Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - Jewish Philosophy: Free Will - Part 2

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

okay on thursday we started talking about free will and we covered a number of points i'm going to start by going back through them briefly and if any questions have arisen in the meantime i'll be happy to discuss them those who are new we have to do them to get them on the table i'm happy to do that it's an axiom of judaism that people have free will one very important reason for that is anything without free will has no responsibility for what it does no responsibility means no good and evil no right and wrong no reward no punishment it's equivalent to a thing or an animal so for us since the torah starts and ends with responsibility and reward and punishment good and evil right and wrong free will is an absolute requirement and although there are contemporary philosophers who talk about good and evil right and wrong without free will they are subject to a dreadful mistake that's only my view but the view of some of the best contemporary philosophers of course like everything else in philosophy it's controversial but that is definitely the starting point of the jewish tradition what is the jewish definition of free will well definition is probably too strong a word let me just insert a remark that the request for a definition isn't always in order although philosophers are supposed to live by the battle cry define your terms it's a mistake the request for definition isn't always in order we are constantly using concepts for which we have no definitions truth justice beauty and the rest there are no definitions for those concepts and we're using them all the time without apology

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1. 0:21okay on thursday we started talking about free will and we covered a number of points…
2. 5:41that certainly is not has no responsibility for what it does nothing it does can be…
3. 11:39maybe he's the oldest child maybe he hasn't actually catalogued these features and built his statistic…
4. 17:26god's knowledge yesterday that's got to be nonsense can't even be possible to contradict god's knowledge…
5. 23:14gives me depends upon what i do if i do x i'll get a certain kind…
6. 29:09standard solution um i would not put it the way you did because things can't be…
7. 34:28um and it it spills over into other thoughts as well we're talking to make this…
8. 40:14you talk about justice justices in the end how you deal with people mercy is in…
9. 46:01that everything that's described about those little things is how they relate to other things all…
10. 51:47and by the way in the ancient times when ancient people thought that thinking goes on…

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