Are You Arrogant or Do You Just Enjoy Honor?

Most people naturally assume that arrogance and an interest in honor are synonymous, but Luzzatto has a more nuanced approach. He views them quite differently.

At the end of chapter eleven, Luzzatto identifies and analyzes what he considers to be the most common character flaws: Arrogance, Anger, Jealousy, and Desire. Luzzatto then divides Desire in two - the desire for money and the desire for honor - bringing the total to five common flaws. (The "desire" discussed here is a character issue and is to be distinguished from the Yetzer HaRa for prohibited relationships. Luzzatto dealt with that problem at length at the beginning of the chapter.) By way of introduction, Luzzatto tells us that these traits all occur naturally in man and it is no small battle to get them under control.

Luzzatto thus begins his list of flaws with arrogance and ends it with the desire for honor. Interestingly, he spends more words on these two traits than on any of the others. But aren't they one and the same? What is arrogance if not an obsession with being honored?

The answer to our question can easily be found by contrasting Luzzatto's sharp definitions for these two traits. Arrogance, he writes, is thinking that you are important and deserving of praise. Honor, on the other hand, is a desire. The difference is clear. Arrogance is a way of thinking about yourself (irrational and baseless, but a way of thinking nonetheless) and the desire for honor is just that, a desire. Fundamentally, it no different than other desires, e.g., the desire for money. Desires exist irrespective of how you think about yourself.

Although it is true that arrogance can lead to an obsession with honor - Luzzatto himself described this phenomenon in his treatment of arrogance - it does not follow that any interest in honor is indicative of arrogance. It is natural for man to enjoy honor and the humble are no exception. 

What an incisive insight! And what a great relief! Thank you, Luzzatto.

Giving Nachas

In chapter eighteen Luzzatto introduces "Chassidus." Echoing what he wrote in the introduction to the book, Luzzatto decries all the nonsense that passes for Chassidus and feeds the perception that Chassidus is basically irrational. The truth is that Chassidus is an exceedingly deep concept, the roots of which are expressed by the well-known line of the Gemora in Berachos (17a):

אשרי מי שעמלו בתורה ועושה נחת רוח ליוצרו

"Praised is the man who labors in Torah and gives Nachas to his Creator."

How exactly can a human being give pleasure to God? In unqualified and inspiring prose, Luzzatto compares the love of God to the love for a parent or a spouse. The effect of true love is always the same: it generates a desire to give pleasure to the other. The loving husband figures out what his wife likes and he buys it for her. He certainly doesn't wait for her to ask for it; that would miss the point. The same is true for one who is in love with God. Such a person uses the mitzvos of the Torah to read God's Mind and to figure out the kinds of things that God likes. He then expands on the mitzvos and fulfills the spirit of the law in all that ways that he deems would give God pleasure. This is what it means to give Nachas to Hashem and this is the true Chassidus.

The idea is a beautiful one, but the implementation is fraught with dangers. Who can say with confidence that they have read God's Mind accurately? Are the mitzvos of the Torah open to subjective interpretation and expansion? Won't this lead to the very extremism and foolish behaviors Luzzatto complained about? If there are no defined parameters, anybody do anything in the name of Chassidus. This is a frightening prospect.

Not surprisingly, our concerns were addressed by the Gemora itself. Let's read it again: "Praised is the man who labors in Torah and gives Nachas to his Creator." Chassidus is for the man who labors in Torah! Only a Talmid Chachom with a deep understanding of the entirety of Torah could conceivably succeed at Chassidus, accurately determining God's unspoken preferences. The rest of us will have to settle with the practices of Chassidus mentioned by Chazal and described at length by Luzzatto in chapter nineteen. As the sages said flatly, "An ignoramus cannot be a Chosid" (Avos 2:5).   

It was a delight to discover that R. Chaim ben Atar (the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, a contemporary of the Ramchal) makes a similar point. Moreover, he saw it in a verse.     

אם בחקתי תלכו ואת מצותי תשמרו ועשיתם אתם

"If in my laws you walk, and my mitzvos you safeguard and perform..." (Vayikra 26:3)

The Ohr HaChaim typically offers multiple interpretations, but here he went all out. Forty-two different ways of understanding this verse! Here is number six:

This [verse] can also be explained in light of what they said, "An ignoramus cannot be a Chosid" (Avos 2:5). This means it is forbidden for an ignoramus to practice Chassidus, to take on stringencies and [add] fences [to the law] as the Chassidim do, because sometimes he will be "strict" in a way that actually turns out to be lenient. [For example,] you could have a "Chosid" who wishes to commit to fulfilling the mitzvah of Onah (conjugal relations) on the holidays. He thinks it is a great mitzvah to be intimate with his wife on Yom Kippur; we have heard that this has actually happened! This is why the sages forbade the ignoramus to practice Chassidus and this is the meaning of our verse: "If in my laws you walk" - i.e., [if you] labor in Torah study (cf. Rashi ad loc.) - then "my mitzvos you shall safeguard" - you should put up safeguards for the observance of the mitzvos, i.e., [extra] fences and observances - but otherwise, don't! 

A Blind Man and a Horse II

We have addressed the question before. Why does Luzzatto need two different metaphors to illustrate the same point? Here we revisit the problem and offer an alternate approach.

The two metaphors are found in chapter two. The title of the chapter is "Defining the Trait of Zehirus." What is Zehirus? A literal one-word translation will obviously not due justice to Luzzatto's chapter-long exposition, but this much we can say: A Zahir is an introspective person who takes life seriously.

Despite the title, Luzzatto spends the bulk of the chapter describing not the Zahir, but the non-Zahir, and it helps sharpen his point. Man must be introspective about his life, warns Luzzatto, or else he is doomed. One who lacks Zehirus "submits his soul to the dangers of oblivion" and "follows his habits like a blind man in the dark." 

Luzzatto continues his scathing rebuke of the non-Zahir with the following metaphor:

"One who goes through life without considering if his lifestyle is proper or inappropriate is like a blind man who walks along the edge of a river. He is in grave danger..."

Our author is not satisfied. He presents yet another metaphor for the non-Zahir, this one from Sefer Yermiyah:

"No man regrets his evil deeds, saying, 'What have I done?!' They are all busy running like a horse plunging into battle" (Yermiyah 8:6). That is, they were pursuing and following their habitual pursuits and lifestyle without giving themselves time to analyze their behavior...

The question is this. Why does Luzzatto need the second metaphor with the horse? What did the horse add that wasn't captured by the blind man?

In an earlier post we suggested that these two metaphors describe two different non-Zahir personalities. But now we offer an alternative possibility. 

Both metaphors describe the very same person - at two different stages of his development. 

The first step in the degeneration of man is his failure to be introspective and self-critical. At this point he stumbles through life like a blind man, guided only by his desires and oblivious to the dangers inherent in his lifestyle. This is bad enough, but it soon evolves into something worse: the development of habits. This is where the horse comes in. The problem now is no longer mere ignorance, but an ingrained tendency for unhealthy behaviors and the mindless pursuit of pleasure.

At the beginning of the chapter Luzzatto told us that one who lacks Zehirus 1) "submits his soul to the dangers of oblivion" and 2) "follows his habits." It stands to reason that the two metaphors that follow are meant to illustrate these two points. The blind man walking along the edge of a river is submitting his soul to the "dangers of oblivion" and the horse plunging into battle is blindly "following his habits." Habits born of the ignorance of the laissez faire.

At the end of chapter nine Luzzatto explains why Zerizus comes after Zehirus:

You can understand why it is appropriate for Zerizus to be the level that comes after Zehirus, for generally people can't become Zariz unless they are Zahir first. A person who pays no attention to his behavior and doesn't contemplate the service [of God] or its requirements - which, as I have written, is the trait of Zehirus - will find it difficult to feel a love and a longing for it and be driven by a passion to [serve] his Creator. For this person is still drowning in the physical pleasures and running in pursuit of his habits that distance him from all of this...  

"Drowning in the physical pleasures and running in pursuit of his habits!" 

Here in chapter nine, as he refers back to the non-Zahir personality, Luzzatto echoes the metaphors of chapter two: the blind man who is about to fall in the river and the galloping horse. As before, drowning comes first. 

The metaphors are graphic, but the slippery slope of the riverbank is all too familiar. After drowning in the river of pleasure, the careless blind man resurfaces transformed; now he is a battle horse. Saddled with animalistic addictions and driven by an insatiable appetite, he gallops further and further away from a meaningful relationship with God.

A little Zehirus early on can save a lifetime of heartache.

(For a third approach to these two analogies see this post.)