Understood more broadly, morality must consider consequences in history, because it is for the sake of history—the improvement of the condition of man and his eventual redemption—that morality exists. Berkovits explicitly deduces the nature of morality from the belief in an eventual redemption of mankind in history. “Man in all his creaturely existence is to be redeemed. Redemption is an event in history. This world is to be established as the kingdom of God. The deed, man’s daily life in space and time, must find its place in the kingdom; it builds the kingdom…. The deed, being the stuff out of which history is made, is never private; it is always public, as history itself.”⁵³ Morality does not concern merely the individual’s adherence to the divine command, but is the individual’s way of contributing to the biblical vision of redemption. In the moral deed, man takes responsibility for history.

In this, Berkovits’ understanding of morality resembles Max Weber’s “ethic of responsibility” governing the conduct of politics. In Weber’s view, the moral political figure acts in full consideration of consequences because he is acting for the furtherance of certain results, and is held to account principally for his success or failure to bring them about.⁵⁴ Under such a system, right and wrong take on a different kind of meaning than under an approach based on the purity of intention, and require a different sort of discipline. Confronted with a situation that is unjust or dangerous to the public, the individual asks not which rules he is obligated to follow based on a theoretical ethics, but begins by asking what a just situation, or one which eliminated the danger, would look like; only then does he ask what is necessary in order to bring about such a state of affairs. The political figure described by Weber is motivated by a general sense of responsibility for outcomes, and is guided by his own understanding of what results are desirable. Moreover, because he is interested primarily in achievement rather than the correspondence of his actions to a set of rules, the kind of knowledge necessary for proper moral decisionmaking is vastly different under an ethic of responsibility than under an intention-driven ethics. If one must account for results, then one’s understanding must include a due appreciation of all those things upon which results depend, beyond one’s own intentions: Historical and cultural factors, the proclivities of political actors, human nature, and so forth.

It is such an ethic of responsibility that Berkovits sees being demanded by the Jewish understanding of the deed, which is “always public, as history itself.” He finds in Judaism a moral perspective according to which our actions are determined out of a sense of responsibility for the attainment of certain results, be they on an interpersonal or on a communal level. This is not to say that Berkovits advocates the abandonment of the weighty rules of behavior which we ordinarily associate with morality. On the contrary, precepts such as the avoidance of lying, killing, and violating the property of others are essential elements in the creation of a society of the sort envisioned in the Bible, and it is for this reason that in addition to its articulation of a larger vision, the Bible provides a collection of strong precepts which are intended to contribute to its realization. But there is a crucial difference between the rules appearing under an ethic of responsibility and the moral law as understood by Kant’s Jewish followers: Because the rules are derivative of a larger vision of society, they are also subordinate to that vision—that is, they are not “absolute” laws at all, but general principles which ought to be followed under most conditions, but which should not be binding in cases where their application clearly does more harm to that vision than does their neglect. The result is that even such clear-cut biblical precepts as the avoidance of shedding blood and infringing on the property of others are found—in the killing and expropriation experienced in wartime, for example—to be limited in their applicability when the greater good is truly at stake; and many other, often less weighty, biblical laws are affected in much the same manner. Moreover, the purity of intentions, which Kant posed as a minimal condition for moral behavior,⁵⁵ takes on secondary importance under an ethic of responsibility, in which intentions are only important insofar as they affect outcomes. And finally, as far as intellectual faculties are concerned, an ethic of responsibility places a far greater emphasis on one’s ability to judge the weight of rules against the consequences of behavior in a given case than on one’s ability to formulate a pure intention. Soundness of judgment, rather than purity of thinking, becomes the decisive element in the composition of the just soul.⁵⁶

By introducing morality as an ethic of responsibility, Berkovits’ understanding of Judaism avoids two common pitfalls of modern moral discourse. On the one hand, because rules governing right and wrong are not absolute, but are instead subordinated to outcomes, moral valuations cannot ignore the specific situation in which the individual finds himself and upon which outcomes depend; in no case are we left concluding that he has done something that is on some level “wrong” even though it was the best of all available options—a conclusion which follows easily from a morality based on absolute rules, but which violates our basic understanding that right and wrong are intimately linked to free will. On the other hand, because the biblical vision is an eternally binding one, the source of moral understanding is objective and external, so that man is not left groping for moral guidance solely from within the confines of his own immediate reality—a belief in the primacy of the “situation” which flows naturally from the existentialist enterprise, but which ultimately produces a morality that is hopelessly subjective and relativistic.⁵⁷ 

In Judaism as understood by Berkovits, the moral actor adheres to the heteronomous precepts which the Bible and the tradition provide, but always keeps before his eyes the redemptive state of affairs which they are meant to bring about, and therefore understands that he must ultimately exercise his own judgment in determining where the applicability of a given moral precept reaches its limit. Morality for Berkovits is, like politics, an “art of the possible,” the aim of which is not mere adherence to a code, but the advancement of a vision of reality through the application of the consequence-driven values articulated by the prophets and their heirs in the rabbinic tradition.

 

Berkovits’ argument with Kantian moral thought and its Jewish adherents is, however, predicated on a deeper critique of much of Western moral thought since pre-Christian times. This tradition has consistently sought to portray morality as a set of ideas which, once grasped and accepted by man’s non-physical side (that is, his intellect or spirit or soul), will bring about a commensurate change in the behavior of his physical element. Thus for Plato the good is identified with knowledge; for the Christian with faith; for Kant with reason. What unites this traditionis its fundamental dismissal of the body as a significant factor of the good, the assumption being that once man’s non-physical element is properly directed, the physical side will surely follow.⁵⁸ 

However, as Berkovits points out, the physical side does not surely follow—and therefore it cannot be left out of the moral equation. Morality is distinct from other areas of philosophy in that it is about performance, which means that it cannot exist without the cooperation of the body. As he writes:

Here Berkovits confronts the Platonic-Christian moral tradition, which sets itself against the body and the material world it inhabits, with what he understands to be the traditional Jewish account of man’s nature as comprising spiritual and material elements, both of which must be engaged and tutored if he is to redeem himself and his world.⁶⁰ In learning to act morally, man faces a dual task befitting his dual nature: His conscious self must learn to identify and desire the good, and his material side must learn how to carry it out. Because the material is no less intrinsic to morality than the spiritual, any moral system which does not account for both will necessarily fail to maintain its applicability for actual, physical man—and without applicability, morality can have no meaning.