I rarely admit that I am wrong. Not on account of any reticence to admit wrongdoing on my part, but merely on account of a general lack of wrongdoing. However, I am taking this opportunity to be modeh al haemes. I made a mistake. When I created my blog title it was with the very best of intentions, but the title, "Primum Non Nocere" (First, do no harm), champions a stance that is contrary to that of Judaism. This Latin phrase, one of the principle precepts of medical ethics, the basis of the doctrine of Nonmaleficence, is utter and complete rubbish.
Koheles teaches us that "ayn tzadik ba'aretz asher oseh tov v'ein yechetah", there is no tzadik who does good and doesn't sin. Notice that it doesn't say there is no tzadik who doesn't sin. There are people who don't sin. But, these are individuals who also do no good. It is not difficult to do no harm. I have a surefire recipe for anyone to ensure that they never cause any harm. It involves moving into a cave in the deepest, darkest recesses of the most uninhabited region in the world and staying there until you perish.
But that's not what the Torah demands of us. We are tasked to interact with the world, to attempt to improve it, knowing full well that at times we will stumble. Making sure you never do anything wrong is a surefire recipe for never accomplishing anything good. We live in the olam d'sfeikah, the world of uncertainty, not everything is black and white and the only thing that is certain is that we will all make mistakes. Yet, our guiding principle should be to do good, while obviously still attempting to minimize the harm we cause.
There's a quote often attributed to Edmund Burke which sums up this thought, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." So, having completed my mea culpa, please disregard the title of my blog and go forth and do harm.
well..the harm should only be a side effect of doing our best to do good a lot of the time. We should not just go ahead and just do harm intentionally! Rather..we should be doing..and as humans we will inevitably make mistakes..
ReplyDelete(don't know if i was clear)
Yes :) I of course agree with you, and that was the message that I was trying to get across in the post. However, for a closing statement, "...go forth and do good while knowing that you will do some harm, yet while trying to minimize that harm" wasn't quite as catchy.
ReplyDeleteGreat post- I agree! That is why Noach is criticized. It is clear that he did no harm which is why he merited to be saved from the flood, but that is not enough. One must actively be doing good. But the key in "First, do no harm" is the word "first"- I don't think it is saying you should stop there. It's just saying that "Do no harm" is the bare minimum.
ReplyDeletePNN- good point..coming up with titles are always the hardest...
ReplyDeleteI note that you write that the famous quote is merely 'attributed' to Burke; your suspicions are correct:
ReplyDeletehttp://tartarus.org/~martin/essays/burkequote.html
http://bdld.info/2010/01/31/bringing-redemption-to-the-world/
Yishai, it is said, never sinned. But to do no good, what does that mean? He obviously kept the mitzvos, because by not doing so he would have sinned. So doing the mitzvos does not necessarily mean doing good? Take tzedakah, for instance. We are required to give it, meaning Yishai had to have given it. That is doing good. One is required to honor their parents. Not doing so would be a sin. So Yishai had to have honored his parents.
ReplyDeleteDoes mifarshim in Koheles go deeper?
@English Major: As you say, the gemara in Shabbos (55b) lists four people who never sinned: Yishai, Dovid's son Kalev, Binyomin, and Amram. I had intended to look into each of these cases to try to align them with this explanation, but didn't have the time. As an aside, the Meiri does note that it's not necessarily that they never sinned but rather that it appears none of their sins was great enough to merit death.
ReplyDeleteI'm truly just spit-balling here, but it could be argued that with at least three (perhaps even all four) of the individuals they were either the son or father of someone who did great things for the Jewish people, while they by comparison did very little. And, in the cases of both Moshe and David, who both contributed greatly to the Jewish people, they also both sinned in a manner that chazal truly struggle to explain because it seems to be such an area of sefeikah as to what exactly their sin was. So, this gemara could actually align with my point quite beautifully.