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“If morality is a myth or an illusion, why persevere with moral judgments, moral
language, and moralistic ways of thinking? Joel Marks offers a plausible alternative:
desirism. This means thinking, speaking, and acting in accordance with our rationally
scrutinized desires, rather than claiming the support of a mysterious, always-elusive,
indefinable source of moral authority. Marks is now the foremost advocate for doing
away with morality and replacing it with something more defensible, and – by most
people’s lights – better.”
Russell Blackford, University of Newcastle, Australia
Reason and Ethics

Reason and Ethics defends the theoretical claim that all values are subjective
and the practical claim that human affairs can be conducted fruitfully in full
awareness of this.
Joel Marks goes beyond his previous work defending moral skepticism to
question the existence of all objective values. This leads him to suggest a
novel answer to the Companions in Guilt argument that the denial of
morality would mean relinquishing rationality as well. Marks disarms the
argument by conceding the irreality of both morality and logic, but he is still
able to rescue rationality while dispensing with morality on pragmatic
grounds. He then offers a positive account of how life may be lived
productively without recourse to attributions and assertions of right and
wrong, good and bad, and even truth and falsity.
Written in an accessible and engaging style, Reason and Ethics will be of
interest to scholars and students working in meta-ethics as well as to the
generally intellectually curious.

Joel Marks is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of New

Haven and a scholar at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for
Bioethics. Among his many professional and popular publications are two
previous monographs defending amorality, Ethics without Morals and Hard
Atheism and the Ethics of Desire. His website is www.docsoc.com.
Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory

Comparative Metaethics
Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality
Edited by Colin Marshall

An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility

Michelle Ciurria

The Principle of Double Effect

A History and Philosophical Defense
David Černý

Apologies and Moral Repair

Rights, Duties, and Corrective Justice
Andrew I. Cohen

Kantian and Sidgwickian Ethics

The Cosmos of Duty Above and the Moral Law Within
Edited by Tyler Paytas and Tim Henning

Cultivating Our Passionate Attachments

Matthew J. Dennis

Reason and Ethics

The Case Against Objective Value
Joel Marks
For more information about this series, please visit:
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Reason and Ethics
The Case Against Objective Value

Joel Marks
First published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2021 Joel Marks

The right of Joel Marks to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,

and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

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ISBN: 978-0-367-53432-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-08406-8 (ebk)

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For Richard Garner
Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Method and Plan of the Book

1 Moralism

2 From the Moral to the Amoral

3 From Amorality to Desirism

4 What Reason Can Do

5 Companions in Guilt

6 Further Objections and Replies

7 What Is It Like to Be an Amoralist?

8 The Divided Amoralist

9 We Are the 99 Percent

10 Still More Amoral Moments

About the Author

Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

As always, there are so many people who have been essential to my

thinking and writing, in addition to those, often from another era, whom I
know only through their writing. Today there is also the phenomenon of
knowing someone only through their writing but interactively, thanks to e-
mailing; thus, among the friends, colleagues, and acquaintances I want to
thank are several I have never met. But whether the relationship has been in
person or electronically mediated, I cannot say enough about the help I have
received, though various mentions throughout the text may indicate where
it has proved crucial. For now let me just call the roll: Eric Campbell,
Elizabeth Eynon, Maxim Fetissenko, Richard Garner, Susan Gilbert, Matthew
Hanson, Erin Hausam, Laure Hoenen, Huibing He, Stephen Latham, Jennifer
Maas, Lisa Moses, Thomas Pölzler, Martin Rowe, Mitchell Silver, Michal
Škrek, Peter Smith, Pamela Stang, Melanie Stengel, and Benjamin Winton.
Pölzler and Silver deserve special acknowledgment for their meticulous
scrutiny of the entire manuscript (but should be absolved of all
responsibility for my headstrong resistance to a minority of their
suggestions).
I would also like to express my appreciation to two wonderful institutions
that have given me an academic berth for the writing of this book: the
University of New Haven and Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for
Bioethics.
Finally let me mention the comprehensive and very helpful suggestions
offered by two anonymous reviewers for the publisher, as well as the
enthusiastic support of the editors.
Thank you, all.
The Foil
The bulk of this treatise owes its existence to Mitchell Silver’s theory of
morality. This is apt, since his theory, according to his testimony, owes its
existence, or at least its articulation in book form (Silver forthcoming), to my
own work on amorality. By developing his own counterview that morality is
real and necessary, Silver has been attempting to refute my view that belief
in morality is belief in a phantasm and is better dispensed with. Now I am
returning the “favor.” Why would I want to spend a whole book counter-
refuting his ideas and arguments? Two reasons. One is that even on my own
view of ethics, there is nothing to rule out someone’s rationally choosing to
be a moralist in some shape or form. I just happen to prefer being an
amoralist in the sense I have characterized and for the reasons and causes I
have detailed in previous books and articles and columns and continue to do
in the present book. But therefore I do need to spell out carefully what
advantages I see in this amoralism over any moralism that might also seem
attractive.
The second reason is that, despite my ultimately rejecting both the thesis
and argument, Silver’s theory does contain a premise I find intriguing and
inviting, to wit: Morality is the practical form of reason. In more detail (as I
understand it, but Silver has also given this account his qualified approval),
Silver’s story goes like this. We know the world through our beliefs, and we
assess those beliefs with reason. Ultimately reason endorses (or rejects)
beliefs in terms of their utility. (Silver calls this idea rationalist pragmatism.)
The ideal is a complete set of maximally useful, i.e., rational, i.e., true beliefs.
Morality is simply the set of true or rational beliefs about what we ought to
do. (Note: Other domains of normative belief pertain to other oughts,
including the meta-belief, which Silver presumes would be a member of the
ideal set, that the total set of our beliefs ought to be logically consistent.)
The beauty of this scheme is that it nips the is/ought problem in the bud.
For ever since Hume, ethicists have puzzled over how to rationalize ought in
terms of is – that is, how to derive ought from is; for example, to
demonstrate the wrongness of someone’s action (an emphatically
prescriptive ought not) on the basis of its being an act of lying (a merely
descriptive is). Silver’s solution is that the one need not be derived from the
other, since oughts and is es are rationalized in exactly the same way,
namely, in terms of their utility as members of a coherent total set of beliefs.
(This is analogous to Darwin’s maintaining that humans and monkeys have
a common ancestor, as opposed to saying that humans descended from
monkeys.) So both the belief that so-and-so is lying and the belief that he or
she is doing something wrong have a common source; the second is not
derived from the first. Problem solved (or dissolved).
This is a beautiful scheme (I feel, although I also feel I have successfully
refuted it in Chapter 5). It is also remarkable (to me) that both Silver and I
maintain that ethics is the same as practical reason(ing), and we both claim
to have dissolved the is/ought problem. However, my manner of dissolving it
is more radical: I maintain that there simply is no moral ought, that is, that
no moral propositions are true. Thus, we no more need to “solve” or grapple
with the is/ought problem than we need to solve the how-many-angels-can-
fit-on-the-head-of-a-pin problem. There is no ought, and there are no angels.
But the devil is in the details. So … read on!
Introduction
Method and Plan of the Book

Rhetoric and Philosophy

My professional training and career have been as an analytic philosopher,
and my style of writing has conformed to that. This means that the emphasis
has been on arguments. But over a decade ago I experienced what I call an
anti-epiphany, when the scales fell from my eyes and all that I had fervently
believed about ethics suffered a diametric reversal. Subsequent to that I
found my writing style changing as well. This may be a case of form
following function. I now see ethics as a matter of preferences rather than
objective values; and, consonant with that, I no longer seek to prove
anything. I continue to employ analysis and argument, but they have
become subsidiary to the main business of persuasion and expression. Here
is an example.
I have a long-standing professional friendship and dialogue with a
veterinarian named Pete, who works at an animal research laboratory. Pete
likes to portray himself as focused solely on the welfare of the animals in his
care, even though those animals spend their whole lives in confinement, are
sometimes subjected to painful experiments, and are usually killed once
their scientific use is over. Pete sees to it that the animals are housed and
treated and finally killed (if they cannot be adopted) as humanely as possible
under these circumstances. Nevertheless, Pete also acknowledges that he
supports animal experimentation for biomedical purposes, since he cares
about the welfare of human beings; so although his professional role is
limited by the circumstances, he, however regretfully, since he loves
animals, willingly abets this kind of research.
Pete knows that I oppose animal experimentation, and I have even
encouraged him to quit his job. My argument is a familiar one in animal
ethics, namely, that concerning ourselves with the welfare of animals who
are being exploited is a distraction from, and can even be counterproductive
to, reaching the ultimate goal of liberating the animals from that
exploitation. By making animal exploitation more palatable, we make it
more likely to endure. (I was introduced to these ideas by Lee Hall and Gary
Francione.)
On one recent occasion, Pete put me on the hot seat. “You are telling me,
then,” Pete said, “that given the alternatives of letting the rats and mice in
my lab be treated with cavalier disregard for their welfare, as they were
until very recent times, and having someone like me on staff to assure that
their pain and distress are minimized, you would choose the former? For
instance, a growing body of research has shown that CO2 is aversive to
rodents. But inhalant anesthetics, like isoflurane, are a humane alternative to
CO2 for rendering animals unconscious. This allows for a two-step
procedure: The rodents are first anesthetized using isoflurane, then upon
insensibility they are killed with CO2. But you think we should be
indifferent, or even antagonistic, to this option of euthanasia because those
rats and mice shouldn’t be in the lab in the first place, and we should
therefore be directing our efforts all and only to removing them from the
premises?” (I have put some of these words into Pete’s mouth from
University of British Columbia [2015]).
I fully felt the force of Pete’s question. But I also was repulsed by it. Why?
Because the very example, intended to be persuasive, inevitably brought to
my mind a very unflattering image. I explained this to Pete. “You will forgive
me for the comparison, which is almost a cliché among people trying to
drive home any kind of point these days, but you sound to me like a Nazi
from World War II. Here I think the comparison is truly apt, in fact even for
historical reasons, since there may have been an actual causal connection
between the mechanized slaughter of animals in the United States and the
mechanized slaughter of human beings in Nazi Germany (according to
Patterson 2002). In any case, let me put your question into this other context:
“I am the commandant of a concentration camp and you are a soldier there who has
been charged with executing the civilians arriving by the trainloads. Let’s say I am
perceived by my men as concerned about their welfare, and so you come to me and
open your heart about how sick it makes you to be participating in this slaughter. You
say to me, ‘The women and children especially. Mein Gott, one of the little girls in front
of the firing squad this morning reminded me of my own daughter. I don’t know how I
can continue to carry out my duty.’
“I, the commandant, reply, ‘I understand your feelings. Even though our Führer has
determined that these individuals are vermin infesting the German state, they
sometimes bear a remarkable resemblance to fully human beings and can elicit similar
feelings from our hearts. Therefore I think I must implement a plan that has been under
consideration for just such reasons, namely, the installation of gas chambers to take the
place of firing squads. These will dispatch our inmates without the need for face-to-face
confrontation that is so upsetting to you and, I’m sure, others who are tasked with this
dirty job. It will even be less painful and distressing to the inmates; after all, even
vermin have feelings. Our scientists and engineers and chemists are hard at work
devising methods to fool the inmates about their ultimate fate and then to execute them
as quickly and painlessly as possible, so that we ourselves need not be upset even by
agony in their faces as we herd them into the chambers or by any screams from within.’
“So now I, Joel, ask you, Peter: How does this make you feel? Would the welfarist
accommodations soothe your soul about the task at hand? Is it sufficient to try to
minimize the suffering of all concerned ‘under the circumstances’? Or are the
‘circumstances’ themselves the greater and more urgent problem?”

Pete took my point and was silent. But I realized that I also took his point. If
there was no immediate remedy to the situation, would I not want the little
girl to believe she is just going to take a shower and for her then to black out
almost instantaneously, rather than be hauled in front of a firing squad? And
if I were the person in charge or the one carrying it out, would I not, for my
own sake as well as the little girl’s, strive to devise the least painful method
possible … however distasteful I might find that task, or however repulsive it
might seem to an outsider for me to be engaging in such an activity because
of its ultimate aim of executing the innocent?
 So what I then realized … or saw as further confirmation of what I have
realized many times before … was that there is no answer to the question
Pete and I were dealing with. That is, there is no single, universal, objective,
absolute answer. Furthermore, I take this fact to be tantamount to there
being no such thing as morality – right and wrong, good and bad – since I
find moral relativism to be unintelligible. (I will explain this in more detail
in the body of the book. In the meantime, note that I am of course not
denying that morality does exist in the sense of a believed and felt
phenomenon that greatly influences the course of human events.)
You might object that, even were one to grant that Pete and I were
dealing with a real moral dilemma, this would not rule out that some things
are clearly right or wrong; for example, would we not all agree that it is
simply – objectively, absolutely – wrong to torture the rodent or the human
“vermin” just for fun? Alas, I reply, the answer is clearly “No.” And for two
reasons – two kinds of reasons. One is that there are human beings who
think it would be fine (and fun) to do it, even if they thought about it; and I
am not confident at all that such people are merely outliers. The other is the
more abstract and theoretical consideration that it does not seem plausible
to posit something of a metaphysical nature – like God or karma – that
would make our beliefs in right and wrong true universally and objectively;
whereas, on the other hand, a plausible empirical story can be told about
why evolution would have generated such beliefs in us but having only
“relative” application (for example: It’s wrong to kill “our” little girls but not
“theirs,” or OK to torture rats but not humans).
So I take the “dilemma” Pete and I faced as emblematic of all moral
questions. I further conclude, therefore, that, since there is no truth of the
matter, there is also no way either of us could prove our own view of the
matter. Hence, there is no point in our generating logical arguments in an
attempt to accomplish that task.
Have we nothing to say to each other, then? Oh, I think we have a great
deal. However, I now reconceive the enterprise of mutual persuasion as not
so much rational as rhetorical. I am not suggesting that we engage in
irrational dialogue; and indeed I fully support mutual critique of the
soundness of each other’s arguments. Nor do I advocate deception or
indulging in ignorance. Nevertheless, nonrational dialogue may be
appropriate. What I mean is that, in lieu of our attempting to argue a point,
our real ethical business is to strive to influence (alter, reinforce, deflate, etc.)
intuitions. (Of course I will have much more to say about what I mean by
“ethical.”) More epigrammatically I can say: I no longer want to prove
something, but to move someone. (This “someone” might even be myself.)
Thus, I want Pete to come to share my intuition or feeling that
experimenting on rodents is “just not done.” I want him no longer to feel the
need of an argument to prove that proposition, any more than he would
need me to convince him not to perform the same experiments on little girls.
But similarly, Pete wants it to be, as we say, unthinkable to me not to
experiment on rodents if doing so held out some chance of sparing little girls
pain and suffering or death, and so the only question of animal ethics with
regard to animal experimentation would be how to minimize the pain and
suffering and killing of the rodents, and not whether we should be
experimenting on them in the first place.
To achieve our respective desired persuasive outcomes, Pete and I were in
effect telling each other stories. Pete’s story could not prove that animal
welfarism is the morally right policy to pursue. My story could not prove
that welfarism is morally wrong. However, the two stories were effective in
moving both of us (toward both our own and the other person’s position, or
both toward and against both positions). May the stronger rhetoric win! But
this is not really a wish or an injunction. The “stronger” rhetoric will “win.”
Furthermore, that is a mere truism, since, by definition, whichever rhetoric
more strongly moves someone (and thereby “wins”) is the stronger. The
particular rhetoric I myself have adopted as the default, however, is not
simply “whatever works,” but whatever works compatibly with candor and
reason. Call it honest rhetoric. No doubt different rhetorics (honest or
otherwise) “work” under different conditions (of historical time, cultural
place, receptivity of auditor, skill of speaker, etc.). But to think that ethical
persuasion does not require rhetoric is a wishful fantasy if not fanaticism:
the belief that merely “being on the side of” right or good is sufficient to
carry the day. It’s a belief in God, really, who is of course “on our side.”
Mutatis mutandis for meta-ethical persuasion. The (also honest)
alternative to the method I have adopted in this book would be for me to
write a treatise that ends in confusion … like the early Platonic dialogues or
entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. That would be the only
fair accounting of the state of the arguments about the nature of ethics. But I
don’t want to leave you throwing up your hands. My goal is to move you to
change your ways (if you are a moralist) and most assuredly to move me as
well, as one’s own moralism is equally difficult to uproot.
Let me broaden this discussion still further. I see philosophy’s special task
as the pointing out of logical possibilities. Often these take the form of
counterexamples to a hypothesis. But they can also serve as new hypotheses.
Thus, whereas analytic philosophy in particular may be inherently incapable
of proving any positive proposition, it can serve excellently as both a critical
and a creative tool. The idea is to “make the world safe for” new, or even
discarded, conceptions of things: to show that a certain idea is viable after
all, despite appearances or dogmas or unquestioned or even unaware
assumptions to the contrary. (I think this idea is Daniel Dennett’s [1995].) A
model instance was some medieval astronomer’s pointing out the ambiguity
of the diurnal motions of the celestial bodies: Maybe they are apparent and
not real! In the amoralist project it is pointing out the ambiguity of
categorical obligations and prohibitions and permissions: Maybe they are
subjective feelings and not objective facts!
Science is then the ideal epistemic next step to test what began as a mere
logical possibility, which then becomes a hypothesis. (Note: The context is
presumed to be the search for truths about the empirical world. The search
for truth in logic and mathematics belongs to those disciplines.) But it turns
out (as an empirical fact) that some hypotheses do not lend themselves to
scientific resolution. (I am indebted for this insight to the in-my-opinion
fruitless, albeit valiant, attempt of Thomas Pölzler to save philosophical
science in his meticulously argued book, Moral Reality and the Empirical
Sciences [2018].) There are, I think, two chief reasons for this, albeit usually
in combination: (1) There is an irresolvable dispute about the meaning of a
critical concept, or (2) The effort involved in establishing a fact of the matter
is simply unfeasible. Relevant examples of (1) are settling on univocal
meanings of “morality” or “happiness” or “desire;” of (2), ascertaining
whether all human beings would have the same basic desires under ideal
conditions (meaning what?) or whether most human beings would, under
actual conditions, prefer a so-called desirist regime, of the kind I will defend
in this book, to a moralist regime. These are then fair game for philosophers
to adduce whatever considerations they can come up with, and in as
persuasive a manner as they can devise, to support their favored ones and
refute the ones they don’t like.
(It occurs to me that these ideas may, unsurprisingly, have roots in my
early exposure to the ideas of others. In particular I think now of Carl
Popper, who is well known for having made the analogous claim that
science could disprove but not prove hypotheses; Brewster Ghiselin [1952],
who edited a marvelous collection of testimonials to the varied sources of
creativity; and Thomas Aquinas [and I am grateful to Arthur Stephen
McGrade, the teacher who introduced me to him], whose method was to
adduce any and all relevant considerations to buttress his and refute
opponents’ claims. Perhaps my original contribution to this mix is to suggest
that analytic philosophy offers an actual method for creatively generating
new hypotheses, namely, the uncovering of logical possibilities.)
Philosophical activity may therefore be a largely rhetorical endeavor, as I
have been arguing (rhetorically!) in the case of ethics, to bring more
credence to one’s favored world … so as to enlist more people in one’s
favored ideals and projects (like, for me, not harming animals, or getting rid
of anger, or removing TVs from restaurants and waiting rooms and motel
rooms and even people’s private living rooms and bedrooms). How
extraordinary, therefore, that I am now living testimony to the shrewd
insight of an academic psychologist, who, four decades ago, when I asked
him whether, given my interests, he would advise me to apply to be a
doctoral candidate in his graduate program, replied: “We are interested in
asking questions that can be answered. You sound like a philosopher.” It is
the absolute truth that that remark of his is what gave me the idea to look
into philosophy, as I had never studied it before or considered it for a career.

Outline of Chapters
The basic theory of amorality was laid out and defended systematically in
my first book on the subject, Ethics without Morals (2013). The format of
parts of the present volume is similar to that of my second book on
amorality, Hard Atheism (2016): an assemblage of short pieces promoting
amorality, loosely grouped into chapters by subthemes. Reason and Ethics
goes beyond the previous books to question the existence of all objective
values – and not only moral ones. The emphasis remains, however, on the
practical implications of accepting the subjectivity or even non-existence of
morality; more specifically, the book makes the case that human affairs can
be conducted fruitfully in full awareness of such acceptance. The argument
proceeds as follows.
Chapter 1 sets the stage for the rejection of morality that underlies this
book’s main subject of how to live without morality. Before something can
be rejected and an alternative offered, it is obviously important to explain
what is being rejected. This chapter argues that such a task is not so simple
because any word of significance has multiple meanings. This fact itself
refutes what I call moralism, which, in this broad sense, is the view that all
words have a single meaning and all questions a single correct answer. This
book is therefore premised on the denial of not only morality (in one or
more senses) but also of moralism (in the sense specified). Morality is then
characterized in two ways, as a presumed set of objective values and as the
belief, with attendant social institutions, that such values exist. Subsequent
chapters will argue both that the belief is not true and that, true or not, the
belief is less conducive to the satisfaction of our considered desires than
would be some amoral alternative. Chapter 1 also sketches the pragmatic
assumptions that underlie the book’s main arguments.
Chapter 2 reviews arguments for amoralism in the two senses of moral
nihilism and moral abolitionism. The first is the denial of objective right and
wrong and other moral values, in other words, of moral realism; the second
is the recommendation to think and act as if moral nihilism were true,
whether it is or not. The possibility of an ethics that rejects objectivity but
retains rationality is broached. The case for moral nihilism invokes
evolutionary ethics as the best explanation of our believing in objective
moral values even though that belief is baseless. Moral nihilism is
acknowledged to be compatible with atheism and the denial of free will. The
case for moral abolitionism relies on a critique of moral practice as typically
involving double standards, egotism, anthropocentrism, and a hardening of
attitudes that breeds intransigence and conflict. Moral abolitionism is also
defended against alternatives such as moral fictionalism, moral
negotiationism, and moral conservationism, all of which, while similarly
rejecting moral realism, seek to retain various vestiges of morality in
practice.
Chapter 3 provides a preliminary characterization of the ethics this book
seeks to promote, which I have named desirism. Desirism dispenses with
moral belief and moral practice. The chapter builds on the defense of moral
abolitionism in Chapter 2 to fill the vacuum left by the recommended
removal of moral thinking and feeling and action from our lives. The
positive ethics of desirism recommends in their place simply that we subject
our desires to rational scrutiny before acting on them. This is not itself a
moral injunction, I argue. A compatible conception of rationality, and of
practical reasoning in particular, is sketched, which will be amplified in the
two next chapters. Some advantages of a desirist ethics over a moralist ethics
are also introduced, including the elimination of guilt feelings. Here part of
the task is to show that this really would be an advantage, as some see guilt
as playing a beneficial role in human affairs.
Chapter 4 takes up practical reasoning, a key component of the ethical
desirism I am promoting in this book. Indeed, desirism might even just be
the recommendation to engage in practical reasoning. Desirism might thus
more aptly be called “rationalism.” (This also accounts for the book’s title.)
But all of this terminology requires extensive examination, as terms like
rationality and desire, like morality and ethics, have different meanings in
different schemes. Yet we philosophers do mean to be discussing substantive
issues in the end, and we only see conceptual analysis as a necessary
clarification of just what everyone is talking about, asserting, and denying.
Specific theses defended in this chapter are that rationality and normativity
can be understood in empirical terms, moral relativism is an incoherent
notion, moral reasoning is necessarily specious, and the requirement of
moral consistency is foolish (in the Emersonian sense). This chapter
concludes the preliminary exposition of the book’s project.
Chapter 5 takes up the so-called Companions in Guilt argument, which, in
my preferred articulation, likens the rejection of morality to the rejection of
rationality and thereby suggests that giving up morality is too costly or
simply unnecessary. I consider this to be the strongest objection to
amoralism. Strictly speaking, it is an objection to an argument for moral
irrealism. But my concern is to promote moral abolition, which is naturally
based on moral irrealism but need not be. Therefore my greater worry about
the objection is that it strikes at the heart of my defense of a rationalist
ethics (desirism) as an alternative to morality. I offer a twofold reply to the
objection. One is that morality and rationality are not as “companionable” as
the objection supposes. The other is that, even if morality and rationality
share the “guilty” feature, there are independent, pragmatic grounds for
dispensing with the former while retaining the latter. A second articulation
of Companions in Guilt is also considered, involving intuition rather than
rationality. A discussion of reasons and causes and of justification versus
explanation lays the basis for its refutation as well.
Chapter 6 addresses a host of additional objections to the
amoralist/desirist project. Some of the objections pertain to the underlying
irrealist claim that objective moral properties do not exist. Others pertain to
the central concern of this book that, whether there are objective moral
properties or not, rational reflection on life and the world would lead most
of us to prefer a life and society that presumed there aren’t. The objections
considered include that moral disagreement has been overblown; morality
has such a powerful hold on us because it is obviously useful and even
essential to human survival; morality is ineliminable from the human
psyche; morality could be tailored to avoid abolitionist objections; the ethics
of desirism that this book promotes as an alternative to morality depends for
its efficacy on the very same desires as morality; amoralism is just another
form of moralism; to eliminate a sense of right and wrong is to become a
psychopath; moralism is a straw person, since most people live by a
conception of morality that is not moralist in the problematic sense; and
Buddhism offers an attractive alternative to both morality and a desire-
based ethics.
Chapter 7 begins the final part of the book, which examines the question:
How different from a moralist would an amoralist be? More specifically,
how different from a moralist would a desirist be, an amoralist who always
acts on the basis of his or her considered desires? In many ways, I assert,
there would be no difference at all, since, just as there are indefinitely many
types of moralists, so there would be indefinitely many kinds of desirists.
Nevertheless, I argue, desirism may make for a distinctive type of attitudes,
and these attitudes, which would be free of anger, guilt, intransigence,
disdain, and the like, and would manifest curiosity, sympathy, and
practicality, are attractive both intrinsically as feelings and instrumentally as
behavior. The problematics of apology and diplomacy for a desirist are then
considered. I also stress that amoralism is not itself a duty. I further clarify
that this chapter focuses on the ideal of desirism, which may be as elusive as
any other ideal.
Chapter 8 brings the “what it is like to be an amoralist?” question, first
broached in Chapter 7, closer to ground level by considering in greater detail
moralist lapses the (ever-aspiring) amoralist is liable to. This is not only a
practical problem but could be framed as an objection to amoralism since
ethics is inherently practical; so what kind of an ethics would amorality be if
it could not be achieved? The rest of the book therefore examines the
practicability of amoralism. It also styles this as the problem of modernity.
The conclusion of the present chapter builds on two analogies. The Müller-
Lyer illusion of two parallel lines appearing to be of unequal length persists
even in full knowledge of their equal length. Just so, moralist feelings are
likely to persist even if we become convinced of their illusory nature.
However, in both kinds of illusion, we retain the capacity to resist the
delusion of believing in the appearance and hence to act on the basis of
reality. This process is also likened to the way a yogic meditator ignores
distracting thoughts and brings her mind back to a mantra.
Chapter 9 presents a detailed case study of one application of desirism –
in both theory and practice – to a highly contested issue in animal (or
medical) ethics, namely, whether laboratory experimentation on non-human
animals is justified. Unlike eating animals (in the United States anyway),
using them for medical and even basic research can plausibly be argued to
be a matter of life and death for human beings. That is the basis for the
standard utilitarian defense. Meanwhile, a desirist who happens not to want
any animals, human or otherwise, to be subjected to breeding, confinement,
procedures, and finally “sacrifice” or “euthanasia” of this sort, has, qua
amoralist, no moral argument to offer on behalf of her preference. This
chapter makes two main points about this asymmetry. One is that the
desirist can still mount an effective rebuttal against the defender’s argument,
in this case by exploding the claim that animal experimentation is humane,
without in any way compromising her amoralist commitments. The other is
that the rebuttal is more likely to be effective not only logically but also
psychologically for having been grounded amorally rather than morally.
Chapter 10 concludes the book with a potpourri of other applications of
desirism – the author’s recommended alternative to morality – to issues of
the day gleaned from newspapers, periodicals, and books, professional and
lay. Timely topics include designing rules of the road for self-driving cars,
using new techniques to investigate biology, dealing with disrespectful
students, adopting universal health care, aiding animals in the wild, and
resisting Nazism from within. Throughout there are also more general
lessons drawn about the authority of professional ethicists, the methodology
of practical ethics, and the effect of language on our ethical outlook.
 I take it as a sign of the merit of the desirist ethics I am promoting that it
has been so fruitful. I experience a bottomless font of exciting ideas,
solutions to theoretical puzzles, and helpful practical applications. But there
is also a more global drive, as new conceptions of the whole open up before
me. What I am really about herein, and forever, is trying to discern and
refine the essence of ideas I am intrigued by. My experience of writing about
amorality over the last decade-plus has therefore recapitulated, mutatis
mutandis, that of one of the giants on whose shoulders I stand, thus:

So it was not only that the different parts of [Immanuel Kant’s first] Critique were
conceived, one by one, over a period of approximately eleven years, but also that the
“essential point” underwent some development and change during that time. It took
some time for Kant to realize what the point of his critical philosophy really was.
(Kuehn 2001, p. 235)
1
Moralism

Template
Morality is a fill-in-the-blank template. Thus: The right thing to do (or a
permissible thing to do when there is more than one option that is not
wrong) is [Choose one]:

1. whatever will (or is rationally considered likely to) work out for the
best for all sentient beings.
2. whatever promotes human flourishing.
3. whatever will (or is rationally considered likely to) have the best
consequences for oneself.
4. whatever God commands.
5. whatever reason dictates.
6. whatever shows equal consideration for all affected parties.
7. whatever karmic duty prescribes.
8. whatever best preserves human relationships.
9. whatever promotes personal excellence.
10. whatever expresses aesthetic taste.

The list could continue indefinitely. Of course it does not follow that all of
these general options would yield different, not to mention incompatible,
answers to particular ethical questions. Maybe they would all give the same
answers. For example, God might always command that one do what will
have the best consequences for everyone, which would be identical to what
karma prescribes, which would also turn out to have the best consequences
for oneself, etc., and in the particular case this would mean, say, Eleanor
ought to lie to her father on his death bed so as not to upset him. In fact, it is
pretty much guaranteed that the argumentative method of casuistry, by
which a particular conclusion is drawn from a general premise, is capable of
generating this happy result. As Groucho Marx is reputed to have said,
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.”
Unfortunately, casuistry can generate this result for both the conclusion
that one ought to tell the lie and that one ought not to. But so much the
worse for casuistry? Why think that this creates a problem for morality?
Would it not be natural to expect that ethical questions have both correct
and incorrect answers? So if casuistry can generate contradictory answers, it
must not be a reliable method for deciding ethical questions. Casuistry is
liable to degenerate into sophistry, which produces arguments that may
appear to be sound but in fact are not. Some of the arguments will contain a
false premise, or a moot premise, or involve a faulty inference based on
equivocation, or beg the question, or commit some other fallacy of
reasoning.
But this response to the profligacy of casuistry only postpones the
reckoning with the template problem. For the application of duly vetted
reasoning to ethical questions leaves us with the original superfluity of
ethical principles that now seems likely, from time to time, to generate
incompatible answers to particular ethical questions. A person obeying a
biblical commandment might reason, correctly, that she ought not to lie to
her father, but a person concerned to produce the best consequences for
everyone might reason, correctly, that she ought (or at least is morally
permitted) to lie to her father on this occasion.
“Correctly,” that is, if the respective ethical principle were true. So perhaps
we must winnow out the false principles. Ideally only one would be left; and
it would always, via sound reasoning, yield true answers to particular
ethical questions. For example, we might conclude that biblical injunctions
cannot be considered true as universal principles, whereas the imperative to
maximize benefits to everyone is unconditional; therefore, if it followed via
true premises from the latter, as well as from all other true ethical principles
if there are any others, the true ethical answer might be that one may or
ought (or ought not) to lie to one’s father (even) to spare his feelings on his
death bed.
But it’s not going to happen: Philosophers and other thinkers and
moralists will never arrive at a consensus, or anything close, about which
ethical principle or principles are true and false. The reason is simple. It
seems obvious that many principles have intuitive appeal to most of us. (I
am forever grateful to my friend and colleague Wendell Wallach for pointing
this out.) But this does not, cannot mean that we adhere to them
unconditionally, since they have contradictory implications. They are much
more likely to be rules of thumb, therefore, that offer us helpful guidance on
some but not all occasions and different rules on different occasions. So a
single Supreme Principle of Morality is a will-o’-the-wisp.
However, this realization does not solve the template problem either. For
even if one discarded some candidate principles as baseless (for example, a
principle based on the existence of a god in whom one does not believe or
on the authority of a holy book one does not accept) and accepted all of the
remaining principles as conditional, it would still be undetermined how one
is to decide which principle applied in which circumstances. So should
Eleanor tell her dying father the truth about his son (that he’s a
philanderer)? If she believes that the family relationship is paramount in the
present case, then she ought to lie (to keep the family intact). But if she
believes self-interest to be the applicable principle, then she ought to tell her
father the truth (because then he will disown his son and leave the family
fortune to her).
Perhaps, then, the template problem is an artifact of the highly abstract or
principled nature of the options offered to us by moral theory. There is no
real problem at all, one might surmise, for if we relied instead on particular
answers to particular ethical questions on particular occasions, there would
certainly be the possibility of significant agreement. For example, nobody,
after rational reflection, is going to think it’s OK to intentionally kill
thousands of healthy, harmless babies.

Babies, or Off the Deep End

So let us put principles, even conditional ones, aside altogether and look
directly at particular cases (as the ethics of moral particularism would
advise). Won’t we here at least, at last, find (near) unanimity of moral
opinions? A number of psychological studies assure us that we will. And
common sense would seem to back this up. Take those babies: Who in his or
her right mind is going to think it’s OK, not to mention obligatory, to kill
thousands of them?
Alas, lots of people. The people who ran the Nazi concentration camps, for
instance. Of course they were evil, seems the easy response. Well, then, how
about folksy President Truman, who OK’d the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki? Ah, but this is handily accommodated by the doctrine of
double effect, a time-honored moral principle that excuses “side effects” of
otherwise justified actions. So in this case, since the bombings plausibly
served the legitimate purpose of shortening a horrific war by demonstrating
the overwhelming destructive power the US could now wield, the
“unintended” killing of the innocents was not wrong. Casuistry at its finest.
But, then, what about the pre-atomic area bombing of cities in Germany
and Japan by British and American forces in the same war? This appears to
have been for the express purpose of demoralizing the civilian populations
(Ellsberg 2017, Chapters 14 & 15). Still, the defender of our moral nature
might reply, that was an extreme situation, which it is not fair to judge by
peacetime standards.
Yet war does not seem relevant to the millions of legal abortions
performed in the US since Roe v. Wade. Is this not an example of massive
indifference to killing millions of babies? Whoa! is the response: This
example is irrelevant. These are not babies killed, but fetuses. And this is a
matter of fact, not of morals.
But, to use the idiomatic rejoinder which I myself now find compelling:
Says who? In other words, the template problem has now spread beyond the
strictly moral to the (nonmoral) factual. A baby is [Choose one]:

1. an infant or very young child.

2. a newborn or very young animal.
3. the youngest member of a family, group, etc.
4. an immature or childish person.
5. a human fetus.

That list is taken straight from dictionary.com.

This suggests that the morality of killing multitudes of babies is still at
issue, since the question is not whether a fetus is a baby – clearly it is, in
sense number 5 – but whether it is wrong to kill a baby. And different
people obviously, even after rational reflection, conclude differently: Some
people view a fetus as no more entitled to continued existence than an
appendix, while other people view a fetus as just as entitled to continued
existence as a newborn or a child or an adult.
But is the reflection about this matter really rational in all cases? Of
course not in every instance. Might we yet suppose that reason favors one
answer over the other? Thus, I imagine that many who believe that it is a
woman’s right, absolutely or in specified circumstances, to choose whether
to have an abortion, also believe that anyone who denies this must be
committing some fallacy or other in their thinking (if they are thinking at
all). For instance:

A full-blown, rights-bearing living human being has a heartbeat.

A fetus has a heartbeat.
Therefore, a fetus is a full-blown, rights-bearing, living human being.

That argument is an instance of the fallacy of asserting the consequent. The

conclusion simply does not follow logically.
 But this does not settle the case at all. The abortion opponent could be
reasoning otherwise and logically. Or she may not value rationality over a
direct intuition in this case: Hearing the heartbeat in her own belly through
a stethoscope has convinced her that the fetus is something precious or holy.
Or – yes, even this – reason may be as much up for grabs as any other
concept defined in the dictionary. For example, dictionary. com gives one
meaning as “the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions,
judgments, or inferences;” but who is to say that this must at all times be
restricted only to inferences that accord with the rules of logic currently
recognized by a particular elite? Indeed, it is arguable that our actual
inference-forming processes tend to violate the rules of logic (a conclusion
one might logically draw from reading Kahneman 2011). I readily
acknowledge that I myself favor reason in the logical sense (with, again,
logical particularly defined). But that hardly settles the question. And it is
commonplace even among this elite that the rules of logic cannot themselves
be proven true by logic without begging the question. This does not make us
logicians skeptics. But it surely denies us the absolute authority to put down
the unbelievers on logical grounds.
In the end, it seems to me, everything is a fill-in-the-blank template, in the
simple sense of any word of significance to be found in the dictionary
having several different senses in common use, so that any question about
anything at all, which would of course be formulated using words from the
dictionary, potentially has multiple and possibly conflicting correct answers.
Of course there are many occasions when people are merely mistaken about
which sense is intended by their interlocutor, so a disagreement about
meaning may be only apparent and not real. And even when there is
genuine disagreement, one could hope for progress without limit in dialogic
reconciliation of conflicting concepts. But a central premise of my argument
in this book is that there is a natural human tendency to consider meanings
as univocal and not recognize even the possibility of disagreement. (This has
certainly proved to be the case – an unexamined assumption, one might put
it – in analytic philosophy, and as a result the field has had no more success
than Socrates in figuring out what virtue – or anything else – is.) And it is
this tendency, with the attendant expectation of univocal answers to
questions of all kinds, that I call moralism (in the broad sense).
Moralism is the bête noire of my brief. And as the discussion to this point
illustrates, it extends far beyond morality. It encompasses, as I said,
everything. Even, of course, itself, since a moralist in this broad sense might
insist that moralism is thus and so and not thus and such, even if others
considered it to be thus and such. I, an amoralist (contra the kind of moralist
I have just described), say only that this is what I mean by moralism, but I
allow that others could with equal legitimacy or rationality mean something
different by it.
But why do I call it moralism if it goes beyond morality? Simply because
its most salient manifestation in my experience of myself and the world is
with regard to morality in the ethical sense. And I shall spend most of the
book talking about moralism as an ethical phenomenon.
And what is my beef with moralism? Mainly that it engenders endless
pointless but often devastating conflict. (Ingram 2015 consonantly dubs this
the Conflict Argument.) And I would prefer a world with less conflict in it.
(The flip side of the moral coin is that it engenders entrenched attitudes and
practices and traditions, which is something else I don’t care for, and which
is what accounts for the intensity of conflict between moralists with
opposing views on something. A different metaphor, then, captures my
conception of a noxious moral universe, to wit: The resistances to change
and diversity are, respectively, the temporal and spatial aspects of moral
spacetime.)
Mitchell Silver has suggested to me that realism might be a better term
than moralism for the general phenomenon. And I can certainly appreciate
that straightforwardly factual questions and answers can be as contentious
as moral ones. Indeed, the very phenomenon I am exercised about is the
assimilation of values (right and wrong and good and bad) to facts. So I have
no objection to using realism as synonymous with my moralism in the
broad sense – just as nihilism could be synonymous with my amoralism –
or even as preferable, given the common understanding of moral as
something of narrower scope. However, I will still find it useful from time to
time to use moralism broadly because I have become acutely sensitive to the
way attitudes accompanying straightforwardly factual assertions and
disputes (“The earth is 5,000 years old” or “The earth is 5 billion years old”)
will often ape attitudes that are typical of specifically moral assertions and
disputes (for example, the urge to hold someone in contempt, whether for a
moral infraction or for perceived ignorance about presumed facts); and I
would like to see them eliminated in all instances.
So, according to the moralist (in my broad sense), a rose is a rose is a rose,
and anyone who thinks a fetus is a baby is not simply using “baby” in a
different sense but is using the word incorrectly, saith the right-to-chooser;
and anybody who thinks the fetus is not a baby is not simply using “baby” in
a different sense but is using the word incorrectly, saith the right-to-lifer.
And I will trump them all, for, when in moralist mode myself, I accept
definition number 2 from the previous list as the one, true meaning of baby,
namely, “a newborn or very young animal.” (Here I take animal to
encompass human beings.) Thus, it was for moral reasons that a decade ago
I became a vegan and also began my “campaign” to make the whole world
vegan upon learning of the ongoing atrocity, without parallel in all of
human history, that has been (nonhuman-)animal agriculture, especially in
recent times with the introduction of factory farming. For, you see, it is not
only that human beings kill tens and hundreds of billions of harmless
animals every year unnecessarily (hence I would even call this murder in the
sense of violating a moral law against intentionally killing the innocent), but
also that these animals are, for the most part, babies (PETA n.d.).

Pragmatism, or Where the Truth Lies

I have admitted that my conception of moralism is idiosyncratic and
supremely broad. To repeat: By moralism I mean the assumption that all
sensical questions have one and only one correct answer. (Nonsensical
questions would be “How tall is Mount Everest: True or false?” “Does the
color red sleep furiously?” and “Is the present king of France bald?”)
Moralism in this sense may not seem odd at all when it comes to factual
questions like “Is the earth round?” or “Did Jane commit the murder?” or to
mathematical questions like “Does 2 + 2 = 5?” or to logical questions like “If
A is a bird, and all birds tweet, does A tweet?” It becomes more obviously
problematic when talking about meanings. For example: “Is a rhinoceros a
unicorn?” Yes or no, depending on whether the definition of unicorn
stipulates that the animal must be a kind of horse. Moralism does still,
however, allow for homonyms, such as bank (on the side of a river) and
bank (where you keep your savings), which are two words (that in English
happen to have the same spelling and pronunciation) not one. But the
moralist in my sense would, while accepting that there are two kinds of
banks, nevertheless insist that, say, the question “What is love?” has only one
true answer (even though love could manifest somewhat differently as
parental love and romantic love, and the word could have derivative or
metaphorical uses such as love of a hobby or of a food, and so forth), and the
same for morality and planet and marriage and God and animal and lying,
etc. ad inf.
But it is mostly in the realm of values that moralism has been challenged,
since questions like “Is abortion wrong?” and “Is (or was) it morally
permissible to drop the bomb on Hiroshima?” and “Is it wrong for the
average American to eat animals?” and “Is Dr. Strangelove the greatest film
ever made?” and “Are the Marx Brothers funny?” and “Was Van Gogh a
better artist than Manet?” and “Is Beethoven better than the Beatles?” seem
debatable to the point of irresolvability. This suggests that values are
inherently relative, which would be the opposite of moralism. And, again, I
have chosen the word moralism for the general phenomenon, since it is
precisely questions of moral value that seem the most vexing. People
typically have a much greater stake in the absolute, universal truth of their
favored moral convictions than in their aesthetic and other preferences. We
are much more prepared to allow art museums and movie theatres and
concert halls to showcase works we dislike (that is, on purely aesthetic
grounds) than to countenance behaviors we deem immoral, even if others
think they are perfectly permissible or even obligatory.
Yet I have chosen to challenge moralism on all fronts. As my earlier
remarks about the template problem indicate, I sense shaky ground beneath
all assertions of univocal truth, whether in the realm of values or meanings
or facts and even math and logic. This has been revealed to me through an
endless series of personal jolts: The student who insisted that a person is
lying whenever they utter a falsehood even if they believe it is true; the
foreign friend who took for granted that it is good to be a conformist,
whereas for me the word is practically a slur; the criminal justice
professional who maintained that a defendant convicted in a court of law is
guilty (not just was “found guilty”), whether or not the person actually
committed the crime; the pet owner who “loves animals” but is not a
vegetarian; etc. ad inf. See also the extended discussion in Chapter 9 of
humane and euthanasia and other terms used by animal experimenters. I
simply cannot deny that all of these terms have widespread usages that
differ radically from my own sense of their meanings.
My final acceptance of these differences as fundamental smacks of
nihilism, since if everything can be anything, then in effect nothing exists
(as objectively having certain properties and not others). Yet, by whatever
name, this metaphysical view is also somewhat commonplace in
contemporary philosophy. I have in mind specifically pragmatism: as
paradigmatically exemplified by Quine (1960) and most recently rendered by
Silver (forthcoming). The general idea (in my own take on the scheme and
its implications) is that our cognitive access to reality (even including the
reality of ourselves) is mediated by what it is useful for us to believe. (This at
once becomes very snake-swallowing-its-own-tail-ish, of course, since
pragmatism is itself something I believe.) Therefore one should expect both a
hierarchy and a relativity of true beliefs, for there is a continuum of real
conditions from the universal to the local that would determine what it is
most useful for human beings to believe.
Thus, it may make eminent sense for (almost?) all of us at (almost?) all
times to believe (or assume) that 2 + 2 = 4 and that If a and b, then a, since
life might be difficult or impossible if we didn’t believe such things; and so
natural selection would quickly eliminate any beings who believed
otherwise or at least eliminate their offending beliefs. The beliefs that
survived this evolutionary winnowing would therefore be universal and, for
all practical purposes, true (and hence, by pragmatism, true simpliciter). But
one would also expect that both the belief that winter is snowy and the
belief that winter is not snowy would be true in different locales
respectively. Thus there could be different conceptions of winter. (The
respective inhabitants might have the same conception and just have
conflicting factual beliefs about what they both agree is winter; but,
following Kripke 1980 on H2 O, and Quine 1951 on analytic/synthetic, I am
assuming that the empirical can evolve into the conceptual.) The people
from these two locales who encountered each other would then not be
talking about the same thing if they were discussing winter, and they could
end up having some disagreements about how to prepare for the upcoming
winter (Will we need snowshoes?).
You might think it would be easy enough to settle the matter once they
realized they had different conceptions of winter. But this is precisely where
moralism rears its ugly head by denying that possibility. Winter is winter is
winter. Both sides, if moralist, believe or assume this as bedrock in their
understanding of reality. Thus, they both believe not only that one of them is
wrong about how to prepare for winter, and the other right, but also about
what winter is.
But it doesn’t stop there. Like the butterfly whose fluttering in China
makes the difference between fine weather and a hurricane in the Gulf of
Mexico, or the time traveler whose picking a flower from an ancient
roadside returns to a present world utterly different from the one she left, a
person whose conception of winter has differed from another’s since birth
could end up living in an entirely different conceptual and hence factual and
even evaluative world. Therefore giving up the assumption that one knows
what winter is not only admits the possibility of being wrong about winter,
or about how to prepare for winter, but about anything, about everything:
every meaning, every fact, every value … even what meaning, fact, and
value are … even what a belief is; even what truth is (Do you have a
Tinkerbell conception whereby believing something hard enough makes it
true?) … hence even what it means to be mistaken. It is also likely, of course,
that two different individuals (or cultures, etc.) will have more than one
different concept to begin with – will have countless different concepts, due
to countless different circumstances and manners of internalizing the
meanings of words – and so it is not just one butterfly but countless
butterflies flapping their wings with stormy, indeed chaotic, results
guaranteed in subsequent (interpersonal, international, etc.) relations.
Human beings are ill-equipped to recognize, not to mention internalize
this. (And of course, even those who do will likely be doing so differently
from one another.) But this is the amoralist’s goal. She has a new bedrock
(which is rather more like scree) – namely that, as a matter of course,
different people have different conceptions of things and hence different,
even incompatible, beliefs about what things exist or what their natures are
and then, practically, how to behave accordingly. Note that there is still
(presumably) a reality, but our access to it is always mediated by who or
what we are, our circumstances, etc. Most human beings have a handful of
sensory organs and a brain (or two) for this purpose; in the 21st century we
have Einsteinian physics to assist some of us; and so on.
It’s all subject to ignorance and error, of course; but that in itself does not
mean we are doomed to delusion and is not the point I am making.
Descartes believed the all-good God had provided us with means to disabuse
ourselves of delusions; the perception psychologist J. J. Gibson (1966) made
the same point in scientific terms. The mere fact that every cognizer has, of
necessity, a limited or partial or perspectival view of reality is not the same
as being necessarily deceived (as if by an evil daemon, in Descartes’
memorable formulation in the Meditations); for example, Gibson argued –
or, like a Wittgensteinian philosopher (1958, §127), reminded us – that when
only the front of a person is in our visual field, we nevertheless see the entire
person (and if there is any question of its being a cardboard cutout, we can
usually walk around the object to make sure it/he/she isn’t).
 There is nevertheless a systematic disconnect between the world we know
through experience and reflection (inference, reason) and science on the one
hand, and, on the other hand, the world as it is “in itself.” It even seems
possible – I would say certain – that different people could have wholly
functional worldviews that nevertheless differed in every detail. Within each
worldview the concepts would be coordinated more or less, such that it all
“worked out” in the end; that is, each worldview would be sufficiently in
sync with reality such that the worldview (and its vehicles, us) had – in the
nature of the case – survived under existing conditions up to that point. And
yet the various worldviews could all differ from one another in every detail.
I draw the conclusion that each of them – and, hence, any worldview – lacks
any point-to-point correspondence with reality.
A picture that helps me here (and that may in fact be causally responsible
for my thinking in this way about reality and about the kind of relation to
reality truth means to me) comes from Hinduism. Reality (or Brahman) is
postulated to be “One without a second” (from the Chandogya-upanishad).
This redolent phrase suggests to me that the oneness of reality is unlike our
usual one, which implies two, three, and so on – in a word, plurality. Reality
is precisely not plural. This does not mean it is some sort of literal block.
Rather I take the meaning, in light of what I have been saying, to be that all
of our worldviews, our conceptual schemes, must miss the mark because,
each being itself plural, yet there being a plurality of them, which are
equivalently functional yet not word-for-word intertranslatable, no single
plurality could possibly be picking out reality, which is presumably one (not
plural) in the sense of being just the way it is and no other. Thus, if my
worldview has cats in it and yours doesn’t (even by a different name), it
can’t be that either of them is describing reality, which could not both have
and not have cats in it (unless we conceive reality in toto on the model of
superposition, i.e., Schrödinger’s cat).
A worldview is plural because the only way finite beings can grok reality
or usefully know it is to carve it up into cognitively bite-size pieces. Our
worldviews cannot be translated into one another because each concept in a
worldview is defined in terms of other concepts in that world-view, and
hence there is no possible Rosetta Stone for equating words with the same
meaning. (Possibly there is some common ground, such as logic or whatever
mathematical or physical formulae on which rest hopes of communication
with extraterrestrial aliens, or for that matter, between you and me.) Thus, if
“winter” were, in effect, homonymic between two worldviews, neither
“winter” would be likely to be picking out some corresponding reality, even
though, as previously noted, both worldviews in toto (and us along with
them) are, in the nature of the case, sufficiently functional relative to reality
to enable them (and us) to have existed to this point.
Note that a belief could still be false or irrational, namely, if it failed to
conform to the norms of truth and rationality that prevailed in the
worldview of that believer. This is my answer to the obvious objection to
pragmatism that even a useful belief is not always a true belief. As others
have argued, it may be the process by which beliefs are arrived at or
assessed that is justified pragmatically and not the individual beliefs
themselves, which are assessed by the useful process. However, being a
holist, I imagine that it’s a mix. This reminds me of a wonderful joke told to
me by Jerry Shaffer, which I call:

Reb Without a Cause

A rabbi, doing marriage counseling, listened to the wife and said, “You
are right.”
The husband said, “Wait, listen to me,” and after listening, the rabbi
said, “You are right.”
The rabbi’s wife, listening behind the screen, said, “Rabbi, they can’t
both be right.”
The rabbi replied, “You are right too.”

But my larger point is that a belief that is false relative to a given world-
view could be a member of (and hence true in) a different worldview … but
not quite, in that it would be a different belief, despite appearances, because
of its respective position in its own worldview. Thus, the two people arguing
about preparations for winter seem to be arguing about the same thing, but
they are not. One is arguing about how to prepare for snowy winters, the
other for snowless winters. Winter is thus a homonym. But the respective
believers cannot be convinced of this, all the less to give up their own
conception of winter in deference to the other’s. And now, as noted earlier,
we have a fuller understanding of why: It is not just a matter of conceding
that one is wrong about something. One would have to concede that one is
(or might be) wrong about everything. For each person’s conception of
winter (in this scenario) is inextricably bound to other, perhaps countless
other, beliefs and conceptions; so to give it up would mean having to
reassess all of its connections to others, and of those among themselves,
which would inevitably involve altering other conceptions and beliefs as
well to an indefinite extent. This could be upsetting indeed.
Indeed, resistance to such change could be justified, given that one’s own
worldview might be more useful under existing conditions. (I am catholic
about what something might be useful for in the general pragmatic scheme,
but most fundamentally, I can put forward as a plausible working
conception without turning this into a treatise on pragmatism that
something is useful if it helps preserve the existence and possibility of
thriving of a given individual or community.) This explains the otherwise
puzzling phenomenon I have noticed so often: that people whose beliefs and
attitudes strike me as downright batty (as mine do them, I am sure)
nevertheless get along in life as well as I do, and sometimes better. (I half-
jokingly remarked to one such friend of mine whose car-driving habits
appalled me that it just wasn’t fair that she was still alive.) It could be
downright dangerous to give up a worldview. And even if a different
worldview were equally useful, even more useful, there could be danger, or a
real cost, to making the change, since one would be giving up a regime with
which one is familiar and comfortable (and of course has its many pleasures)
for a new one with which one will have relatively halting facility for an
indefinite period – as if, but this is also literally the case, one were replacing
one’s native tongue with a foreign one.
 This also explains the mutual incomprehensibility of the parties to
disputes of all kinds. For the most part we go around assuming that we all
live in the same world or that everybody sees things the way we do. The
crack in this cosmic egg, this global illusion, comes about when there is
disagreement (or befuddlement). And it does not have to be about something
big, like the international dispute over North Korea’s nuclear program
(“How could Kim Jong-un not want a lucrative economic deal?” “How could
President Trump believe I’d be willing to give up nukes?”); it is far more
typically about something seemingly trivial, such as replacing the cap after
using the toothpaste (“How could he just leave it open like that?” “Why is
she so bent out of shape about such a tiny thing?”). Suddenly two entire
worldviews can be at odds, unbeknownst to the disputants. A “clash of
civilizations” is a daily occurrence in the most domestic settings. Instantly
anything at all can flare up; and the other person, who until that moment
was your bosom friend, suddenly seems like an idiot, a madman, a monster
(see for example “What Is It Like to be a Moralist?” in Chapter 8).
Thus, it is not so easy for the person who has just immigrated north to
adapt to the need for snowshoes in winter. “When in Nome do as the
Nomans do” means not just buying new footwear but also reconceiving the
entire world. The same is true for changing conditions over time. Thus, with
global warming, Nomans may soon be needing to trade in their snowshoes
for umbrellas … among countless other changes. Obviously, there will be
massive resistance, beginning with outright disbelief. I myself live in a
temperate zone but near the water. It is slowly dawning on me that my
assumptions about weather and security are becoming questionable; but still
my beliefs resist, for to give up one would be like knocking over a domino or
removing a finger from the dike, and that could take me to a place
(figuratively and literally) I really don’t want to go. So I continue to believe
that “It can’t happen here,” despite the accumulating evidence of hotter
summers, fiercer storms, greater flooding, even tornadoes popping up (or
down).
After a certain point it will become apparent that the utility of holding
onto my entire worldview about the way the world is has considerably
diminished relative to adopting a different worldview, in which “It can and
will happen here” is true. This could turn out to be dreadful … or liberating
with new, unforeseen possibilities (say, as I move to a new location). But
whichever, it will be a big change. Reality will have changed, and
accordingly the world I experience; the world I think I know will too. If “my
world” doesn’t, I may simply cease to exist as a result, since reality continues
to affect me whether I cognize it or not (the next hurricane blows me away
because I stayed put in my old beliefs and, hence, in my old house). Or
sometimes the world doesn’t change but the worldview does: This was
Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) idea about scientific revolutions – the old guard
simply dies out, taking its paradigm with it.
To sum up: Moralism (in the broad sense) is the view that all sensical
questions, when rationally assessed, have univocal answers. I reject this
(even, of course, as it regards “What is moralism?”). I’m not even sure that I
believe any sensical question has a univocal answer. But even if I held that
no sensical question has a univocal answer, I would have to recognize, to be
consistent, that this applied also to the question, “Does any sensical question
at all have a univocal answer?” Thus, I am pretty much giving up on (my or
anybody’s ever) grasping Truth (in the sense of there being only one correct
answer for any sensical question, or a true belief corresponding to reality).
But I am not giving up on truth relative to a worldview, whose (the
worldview’s) very existence attests to its utility, which (utility) is therefore
the ultimate ground for legitimating the truth. Nor will I relinquish (a
similarly relative) reason or rationality (this being central to the ethics of
desirism I put forward in this book, and also this book’s emphasis; the main
discussion will be in Chapters 4 and 5). This is heady stuff, and numerous
abstruse volumes have already been written about it albeit in other terms.
But I wish to deploy the notion of moralism in very mundane ways so that I
can contend against it by maintaining that all meaningful assertions, from
“The cat is on the mat” to “Pluto is a planet” to “Cruelty is wrong,” can be
infinitely contested on rational grounds.
Note: I have illustrated my conception of pragmatism in terms of
worldviews, which can differ from culture to culture and even person to
person and even in one person from time to time. But I have also suggested
that each of us possesses different, even incompatible intuitions; thus, we
might adhere to an ethical egoism in some arena of life but a utilitarian ethic
in another or believe in free will when acting as a prosecutor but in
determinism when a defendant, and on and on. So it is not, strictly speaking,
correct that anyone is wholly governed by a worldview, if a worldview is
taken to be something that must be coherent (in the sense in which it is not
when a person has conflicting intuitions). Again, there are many ways one
could go about attempting to smooth this over in an effort to achieve
coherence in one’s own worldview (or in attempting to understand
somebody else’s). But in the end, I see no reason to rule out an incorrigible
residue of incoherence of this sort, since it may simply be more useful for
each individual to harbor a hodgepodge of worldviews suitable to various
occasions than to be globally coherent. This could, for example, explain why
we are not likely to give up our so-called folk psychology, including
everyday concepts like free will, even though it may be forever
irreconcilable with scientific materialism. (Cf. also “Evolutionary
considerations” in Chapter 2.)

Ethical Pragmatism and the Rejection of

Morality
I have put forward a kind of pragmatism for deciding what exists, one of
whose upshots was that the (belief in the) existence of anything whatever
can be defended. Let me now apply this idea more directly to morality. Here
I am talking about the set of presumed truths and injunctions that is
commonly taken to include eating animals is wrong (or, alternatively, eating
animals is permissible or is sometimes permissible) and we should honor our
parents and feeding the hungry is the right thing to do or is a good thing to
do and we must always strive to be fair and just and so forth). I claim that
there is no such thing. But how can this be, if I also hold that there can be
grounds for believing that morality does exist? There are two distinct ways I
can answer that question. One is that, after a great deal of rational reflection,
I find it eminently useful to believe that morality does not exist – for me to
believe this, and for all (or most) of us to believe it. This book, as several of
my previous books, expands on this theme.
The other way I can defuse the apparent contradiction of my asserting the
nonexistence of something I grant may be rationally considered to exist, is
to claim that morality is a homonym referring to two quite different things.
One type of morality is the belief, and all human institutions attendant
thereon, that there are objective values of the sort illustrated above (right,
wrong, good, bad, just, unjust, etc.). This type of morality I certainly do
think exists. That is, I am confident that many, perhaps most, perhaps even
all human beings harbor the conviction, however unarticulated, that some
things just are right or wrong or good or bad or just or unjust, etc. as a
matter of absolute, objective fact and regardless of whether someone or even
anyone believes that they are.
What I don’t believe exist, however, are the specified values themselves.
In other words, I don’t believe that any moral beliefs are true. This is
tantamount to saying that I don’t believe morality exists, but now in the
sense of “morality” referring to this set of objective values. It turns out, then,
that the first sort of morality, which I do believe exists, is the belief in the
second sort of morality, which I believe does not exist. To disambiguate I
sometimes refer to the first kind as empirical morality and the second kind
as metaphysical morality. Empirical morality surely exists. Metaphysical
morality surely (in my opinion) does not.
I wish I could pick one of these two types of morality to refer to as
“morality” simpliciter. Unfortunately I feel they lay equal claim to being the
primary sense. Previously I have tended to refer to metaphysical morality as
“morality,” since the belief in morality would seem to be derivative from
what it is a belief in. But now I am tending in the other direction because it
is empirical morality that has a more graspable identity and hence can be
studied more definitively, just as religion can be studied more readily than
Another random document with
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Habhdalah, 254, 340, 343.

Haggadah, 372, 379.

Hagiographa, 87.

Halachah, 138.

Hallel, 96, 379, 387.

Handicraft, 322.

Hanuccah. See Chanuccah.

Haphtarah, 345, 347 sq.

Headings of Biblical books, 56.

Hebrew, 420, 480;

letters, 135.

Hechal, 424, 481.

Hell, 223.

Holiness, 59, 290.

Holy Spirit, 200.

Home service, 476.

Honesty, 103, 293.

Honey, 466.

House of God, 42, 423.

Husband and wife, 106, 310. [526]

Idolatry, 236, 250.

Ikkarim, 188, 201, 202, 219.

Immortality of the soul, 164.

Immutability of God. See God.

Immutability of the Law. See Law.

Incorporeality of God, 41, 173.

Industry, 103, 322.

Inspiration, 52, 173.

Instruments, musical, 93.

Integrity of the Pentateuch. See Pentateuch.

Interest, 294.

Ittur soferim, 203.

Jewish life, 467.

Jubilee, 59, 402.

Judaism, 2, 236.

Judges, 63.

Judgments, 240.

Justice of God. See God.

Kaddish, 434, 441, 448, 494.

Karaism, 210.

Kasher, 378, 463.

Kedushah, 434, 447.

Keri-u-Khethib, 203.

Kiddush, 254, 340, 342, 379.

Kindness of God. See God.

Kindness, to our fellow-men, 301;
to animals, 318.

King and people, 106.

Kings, the Book of, 65.

Kittel, 492.

Knowledge, 323.

Kodashim, 138.

Kol-nidre, 408.

Kuzari, 13, 172, 218.

La-alukah, 98.

Labour forbidden on Holy-days, 349.

Lamentations, 87, 113, 413.

Law, of Moses, 87;

oral, 136, 236;
written, 136, 236;
foundation of the, 72;
immutability of the, 139, 215;
object of the, 242;
Rabbinical laws, 219;
abrogation of any of the laws, 417;
temporary suspense of a law, 141.

Leap-year, 362, 367.

Legalism, 234.

Leïthiel, 98.

Levites, 93.

Light, continual, 426;

Sabbath lights, 358;
 festival lights, 358;
Chanuccah lights, 410.

Maamadoth, 433.

Maarib, 408, 435.

Machzor, 363, 391;

Vitry, 434.

Magen-david, 427.

Magicians, 193.

Magistrates, 318.

Man and his fellow-man, 106, 292.

Marriage, 58;
laws, 59;
rites, 484;
civil, 488;
mixed marriages, 489.

Massorah, 55;
Masoretic points, 203;
Masoretic text, 266.

Master and servant, 315.

Mazzol-tob, 486.

Mechilta, 137.

Medabberim, 220.

Meekness, 103.

Megilloth, 87.

Messages of comfort, 70.

Messiah, 156, 161;
days of, 69, 82, 85, 161, 225, 228;
Name of, 73;
—b. David and b. Joseph, 230;
prophecies concerning, 75.

Methurgeman, 349, 432.

Mezuzah, 270, 335, 468. [527]

Midrash, 137, 180, 413;

interpretation, 384.

Mikra, 57, 479.

Milah, 477.

Minhag, 139, 242, 420, 435, 444.

Minor prophets, 78.

Minyan, 441, 472.

Miracles, 32, 192.

Mishnah, 137.

Mishneh-torah (of Maimonides), 139, 197, 202, 217, 241.

Mission of Israel, 156.

Moderation, 103.

Modesty, 261, 427, 472.

Moëd, 138.

Mohel, 478.

Molad, 364.

Monday, 413, 473.

Monotheism, 39.
Month, 361;
Hebrew names of months, 362.

Moon, 361, 476.

Mourners, 491.

Mourning customs, 494.

Murder, 236, 259.

Musaph, 345, 435.

Music in Synagogue, 428.

Myrtle, 396.

Name, of God, 287;

sanctification of God’s, 289.

Nashim, 138.

Natural religion, 22.

Nazirite, 320.

Neïlah, 408, 436.

Nezikin, 138.

New-moon, 219, 346, 364, 435

New-year, 402 sq.

Night-prayer, 440.

Nisan, 362, 363, 371, 372.

Nistaroth, 6.

Nitsachon, 226.

Oath, 252.
Obedience, 276.

Omer, counting of, 389;

days of the counting of the, 392.

Omnipotence, 44, 215.

Omniscience, 148, 215.

Order of Service, 381, 429, 434.

Pantheism, 26.

Parable, of the dry bones, 78;

of Jotham, 64;
of Nathan, 65;
of the vineyard, 67.

Paradise, 223.

Parallelism, 89.

Parents and children, 106.

Passover, 59, 206, 207, 372, sqq.;

lamb, 374;
second, 60, 375.

Patriotism, 310.

Penitential days, 402.

Pentateuch, 57;
contents of, 58;
authenticity and integrity of the, 134, 202;
transcribed by Ezra, 135;
quoted in other books of the Bible, 206;
found in the Temple, 207.

Peoth, 467.

Pharisees, 170.
Piel form of verbs, 182.

Piyyutim, 434, 452.

Polytheism, 25.

Prayer, 280 sqq., 418 sqq.;

of Habakkuk, 83;
of Hannah, 65;
of Solomon, 66;
attitude during, 444;
efficacy of, 44, 183, 280, 422;
language of, 420;
length and form of, 421;
object of, 183;
place of, 423;
time of, 429;
—at fixed times, 434;
night, 440;
for the Sovereign, 311;
—and immutability of God, 189.

Prayer-meetings 449.

Precepts, 234;
their importance [528]235;
number, 238;
division, 240.

Predestination, 147.

Preparation for Sabbaths, Festivals, and Fasts, 474.

Prescience of God, 220.

Priests, 59, 87;

priests’ benediction, 442.

Prophecy, 46, 173, 192;

Maimonides on, 198.
Prophets, 49;
messengers of God, 50;
training of, 51, 201;
sons of the, 52;
truthfulness of the, 131, 192;
false, 73;
books of the, 62;
earlier, 62;
latter, 52, 62, 66;
lessons from the, 345.

Proverbs, Book of, 87, 96;

contents of, 97;
allegorical headings in, 97.

Psalms, 87;
authors, 91;
contents, 88;
figures, 89;
headings, 92;
figurative headings, 94;
historical headings, 94;
names of, 92;
their object, 88, 96;
order, 95;
play upon words, 91;
poetical forms, 89;
recensions, 96;
rhyme, 89;
in the Prayer-book, 96, 439.

Purim, 116, 370, 411.

Punishment, 142 sqq.;

eternal, 223.

Rabbinical laws, 138, 219.

Rabbinism, 210.

Rabboth, 137.
Rainbow, 48.

Reading the Law and the Prophets, 345, 432.

Redemption of Israel, 403.

Release, year of, 59, 75.

Religion, 1.

Reminders of God’s Presence, 328, 468.

Resignation, 277, 284, 494.

Responsa, 242.

Restoration of Zion, 157, 416.

Resurrection, 164, 231, 403.

Retribution, 100, 142, 150, 221, 436.

Revelation, 6, 25, 46 sqq., 170, 190, 394;

on Mount Sinai, 47, 194, 393, 403.

Reverence, 275.

Reward and punishment. See Retribution.

Rich and poor, 106, 316.

Righteousness, 103.

Rites, 435.

Ritual, 429;
in the Temple, 432;
in the Talmud, 433;
variations in the, 349, 354, 392, 401, 402, 437.

Sabbath, 58, 72, 206, 219, 235, 254, 289, 339, 434, 475;
bread, 357;
journey, 350;
lights, 358.
Sacrifices, 59, 152, 217, 414, 416;
restoration of, 162, 417.

Sadducees, 170, 393.

Samaritans, 170, 205.

Sanctification of God’s Name, 250, 289;

of Sabbaths and Festivals, 340.

Sandek, 478.

Sanhedrin, 60, 237, 365, 423.

Sargenes, 492.

Satan, 85, 108.

Scepticism, 33 sqq.

Scripturalists, 210.

Seasons of the Lord, 276, 339.

Second Holy-days, 366.

Sedarim, 138.

Seder-evening, 480 sqq.

Sefer (or sepher), 481;

meonah, zatute, hee, 203.

Selichoth, 401.

Semites, 48. [529]

Sermon, 448.

Servant of God (Israel), 159.

Service, Divine, 284, 345, 408, 413 sqq.

Seventy weeks, 123.

Shalet. See Chalet.

Shalom-zachar, 477.

Shaving, 467.

Shema, 431, 436 sqq.

Shofar, 400, 403.

Shulchan-aruch, 139, 241 sq.

Shushan Purim, 412.

Sidra, 61, 482.

Sifra, 137.

Sifre, 137.

Sign, 68.

Simchath-torah, 398, 480.

Sinew that shrank, 58, 461.

Sivan, 362, 363, 393, 401.

Solemn days, 400 sqq.

Song of David, 65;

of Deborah, 64;
of Solomon, 87, 112, 390.

Sons of God, 108.

Sovereign, 318.

Spirit, Holy, 200;

of the Lord, 87, 190.

Statutes, 239.

Stranger, 295, 303.

Strengthening of the faith, 226.

Superiors and inferiors, 313.

Superstition, 251, 476, 477, 496.

Swearing, 252.

Symbols of good wishes, 487.

Synagogue, 423 sqq., 469.

Tabernacle, 424.

Tabernacles, festival of, 206 sq., 219, 395 sqq.

Taharoth, 138.

Tal, 391.

Talith, 329.

Talmud, Babylonian and Palestinian or Jerusalem, 137.

Tammuz, 362, 363;

Fast of, 401, 412.

Targum, 204, 349, 440.

Tashlich, 405.

Teacher and pupil, 314.

Teaching, 286.

Tebeth, 362, 363;

Fast of, 412.

Tebhah, 424.

Tefillah, 435, 437.

Tefillin, 270, 331, 337 sqq.

Tekanoth, 139, 242.

Temperance, 103.

Temple, 424;
destruction of the, 403;
rebuilding of the, 161, 416, 443.

Ten Commandments, division of the, 266.

See Commandments.

Tetragrammaton, 196, 211.

Thanksgiving, 443.

Theft, 262, 293.

Theism, 29.

Thirteen Attributes of God, 45.

Thirteen Principles, 20 sqq.

Thrift, 103.

Thursday, 413, 473.

Tikkune Soferim, 203.

Tishri, 206, 362, 363, 402 sqq.

Tithe, 470.

Torah, 4, 57 sqq.;
study of the, 285, 326, 469.

Tradition, 6, 137, 212.

Traditionalists, 210.

Truthfulness, 103, 325.

Tsitsith, 60, 329.

Tuesday, 473.

Tur, 241, 337, 465.

Unbelief, 143.

Union of Judah and Israel, 78.

Unity of God. See God.

Valley of Hinnom, 73.

Variæ lectiones in Bible, 53, 203. [530]

Version, Chaldee, 204, 349;

Greek, Spanish, 349.

Vision, 191;
of the chariot, 75.

Visiting the sick, 302, 491.

Wednesday, 473.

Willows of the brook, 396.

Wine, 340, 379.

Wisdom, and folly, 102;

Book of, 127;
of Sirach, 128 sq.

Woman, 470;
disqualification of, 471;
modesty and reservedness of, 472;
in Synagogue, 472.

World, the future, 222.

Worship of God, 280, 289, 413 sqq.

Yahrzeit, 495.

Yalkut, 137.
Year, 362;
beginning of the, 402. [531]

[Contents]
 INDEX OF NAMES.
Abel, 152, 260, 414.

Abarbanel, Don Isaac, 270.

Abh, 329, 342, 362, 363, 412.

Abimelech, 199.

Abraham, 7, 48, 179, 187, 199;

Covenant of, 336.

Abraham b. David, 13, 171, 219.

Abraham ibn Ezra, 14, 181, 197, 210, 269, 321.

Abraham Troki, 226.

Adam, 47, 260, 413, 414.

Adar, 362, 363, 411.

Agag, Agagite, 370.

Agur, 97.

Ahasuerus, 411.

Ahaz, 68.

Ahijah, 62.

Akiba, 292.

Albo, Rabbi Joseph, 173, 174, 188, 201, 219, 231.

Amalek, 370.

Amos, 81.
Amram, Rabbenu, 434.

Antiochus Epiphanes, 410.

Aristotle, 35, 178.

Aristotelians, 179.

Asaph, 91.

Bachya, 3, 12, 172.

Baruch, 129.

Ben-Azai, 292.

Bileam, 60, 191, 199.

Cain, 152, 187, 260, 414.

Canaan, 62.

Carmel, 169.

Caro, Rabbi Joseph, 139, 241.

Cheshvan. See Heshvan.

Chisdai, Ibn, 270.

Cuzari, 13, 172, 194, 218, 231, 233, 445.

Daniel, 116, 205, 214.

David, 53, 64, 91, 161, 238, 427.

Deborah, 64.

Dunash b. Tamim, 12.

Ebal, 169.

Eleazar, 321.
Eli, 63.

Elijah, 62, 169, 229, 380.

Elisha, 62.

Elul, 362, 363, 400.

Enosh, 187.

Ephodi, 201.

Esther, 87, 116, 287, 411, 412.

Ezekiel, 75, 394.

Ezra, 54, 87, 125, 170, 231, 401.

Gamliel, Rabban, 385, 431.

Gedaliah, 412.

Gerizim, 169.

Gibeon, 63.

Gilgal, 423.

Habakkuk, 83.

Hadrian, 392. [532]

Haggai, 84.

Haman, 370.

Hananiah, 74.

Hannah, 65, 405.

Heman, 91.

Heshvan, 362, 363.

Hezekiah, 66, 161, 231, 376.

Hilkiah, 208.

Hillel I., 161.

Hillel II., 364.

Hillel, Rabbi, 161.

Hinnom, Valley of, 73.

Hirsch, S., 185.

Hirsch, S. R., 180, 271.

Hosea, 79.

Isaak, 58, 405.

Isaak b. Abraham Troki, 226.

Isaiah, 66, 205, 206, 212.

Israel, 58, 65, 78, 156, 159, 200, 403.

Iyar, 362, 363, 392.

Jacob, 58, 423.

Jacob, Rabbenu, 241.

Jehudah ha-Levi, 13, 172, 194, 218, 231, 233, 269, 445.

Jeremiah, 70 sqq., 216, 311.

Jericho, 63.

Jerusalem, 65, 125, 158, 412, 438, 468.

Jerusalem (by Moses Mendelssohn), 35.

Jesus, 225.