Assistant Professor of Religion and International Literary and Cultural Studies, Yoni Brafman (Tufts University) will present Morality and Halakhah Revisted: Mistaking a Cultural Predicament for a Conceptual Problem for the first Ethics Monday of the spring '25 semester. In-person and via zoom. A light lunch will be served. Registration is required.
About Morality and Halakhah Revisted: Mistaking a Cultural Predicament for a Conceptual Problem:
The relation between morality and halakhah (Jewish law) is a perennial topic of debate within modern Jewish communities committed to Jewish observance. It may also be taken as an instance of the general conflict between morality and religion. In the Jewish context, it ranges over issues of private life, like gender and sexuality, as well as public concern, like economic justice and the ethics of warfare. In a typical case, some halakhic norm conflicts with a moral duty. Either it prescribes what morality forbids, or it prohibits what morality requires. For example, the seeming moral prohibition on impinging on another person’s bodily integrity without his consent conflicts with the apparent halakhic prescription of male infant circumcision. Or the seeming halakhic prohibition of anal sex between men conflicts with the apparent moral value of sexual expression or even moral prohibition against discrimination. Despite these real and raw clashes, this talk offers a contrarian argument: a conflict between halakhah and morality is not inevitable, arising from the nature of morality and halakhah, or reason and revelation, or Athens and Jerusalem. It rather emerges only when specific conceptions of halakhah and morality are adopted. There are, moreover, reasons not to hold them. Indeed, it suggests that, from a formal perspective, morality both supports the normativity of halakhah and constrains its content. Once the contingency of a conflict between halakhah and morality is appreciated, a diagnosis of why it presently seems unavoidable is possible. It concludes that thinking that a conflict between halakhah and morality is inevitable mistakes a cultural predicament for a conceptual problem.
LOCATION:Dennis F. Thompson Seminar Room, Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, 124 Mount Auburn Street Suite 520N STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20250224T170000Z DTEND:20250224T180000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR