almost the same thing, or different levels of the same thing, whatever the theory is, we’ve discussed that in some other class, maybe.

And one of his organizations, he’s trying to organize the *mitzvos*, or the *mitzvos* and the ethics, the different virtues in different ways. And one of his ways of organizing it is to organize it by the different limbs, the different parts of the person that it pertains to. So you would have like *mitzvos* at least by eye, *mitzvos* at least by eyes, *mitzvos* that have to do with your eyes, *mitzvos* that have to do with your ears and so on.

And *Mekubalim* [Mekubalim: Kabbalists] liked talking about this, like you’re going to be attacking your yeah based on like a physiological picture of the human and that this would be a good way of, it’s based on a certain yeah, I guess it’s based based on a certain physicality, like we said last week, that the *Sigulfian* [unclear term] people are the ones that love the body the most.

The Kabbalistic View: Body as Primary Structure

So, *Mekubalim* in general think of the body as the important structure to think about a human being.

Student: And as an abstraction, you mean as an impediment?

Instructor: Well, they think of that as the best source of abstractions, or the best source of structures. And yeah, it’s based on the theory that the body is an image of the soul or of higher things.

Aristotle and Rambam’s Rejection of Body-Part Localization

But that’s not, it’s very interesting because that’s not something you would get in a Rambam [Rambam: Maimonides] or an Aristotle in any way. Aristotle would explicitly refuse to associate different parts of the soul with different parts of the body. He specifically refuses that. Rambam specifically refuses that in *Perek Aleph* [Perek Aleph: Chapter One, referring to the first chapter of Shemoneh Perakim], based on Aristotle.

Because the soul isn’t abstracting. The soul doesn’t live in space in a part of the body. It lives in the whole body. The whole soul lives in the whole body.

Student: Norse, meaning non-intellectuals.

Instructor: All of the souls.

Student: Intellectuals. Doesn’t matter.

Instructor: All of the intellectuals.

Student: Why not the form of the body?

Instructor: All of them are the form of the body. They’re different in different senses, in different parts, but the parts are not local parts. The parts are not divisible. That’s why, remember when the Rambam said in *Perek Aleph* that the soul has parts, but not parts in the way that the body has parts.

Plato’s Tripartite Soul and Its Rejection

What he’s implicitly denying here, and this is following Aristotle, is denying what Plato said, that there are three souls and they each belong to different parts of the body. Like Plato said, your intellectual soul is in your mind, sorry, in your brain, and your appetitive soul, your one desiring soul is in your heart, or in your torso area, not necessarily in your heart, and this is in your head, and your, how do you call it, nutritive soul, or what Plato calls this, in Aristotle’s sense it would be the intellectual soul, the desiring soul, the nutritive soul, in Plato’s sense it’s the intellectual soul, the anger soul, or the *thumos* [thumos: the spirited part of the soul in Plato’s tripartite theory], and the appetitive soul, and the third lowest one is in the, well sometimes I’m saying this in the liver or the kidneys, but in the lower part of your torso, lower part of your body.

Kabbalah’s Platonic Inheritance

This is an image you get in Kabbalah [Kabbalah: Jewish mysticism] a lot, because *Kabbalists* are all Platonists, and they all follow Plato, saying, if you’ve read Kabbalah, you’ve come across that three-level image of the body, where you have this, like the highest level of the soul, or the intellectual soul in your mind, *Chabad* [Chabad: acronym for Chochmah-Binah-Da’at, the intellectual sefirot], and your intermediate soul, or what Plato calls anger, and the *Kabbalists* are not entirely sure how to read it always because nobody nowadays understands what *thumos* is.

But *chagat* [chagat: acronym for Chesed-Gevurah-Tiferet, the emotional sefirot] is in the higher part of your body, in your heart area. And then *nahi* [nahi: acronym for Netzach-Hod-Yesod, the lower sefirot] or your liver or kidneys, I’m not sure which, or maybe both, or it’s around that area, are about the appetite, like the lower desires of the soul, of the person.

Aristotle’s Alternative: Non-Localized Soul

That’s something that Plato would say. And Aristotle explicitly denies this and says that a soul is not something that belongs to a specific body part. There might even be Platonists that deny it and explain that Plato only meant it as a *mashal* [mashal: parable/metaphor], not literal, because of this idea that the soul is a form and something.

Like Aristotle would say there are three souls, but all of them are in all of the body. So it’s not correct to say the *neshama b’moach* [neshama b’moach: the soul in the brain], or something like that, or the *moach b’moach* [moach b’moach: unclear]. The *moach* [moach: brain] is in everywhere.

Okay, if you read Arizal [Arizal: Rabbi Isaac Luria, 16th-century Kabbalist], you’ll find out that it’s correct also this way. Okay, I don’t know why I’m getting into Kabbalah.

Return to Main Point: Senses vs. Limbs

Point is, my point is that, what was my point? I forgot. Oh, my point is, I was thinking about like this way of structuring it. So one way, so you see when Aristotle talks about senses, this is what he talks about. He’s not talking about limbs. This is very interesting.

Like you can get like a *Mekubal* or a *Chassidishe* say if we’re talking about something like, you know, how do you attack a real *chassidishe*? If Gamma and I, like, you’ve sinned in your eyes, so the logic, or there’s some kind of poetic logic, at least, that says, therefore, you should fix two stone *mitzvos* with your eyes. So instead of looking at women, you should look at the *Shabbos lecht* [Shabbos lecht: Sabbath candles] or something. That would be the solution. Things like that, right? Or you should cry. That would be the solution.

Now, that’s a symbolic way of thinking. I don’t know if it’s also how things actually work, in the sense of the science of what the human being is.

Setting Up the Aristotelian Explanation

And let me tell you why Aristotle would deny that there are sins of the appetite, there are sins of pleasure measure in the eyes. Because he says like this, and I think this is important.

[End of chunk 4]

Aristotle on Sense-Pleasures: The Distinction Between Intrinsic and Incidental Pleasures of Sight, Hearing, and Smell

Chapter 1: The Animal Analogy and the Core Aristotelian Distinction

The Lion and the Cow: Instrumental vs. Intrinsic Pleasure

Instructor: Should I say that I agree with my [previous statement]? He says like this. An animal—and this is where we bring in animals—an animal, we can talk about a cow, I don’t know, a lion. The cow doesn’t eat all the other animals. You could talk about a lion seeing a cow or whatever lions eat, and being very happy that he saw it, because he’s going to have lunch today. But does the lion love the seeing, does the lion like the seeing, the vision of cows, the way that people that watch beautiful movies or look at beautiful sights love the sight of it? Or I’ll give you, maybe lions, I’m not, again, whatever we do, animals. Someone could look at a woman with the sole intention of…

Student: Very good.

Instructor: So that’s the exact point. So, for example, the same thing, let’s talk about the sense of smell. When someone that loves food very much smells the food that he loves, or the woman that he loves, someone that loves the woman very much, and he is all excited and all aroused with this love of the food that he smelled. Is that a pleasure of the sense of smell?

Student: With anticipation of eating it, meaning?

Instructor: Exactly. Exactly. So, הרב אריסטוטליס [Harav Aristotle: the teacher Aristotle], that is not a pleasure of the sense of smell. Your pleasure is of the sense of taste, or touch, or taste, whatever. It’s incidentally mediated by the sense of smell. What lets you know that there is a piece of food here to be eaten is your sense of smell or your sense of sight or your hearing. You know, if you hear a קול באשה ערוה [kol be’ishe erva: a woman’s voice is immodest], whatever, right? That is not a sin. That is not a wrong pleasure in the sense of smell, or hearing, or, how do you call it? Or what was the third one? Or seeing, right? It’s using this sense of sight and what you’re loving, like you said, what you’re loving is what your pleasure is—your anticipation or your…let’s see what his words are.

Genuine Pleasures of the Distance Senses

Instructor: How does one have pleasure in just the sense of smell? There are pleasures. Well, if you just smell בשמים [besamim: spices/fragrances] like when you smell besamim on מוצאי שבת [Motzei Shabbos: Saturday night after the Sabbath ends] you’re not enjoying that—maybe this is reminding you of the good kugel that you put on besamim. You don’t put [besamim on kugel]—I don’t know, maybe you do. But you understand? Or if you watch—when someone, when someone again, that would be the difference between when someone watches a beautiful movie or sees a beautiful painting. That’s a pleasure of the sense of sight itself. It’s not because it reminds him of something, or because it’s anticipation for something that…

Student: Right.

Instructor: There are such pleasures, of course. That’s the difference between art and low art, right? If someone looks at pictures of his wedding, and just to remind himself how much he loves his wife, or how he used to love her, and now he stopped loving her, so it was good times. I don’t know. Or like how much, how געשמאַק [gishmak: pleasant/enjoyable] his wedding was. That’s not pleasure of the sense of sight. That’s a pleasure of memory, of imagining your past or your future or something. Right? Like if you’re looking at pictures of your children or your grandchildren and you have נחת [nachas: pride/satisfaction], that’s not a pleasure of the sense of sight. It’s a pleasure in your children.

Student: Mediated through sight, yeah.

Instructor: If you’d be blind, you wouldn’t be able to have it that way, but you could have—a blind person could also have the same pleasure that that person has, sees a picture of his grandchildren has, just by hearing of it. It’s interchangeable, right? It’s not pleasures of that sense, or in the correct way, right? He would call it accidentally pleasures of the sense. It’s using the sense of [sight]. It’s not the same thing as watching fireworks, right?

Student: Exactly. Watching fireworks is definitely not a pleasure of your hearing because it sounds like people bombing you, but it looks nice.

Instructor: Could there be a sense of pleasure of like memory when you eat something?

Student: Yeah, this is what I used to [eat]…

Instructor: Yeah, but then that would be like a secondary, a secondary sense of touch memory.

Student: So you can cook with everything.

Instructor: Yeah, yeah, this same thing works for everything. Where it doesn’t work—no, no, where it doesn’t work—like I’m saying, if someone likes good smells, people, we’re not, not everyone is into it, but like, someone likes good smells, yeah, you’re into it. If someone likes good smells, and like buys perfumes, not because, like, there’s two ways in which people put on perfume, right? One way is just to attract women, or vice versa, to attract men. That’s not their—that’s not, okay, that’s an עניין [inyan: matter/issue] that you like the smell, and not the people, it’s not much an inyan.

Student: And you can ask to please stop wearing the one that smells like dirty leather.

Instructor: But that’s denial, that it’s about the love of that. Right? So if someone puts up a perfume just to attract other people, they’re not a—and this is a fine שמעקער [shmecker: one who smells/appreciates smells], right? They’re not a lover of a sense of smell. They’re a lover of other people. This is just a way to attract people, because maybe the sense of smell has some connection with arousal, so I don’t know. But it’s just association that people have. It works just like a picture, or just like a voice clip, or anything like that. If you put on the perfume, or you put the בשם לכבוד שבת [besom l’kovet Shabbos: fragrance in honor of the Sabbath] for the smell itself, then you’re enjoying the sense of smell. And the same thing for sight and for hearing. If you like music, if you like music because you hear the person singing on it, it reminds you of something. So that’s the sense in which we’re saying that there is no pleasures of sight, seeing, and smell do not pertain to temperance. Only incidentally, they incidentally could. There could be sights that you shouldn’t see because they cause intemperate actions or thoughts, even, I don’t know. But those will not be called problems of the sense of sight.

Chapter 2: Application to Jewish Religious Practice: A Critique of Certain Approaches

Questioning the Framing of ראיית אסורים [Re’ias Asuris: Forbidden Gazing]

Instructor: This is why I was thinking that maybe the חרדים [Hareidim: ultra-Orthodox Jews] or all these kinds of חסידות חתירות [Chassidus Chateuris: certain Hasidic groups] are wrong when they say that ראיית אסורים [Rias Asiris: forbidden gazing], or looking at things you shouldn’t look at or that you shouldn’t take too much pleasure in or so on, is a problem of the sense of sight. Because it’s only incidentally a problem of the sense of sight. In other words, the תיקון [tikkun: correction/repair] of ראיית אסורים is just not doing things. It’s not in the sight. You’re not pulling in your eyes. Again, there might be a way in which that’s true. I’m just saying a comment. I don’t know if this is called a אור [ur: fundamental principle]. I don’t know. I’m just saying there’s a different way of thinking here.

Student: Subjecting your eyes as an instrument to your body.

Instructor: Yeah, maybe that’s, again, maybe in itself a problem. Or maybe not. Or maybe, like, what I’m saying is, if—well, I’ll tell you what the נפקא מינה [nafka mina: practical difference] like להלכה [le-halakha: for Jewish law] would be, although my [point is] probably not practical, right? נפקא מינה להלכה would be, that there isn’t—there’s actually a מצוה [mitzvah: commandment] that says, a הלכה [halakha: Jewish law] that says, there’s, about both of these things, right, about, I don’t know, about hearing, I wonder, there’s no ברכות [brachot: blessings] I’m hearing, so weird, why don’t we have to see, there’s brachot.

Halakhic Implications: מעילה [Me’ilah: Misuse of Sacred Property]

Instructor: And I was thinking about this, so, I was traveling, and I was thinking about, I went to this beautiful waterfall, and I was thinking of this question. If there’s like some צדיק [tzaddik: righteous person] that would say you shouldn’t look at a waterfall too much because it’s תאוות העינים [Tavis El Hamaza: lust of the eyes], because a waterfall isn’t תאוות העינים, right? Isn’t it? I think. And I was thinking about this שטיקל תורה [shtickl Torah: piece of Torah learning], and I was thinking that there’s a few הלכות [halakhot: Jewish laws] that I was thinking are associated with this. I think I mentioned some of them in the next part of my [manuscript], I mentioned some halakhot. But for example, like if I’m going and write my Yiddish version of this I’ll bring these ראיות [ra’ayot: proofs].

So one ראיה [ra’ah: proof] is that—so מעילה [me’ilah: misuse of sacred property] is when you’re enjoying, when you take something away from הקדש [HaKadosh: sacred property] or ישראל [Yisrael: the Jewish people] or something like that and then you have to pay back. And the law is, the law is that from hearing the beautiful songs of the כהנים [Kohanim: priests] or smelling the קטורת [Ketoret: incense] or seeing the ישראל [Yisrael: Temple/sacred objects] or something that is beautiful you’re not מועל [mo’el: guilty of me’ilah]. And the reasoning I think is just that it doesn’t take anything away from anything. It’s not like כל נהנה [kol neheneh: all who benefit]. It’s things that, right? סנה נבזה לחושה [Seneh nevzeh lechoseh: the sense is not diminished by use]. But the point is also there’s a different point that people say sometimes like otherwise it would be very weird. Like you wouldn’t be allowed to look at the בית המקדש [Bais HaMikdash: Holy Temple] because you’re enjoying the beauty of it for your own sake and like it’s supposed to be only for God. Like it doesn’t work that way. Okay, that’s a question. It is a question. Like are you allowed to enjoy that? Right? The backwards question of the loving your תפילין [tefillin: phylacteries]. Are you allowed to love [sacred objects]?

But the answer is that להנאה [le-hana’ah: for benefit/enjoyment] has these different senses. הנאה [Hana’ah: benefit/enjoyment] is the kind of הנאה from חוש משש [chesha mishash: sense of touch], what we’re talking about now, and there’s the kind of הנאה of כל מראה וריח [kol ma’ar v’reach: all sight and smell], which are not considered הנאה, or not considered מעילה [me’ilah: misuse], like אבא הקדש [Abba Haggadash: regarding sacred property], at least, not called me’ilah, because it’s not—he would, ביבליא לחו [Biblia Lachu: according to their reasoning] would say, because it’s not taking anything, but I would say because it’s not a kind of pleasure, it’s a different kind of—I’m just saying that it’s a different kind of thing. These three senses are different.

Physiological Observation: Distance Senses vs. Contact Senses

Instructor: They’re also distance senses, right? The physiological differences that we see, hear, and smell things at a distance, but we don’t touch or taste anything without physical touch. The sense of touch is ultimately what’s going to impact the world in ways that…

Student: Yeah, these things are connected, I’m saying.

Instructor: All these things are connected, these differences. But then, so what was I thinking? I forgot what I wanted to say. So I was thinking about this difference, right? So then, that’s one of them.

The Question of Blessings on Sense-Pleasures

Instructor: Then, there’s a question like this. There’s a question both about smell and about sight, right? So like I said, there isn’t—so there’s ברכות הריח [birchas ha-rei’ach: blessings over pleasant smells], that’s what I started to talk about. Then there’s ברכות הנאה [birchas hana’ah: blessings over benefit] right for us without—enjoy or I think הנאה [hana’ah: benefit/enjoyment] has implies not only enjoy…

[End of chunk 5]

The Distinction Between Bodily and Non-Bodily Pleasures: Halakhic Categories and Aristotelian Function

Chapter 1: The Classification of Blessings: *Birkat Nehenin* vs. *Birkat Shevach*

Instructor: Because explicitly in the Gemara and the Mepharshim [commentators], when you make a bracha [blessing] like Shehecheyanu [the blessing recited upon experiencing something new or joyous] or something, you see your friend that you didn’t see for a long time, you say a bracha. That’s not called bracha [*birkat nehenin* – blessing of benefit/pleasure], although you enjoy it. We call it bracha. Interestingly, you make a bracha on smells. Wait, wait, we have a separate macabre [source] for it. Wait. That’s what I’m going to talk about. If you learn the brachas [blessings], you’ll see that it’s not called a bracha [*birkat nehenin*] either. Sometimes it is called that, but there’s a special Gemara that says that we knew there from a *kal vachomer* [a fortiori logical inference] because it’s not the same.

But first let me talk about the margin, like the bigger split, right? For things that are a great pleasure, you have to take great pleasure and, you know, having a baby or seeing your friend—we don’t call this person animal because even there’s some tip when we say the word *hana’ah* [benefit/pleasure] which has some correspondence at least with the word pleasure here. It’s in the same area, although I don’t know if it’s the same exact meaning.

Student: Doesn’t it mean benefit?

Instructor: Yeah, it could mean benefit, but it has to be positive benefit, right? Which is kind of pleasure. Or kind of this kind of pleasure. It doesn’t mean pleasure, but it can mean…

Student: Right, but that’s what I’m saying. Like when we talk about *hana’ah* in the sense of benefit, we’re talking about physic—we’re basically talking only about the sense of touch kind of benefits.

Instructor: And *birkot hana’ah* [blessings of benefit] is only about the sense of touch. Touch and taste as well. We’ll get to the question between touch and taste in the next class.

So I’m telling you, when you see a beautiful scenery, you make a bracha. And we call it *birkat shevach* [blessing of praise]. We don’t call it *birkat nehenin* [blessing of benefit]. Right? You say, oh, it’s a massive bracha, I’m seeing something beautiful. There’s no benefit you get out of that.

Student: What do you mean? The pleasure, that’s the benefit.

Instructor: So you think—there’s a different kind of pleasure. So call it whatever you want. I think it’s getting at the same difference. Call it, it’s a pleasure without benefit.

Student: Well, what do you mean it’s not benefit? I’m loving it, I’m happy, it makes me happy, it makes me content.

The Nature of Aesthetic Benefit vs. Bodily Benefit

Instructor: I don’t know. What I’m trying to say is that benefit is really an intrinsic type of value. Like it’s a value to you that it’s a value to see beautiful things because I just ate, okay? So there’s another thing that doesn’t have so much to do with a lack. I don’t know what extent that’s true—people have a need to see beautiful things, and if you never—if you don’t go a few months without seeing anything beautiful, you become depressed. I don’t know.

Student: Yeah, but that’s not—why not call that of benefit?

Instructor: Why? Because it’s too fuzzy. Because most people don’t need that.

Student: Everyone needs—by the way, it’s not true. Everyone needs that. Anyone that lives—hello—anyone that hasn’t seen a beautiful thing, even a beautiful person, right, a beautiful thing for a few months should fast, go and see a beautiful thing.

Instructor: It’s like a lot because no, no, you don’t need it because like you’re depressed.

Student: Well, like beautiful things—a lot of levels of beautiful things. Like there’s degrees of beauty. But like a person can’t live without beauty. I don’t think that’s true. You could have beautiful thoughts and see them in your mind.

Instructor: I’m not saying you have to like go travel to somewhere or watch something, but I do think—so you’re right that there’s a difference. I’m saying all these things are way different ways of getting—I’m showing you that it’s accepted that there’s this differences. Like there’s—

Student: Yeah.

Instructor: Someone in some sense—that’s why you have to make a beautiful soul. We have to make a pretty beautiful room here. It helps me a lot. It used to be more depressing here when it was the garage door.

Student: Yeah, yeah. I definitely agree. It’s sure worth the investment.

Instructor: Yes. For sure. I’m looking to make it more beautiful, think of some art and something.

Student: Well, we have a…

Instructor: Yeah, I have that wall. I have to just hire a commission artist and do something.

Student: You think if we would have continued, it would have been depressing?

Instructor: Yeah. Because then we don’t see beautiful—no, you ultimately you’re less inspired. It’s less—I don’t think it would have been depressing because we still get—you would have to compensate with something else.

Student: Okay. I’m not saying you couldn’t—you’re depressed.

Instructor: You see you don’t need a beautiful—you do need—you see it’s not true. That’s why we did it.

Student: That’s why I disagree with like—

Critique: Recognizing Higher Human Needs Beyond Food and Sex

Instructor: I know. This is also—we’re gonna get to this, I guess next time, I don’t know, whenever I get to it. Like this is where my disagreement with like the Torah-im people is, that everyone recognizes food and sex as human needs, and they don’t recognize the higher needs, which are actually the Creator needs. Like, you could be like a big *mevurach Ephraim* [unclear reference, possibly a learned person] that’s never saw a beautiful thing and doesn’t care about anything being beautiful, and he has a very broken soul because of that. Although, and he tells you, what do you mean eat? I have to eat. Instead that’s worse, because you have to eat and now we’re going to get back—you have to be just like an animal.

Chapter 2: Aristotle’s Function Argument Applied to the Senses

And this gives us a criteria here, also explanation, right? So Aristotle says, besides for people not talking about vision and hearing and smell as being dissipated, as being *ba’al ta’avah* [one controlled by desires], we also can explain this. Because remember—you remember it, but this is where we get to it—you remember that one of the big things with human beings is that it should be human and not animal. Or at least focus, or at least find this unique good and the poise in which he is unique. Just like everything. I think we’re not going to repeat that theory. This is the very, very important *ergon* [function] theory from Book 1, Chapter 7 [of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics], which the Rambam [Maimonides] repeats in the Acknowledgement to *Perek Chelek* [Introduction to Chapter Ten of Tractate Sanhedrin]. And anyways, the function argument.

Animals and the Sense of Touch

So now therefore, animals have the sense of touch. All animals enjoy food and sex. All animals that have the sense of touch, okay? Which is—they’re interesting, the animals that we’re talking about. Maybe even all animals, but at least, you know, the big animals, mammals, I don’t know.

But no animals, or at least we don’t talk about animals—again, you know, whenever we say animals don’t, someone’s going to come and find me an article somewhere that says the animals do. We don’t care about those kinds of questions. But no animals enjoy seeing beautiful things or hearing beautiful things or smelling beautiful things. Animals do get aroused by these senses, the ones that have it, right?

The Example of Dogs and Perfume

And dogs have better sense of smell than humans, but no dog buys perfume. Did you ever notice a dog buying perfume? You could trick a dog with your perfumes, but that’s because it reminds him of the thing that the smell—he thinks that that’s—

Student: No, that’s because you’re—

Instructor: If you don’t—you trouble people also that I—

Student: She’s saying animals—animals only, right? Animals—

Instructor: So this is exactly shows you. Animals could work smell. They smell and he’s going to chase his food by the smell or he’s going to chase his woman, you know, female by the smell and so on. But he will not enjoy the sense of smell in itself. And this is what shows us exactly this distinction: that to enjoy the taste or the touch of the food, that’s the animalistic thing. And that’s why this is the worst kind of thing. Because that is where people are just like animals. To enjoy the smell in itself is a human thing.

But of course animals don’t smell—smell, but animals—they do have sense of smell. They even enjoy—it seems like they enjoy it. But we don’t say that the, you know, the lion saw a beautiful zebra walking in the grass and was like, “Why, my eyes are feeling good now.” No, it’s like, “My stomach is feeling good now because it hopes that’s gonna have a meal,” right? It’s a very different kind of pleasure. And that is very, very important distinction between in which sense the eyes and things like—

When Do the Higher Senses Become Animalistic?

Student: And animals can act when they act that way?

Instructor: The opposite, right. If you only use—not only use—when we say, that’s why we’re saying that the question of temperance is a question of the sense of touch. Or the other three senses when they’re used for that. Oriented towards the application of the sense of touch. As a tool for that, right? Meaning that, right?

Student: Yeah.

Instructor: That’s the difference that we make. I think this is a very important thing. And this already gives us, like, not only we don’t call it that way—like, you’re not just saying, oh, we don’t say that someone who watches movies is *ba’al ta’avah*. Well, some people watch movies—that goes back to, we’ll get to this later, right? It goes back to different kinds of movies, right?

Application to Movies: Aesthetic vs. Arousal

There’s kinds of movies that are not interesting to watch. They’re actually ugly. The only reason you watch them is to arouse certain pleasures or something like that, certain bodily pleasures. And those are not—it’s not a *she’elah* [question] of *me’ah* [unclear] to say *nehenin* [benefit/pleasure]. You see, that’s my *kiddush* [sanctification/distinction]—oh, now I have to go back to the halakha [Jewish law].

It’s a *she’elah* of—whatever. It’s a whatever it is. It’s not a question of the sight, because your sight—your eyes are just serving the body in this sense. That’s why I’m going back to my *hetel halakha* [halakhic distinction] that I’m based on this. So in the same—so I forgot to finish this halakha thing in the opposite sense. But if you’re seeing the movie for the pleasure of—

Student: Right, right. I’m going to get—if it would have beauty, that’s what you’re saying.

Instructor: No, I’m not saying that’s cool. I’m not making that claim. I’m saying that belongs to a different question. We didn’t get to what happens.

Student: No, we didn’t.

Instructor: We get it. It’s already 11 o’clock. Hello? It can go forever.

Chapter 3: Completing the Halakhic Framework: *Birkat Hare’ach* and the Soul’s Pleasure

What I’m saying is, this is where I want to complete the thing by saying the other side. Then I said there’s a halakha that says you make some *birkat nehenin* [blessings of benefit]. Then there’s *birkat hare’ach* [blessings on smell], which is not *birkat nehenin*. I think in the Rambam it says it’s a kind of *birkat nehenin*, but in the Gemara it says it needs a different source because the Gemara explicitly calls it this way.

And think—and this Gemara is a *rippled virus* [unclear reference] that are the opposite. I don’t know, remember the same words? That smell is something that the soul or the breath [*neshamah*] enjoys and not the body. This is literally the difference between pleasures of the body and pleasures of the not body. Even smell is not a pleasure of the body. And when you say body, we mean obviously touch, right?

Because smell is not a divine—it’s not a spiritual thing, right? The Gemara is not saying that smell is spiritual or intellectual or something like that. What we’re saying is that it’s not of the body, right? And the body in the way—in the way that there’s a different thing called *marav re’ach* [pleasant smell] and eating or drinking or something like that.

Now, then there’s other *brachot* [blessings] that we call—we call them, right? For example, right, sometimes called in a general sense, but blessings on the eye. Now I’m really—and there’s also—

[End of chunk 6]

Blessings on the Senses: The Problem of Separating Aesthetic from Bodily Pleasure

Chapter 1: Clarification: Smell as “Not of the Body”

Instructor: The smell is not a divine, it’s not a spiritual thing, right? The Gemara [Talmud: the central text of Rabbinic Judaism] is not saying that smell is spiritual, the Gemara is saying, or intellectual, or something like that. What we’re saying is that it’s not of the body, right? And the body in the way that there’s a different thing called *marav re’ach* [enjoying fragrance] and eating, or drinking, or something like that.

Chapter 2: Categories of Blessings Beyond Food

Now, then there’s other *bruchos* [blessings] that we call, we call them *Birkat Re’iyah* [blessings on sight], right? For example, *Perek HaGomeil* [a chapter in the Talmud], right? Sometimes it’s called *Birkat Sare’ach* in a general sense, but blessings on the eye.

Student: There’s also—but they’re not really about hearing.

Instructor: I wonder about this question. Now I feel like a new question.

Student: So there’s famously—

Instructor: Right, right, right.

The Puzzle of Missing Blessings

Instructor: So there’s famously no *bracha* [blessing] on the pleasure of sex. For nobody knows why. There might be a *bracha* in like *bracha*—but anyways, that’s one question. There’s basically only *brachas* on food, food and smell *bracha*. And but there should have been one for sexual pleasures. We don’t know why. Maybe because it’s like considered too low or something like that. We don’t really know what.

Student: Yeah, maybe because it’s a *kilkul* [damage/degradation].

Instructor: We don’t know. No, it shouldn’t have to be. No, it could be. I don’t know what’s so funny. It’s a theory reason, you know.

Digression: Why No Blessing on Tzedakah

The *Rishonim* [early medieval rabbinic authorities] have said you shouldn’t—there’s no *bracha* on *tzedakah* [charity]. It’s generally no *bracha* because by the time you’re going to be finished taking out your—I’m giving the *bracha*, the poor person is going to be dead, you know, like you can’t, just give him the money and move on. So yeah, it’s hard to say, yeah, *bruchas* come with a certain situation.

The Question of Hearing Beautiful Music

But anyways, there’s *bruchas* which are unseen. So for so, so now I’m realizing that there’s *bruchas* like if you hear good news or something you make a *brucha*, or bad news you make a *brucha*. But that’s none of the pleasure of eating. So why? I have to ask the rabbis, why didn’t you make a *brucha* for hearing beautiful music?

Student: To listen to music?

Instructor: I don’t know why, you know. I’ll list the music.

Student: Sorry, no, it’s actually a hard bit.

Instructor: No, depending on the content of the music, I don’t think it’s only because you’re going to count them for the content.

Student: Yeah, it’s really—no, because this is about is about knowledge, right? It’s like about like you said it’s not about knowledge. It means good news, right?

Instructor: Yeah, which you can technically receive through any form of media, right? It’s not about the hearing, it’s not—

Student: Actually, it’s only one that you make, I mean, even if it’s fixed.

Instructor: Yeah, it’s a *mitzvah* [commandment]. *Megillah* [the scroll of Esther], maybe, whatever.

Chapter 3: Blessings on Sight and the Problem of Separation

But there are many, many, many *bruchas* on sight. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted to use this to illustrate this difference. So, for seeing beautiful things, you make a *brucha*, and it’s a kind of *brucha*. We call it *Birkat Sare’ach*, but I think it’s like for seeing something beautiful, you say, you know, God is great, He makes beautiful things. So, there’s a mass of *bracha*, or *she-kacha lo b’olamo* [who has such things in His world], and so on, including beautiful women, and it says in *Perek HaGomeil*.

Now, of course, most people don’t do this because they feel weird. No, most people don’t do this. Most people don’t do this because of this difference. Then it’s like, how do you lie to see a beautiful woman? Only by toast, and when you make the *bracha*, like with cat and silver, what does that even mean?

The Distinction Between Aesthetic and Animal Pleasure

So the answer is that there’s a difference between enjoying beauty which is a pleasure of the sense of sight and enjoying a woman in the same way an animal would enjoy the sight of a woman, right? See, maybe most people don’t—yeah, so maybe this is the problem. Maybe, maybe human beings have a hard time separating these two things when it comes to human women. I don’t know.

Like imagine you would be—I could give you a way of separating it. Imagine it’d be very old or some in some kind of you know a sexual person or an asexual state where you don’t have any sexual demand. Then you still can appreciate the beauty.

Student: True.

Instructor: If you’re, if you’re, you know, if you’re a heterosexual person, you could still enjoy beautiful personality the same kind, nothing, nothing, just like you see a beautiful thing. If you enjoy, appreciate beauty, and you have to wake up with that—that’s number one.

Does This Apply to Same-Sex Appreciation?

Student: What you’re saying, a man to a man?

Instructor: Yeah, why not? It doesn’t say only beautiful women. Maybe men are not beautiful.

Student: But you said women.

Instructor: No, you said women. No, no, humans.

Student: Three-year stylists.

Instructor: Yeah, I don’t say women. There’s also women explicitly in the stories and stuff, but no, of course.

Chapter 4: The Same Problem Applied to Smell: The Rama’s Ruling

Or the same discussion is regarding smell. So *Rama* [Rabbi Moses Isserles, 16th-century Polish authority] made a *halacha* [Jewish law] that you don’t make a *bracha* on some *bosem* [perfume] ever. You call it perfumes that a woman is wearing, or maybe not clearly a woman, maybe a woman that is *asura alecha* [forbidden to you], a woman that you’re not allowed to marry, or, yeah, then you shouldn’t make a *bracha*. The *Rambam* [Maimonides] sort of invented this *alecha*, or maybe he had a source for it, I can’t really say anyway.

Student: Even if you smell the smell of the sun coming over the person.

Instructor: Yeah, so theoretically, so there’s a question, there’s other questions about the *halachas* of the sun, but theoretically, if it has an *ikkar* [basic law], if they don’t make a *bracha she-kacha lo b’olamo*, at least they have to make *minei besamim* [blessing on fragrances].

Student: Exactly. You have to make *minei besamim*.

Practical Details of Scent Blessings

Instructor: If there’s like a real, if it’s just like a spray, I’m not sure, but if you like put some oil or something.

Student: No, it all has oil.

Instructor: Yeah, but I don’t know how much is considered, like how much is, like you just spray a little bit and I don’t know, is it still the air? How do you know it’s even the air?

Student: You just spray a lot so there’s no soap in it.

Instructor: Okay.

The Problem of Fallen-Out Practice

So anyways, like then you would have to make a *bracha*, according to the *ikkar halacha*. Again, this is, by the way, this is something that people just don’t do for no reason. I don’t know why. This is my, not my *lachash* [whisper/secret] here, but like we just stopped doing a lot of *brachas* for no reason. Pretend not to enjoy good smells. I don’t know why.

Student: Next week on the show on top.

Instructor: I don’t listen to this. I claim that when you make your—

Digression: Coffee

Since I got my new coffee thing, if you grind fresh coffee, you should make a *bracha*. I don’t know. I don’t know where it grows, the coffee. Anyways, it grows on a tree, right? Anyways.

Student: It’s pods in the ground.

Instructor: Those are the correct things you mean. So, you make a *bracha*.

Chapter 5: Concluding Thesis: The Separation Problem as the Core Issue

Anyways, so again, there’s this difficulty of separating these things for the same reason. Like, if you’re only enjoying the attraction or something like that, then you’re not enjoying the sight, then you can’t make a *Birkat Re’iyah* or a *Birkat Sare’ach*. And *Rama* might mean, because it’s *assur* [forbidden], but I think that’s the issue. If there would be a way of separating these things entirely, then there would be a separate pleasure for the smell itself, or for the sight itself, that has nothing to do with the rest of the story.

Anyways, that’s my, I guess that’s enough for today. *Chazak u’varuch* [strength and blessing].