Toldot — The Greater Good

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.” 

These words were said by the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch (1919-1999).
Murdoch might be better known for her novels — she published 26 of them, including the 1978 Booker Prize recipient “The Sea, The Sea” and Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century “Under the Net.”

But Murdoch began her career as a philosopher who practiced at Oxford University at the evening of the Second World War. Due to the depletion of young men from all walks of life, including philosophy departments, Murdoch and other brilliant women found themselves in the spotlight.

Bravely, Murdoch went against the latest philosophical trends of her time, which were scientific, relative and structuralist, and with great Chutzpah claimed that not only there WAS a greater good, and in many ways it was synonymous with God.

Her view of the “greater good” and man’s journey to finding virtues, echoes the personality differences between Jacob and Esau in our portion Toldot.

But before I get to Jacob and Esau, a brief explanation of Morduch’s idea.

Murdoch was a Platonic philosopher who used Plato’s most famous fable, The Allegory of the Cave, to illustrate the core of her thinking.

In Plato’s Cave Allegory which appeared in his “Republic,” and was interpreted by countless philosophers, a group of prisoners are tied in a cave with their backs to the opening, staring at an inner wall. Behind them, a fire reflects shadows of people and objects onto the cave wall. Those shadows, or “Puppet Show” if you will, is what the prisoners perceive as reality itself.

The philosopher, according to Plato, is the prisoner who manages to release himself out of the chains and step out of the cave to observe the true reality. 

Murdoch uses this fable to describe the journey each of us can make towards the greater good.

In Murdoch’s use of the allegory, the fire in Plato’s cave, represents our “self” or our “ego.” The fire is the source of energy which causes us to view reality through the projections of our ego. Everything that we perceive as reality is filtered through the way in which it relates to us and benefits us.

The sunlight in Plato’s allegory represents, according to Murdoch, the greater good: The transcendental sum of all virtues, which is the only thing in existence, which is a necessary reality. 

When a person wants to better their lives, the first step is to unchain themself, turn around and see the fire - recognizing our ego as the source of our false projection of reality. The journey then continues by attempting to step out of the cave - meaning, leaving the fire (our ego) behind. This is done through a process she calls “unselfing,” getting away from our own selves.

The “greater good,” which bears the same characteristics as the monotheistic God — single, perfect, transcendent, non-representable and contingent, is a given truth and can be aspired towards, but can never be entirely achieved. 

Now let’s get back to Jacob and Esau. In his book Shem Mishmuel, Rabbi Shmuel Bornsztain looks deeper into Jacob and Esau’s names as a reflection of their personality. Esau, Bornsztain claims, believes that he is in no need of correction, that all of the calamity that befalls him is due to external reasons and that there is nothing in his personality that needs fixing. Bornsztain learns it from the verses: “Esau realized that the Canaanite women displeased his father Isaac. So Esau went to Ishmael and took to wife, in addition to the wives he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, sister of Nebaioth.”

Bornsztain writes: “Esau felt cheated and in response decided to marry a new wife. He thought that changing his wife would improve his bad fortune!”

The name Esau, in Hebrew עשו has the same spelling as the word Asoo עשו, meaning “was made.” Esau saw himself as complete. Bornsztain further turns to Gematria (which I’m not a fan of, but is always cool) and shows that the total numerical value of the name עשו - which is 376, equal to the total numerical value of the word שלום which comes from the root of “complete” and also means wholeness. This clearly supports how Esau could not see anything within him which needed to be corrected.

In contrast Jacob - Ya’akov was given the name which comes from the root עקב - heel, felt his entire life that he was at the bottom and as long as he was alive he would have to keep climbing up, attempting to reach the “greater good,” or God.

Iris Murdoch, in her philosophy, agrees with Bornsztain. In order to conduct a moral way of being  one must leave his or her own self behind and journey towards the light.

In our day and age, through what some may like to call Virtue Signaling, a lot of people attempt to turn that journey on its head. There is a sense of certainty in one's own way in a manner which does not leave any room for improvement, reflection or self-admitted error. What both Murdoch and Bornsztain are trying to tell us is that the journey towards the virtuous life must be taken with humility and with the understanding that we are far less from being perfect or complete.   

I wish for all of us to find that humility so together we could begin our journey towards the “greater good.”