Is צדקה simply the Jewish word for charity—or does that assumption already conceal a philosophical mistake?

In this seminar, we use Humpty Dumpty to enter Wittgenstein’s radical account of language, grammar, and practice. A movement does not contain checkmate. A sound does not contain speech. A transfer of money does not contain צדקה. Before saying that צדקה and charity are “the same action interpreted differently,” we must first ask: the same according to what criteria?

Wittgenstein’s claim that “essence is expressed by grammar” challenges the idea that words merely label pre-existing ontological categories. Grammar does not simply tell us what name to attach to a completed object or action; it helps articulate what kind of object or action is in question, what counts as the same, and what counts as correct or mistaken.

This has profound consequences for religious life. We do not first exist as complete religious individuals and then privately assign meanings to words such as מצוה, תשובה, תפילה, יראה, and צדקה. We become capable of articulated, norm-governed religious action and self-understanding through participation in a religious world of language, law, ritual, authority, teaching, and correction.

The seminar then reads Humpty Dumpty a second time through Gilles Deleuze. Wittgenstein uses the paradox to expose the impossibility of private semantic mastery. Deleuze transforms Humpty’s wall, his “proud” verbs, and his language of impenetrability into a philosophy of surface, event, becoming, and the production of sense.

The seminar ends by opening the next question:

If a written sign does not contain the rule of its own application, how can Torah continue through כתב alone? What living practice allows written Torah to remain living law?

Primary texts:

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter VI

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §§316, 344, 371–383

Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, “Fourth Series of Dualities”

In this seminar, we continue the central method of the series: there is no neutral reading, no neutral psychology, no neutral wholeness, and no “just doing.” Every position comes with assumptions, and every position is also responding to another position.

The seminar begins with a lecturer who attacks the modern idea that כוונה means inner religious feeling, sincerity, or התלהבות. His alternative is to reintroduce telos: mitzvos are not empty external acts, but Torah-forms with objective goodness. This lets him explain מתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה: even imperfect mitzvah-action trains the person because the act itself is already good.

The problem is that this explanation risks becoming a kind of religious behaviorism. Behaviorism is powerful because it sees that repeated behavior, reinforcement, and external practice really do form patterns. But behaviorism fails when it treats behavior as a neutral observable unit. Human action is not mere movement. Action is behavior under a description, from a source, inside a form of life.

Using the Chinuch, Pri HaAretz, Anscombe, and Wittgenstein, this seminar argues that proper שלא לשמה is not ego using Torah, and not mere external mitzvah-performance. Proper שלא לשמה is action from קבלת עול: I do not yet want the mitzvah לשמה, but I do it because Hashem wants it.

The key thesis:

The question is not only whether an act has Torah-form. The question is what source that Torah-form embodied.

This prepares the next seminar: if the lecturer’s whole argument depends on Torah-form, then we need to ask what kind of thing law is. Is legal form the same as natural form? Does Torah permission purify source? Does halakhic form automatically create kedushah? That will require a theory of law.

This seminar continues the project’s previous distinctions: no “just reading,” telos is not method, wholeness is not neutral, and the Chinuch is not behaviorism.

Source discussed: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §§258, 293, 307, in the revised English translation by Anscombe, Hacker, and Schulte. Brief excerpts are used for educational commentary and analysis.

How can the Chinuch say that a person is shaped by his actions — האדם נפעל כפי פעולותיו — if every action already comes from something inside the person?

In this seminar, we unpack the Chinuch’s famous principle and argue that it should not be read as simple behaviorism. The point is not that external behavior mechanically creates holiness. Rather, every action embodies an inner source, and repeated action strengthens the source from which it is performed.

This distinction changes how we understand שלא לשמה, קבלת עול, and the formation of the heart. If a person does not want to do a mitzvah but does it because Torah obligates him, the action strengthens קבלת עול. But if a person wants to do the mitzvah for kavod, control, self-image, or status, the same action may strengthen the ego instead.

We also clarify several key distinctions: middah as emotional event vs. middah as disposition, behavior vs. action, intention as mental caption vs. intention as governing reason, and why לשמה means more than simply saying “for Hashem” in one’s mind.

Along the way, we contrast the Chinuch with behaviorism, CBT, and psychoanalysis, and prepare the next step: Ramban’s idea of נבל ברשות התורה — how even a legally permitted act may still not be inwardly Torah-mediated.

Main themes: Sefer HaChinuch, האדם נפעל כפי פעולותיו, שלא לשמה, לשמה, קבלת עול, פרי הארץ, Tosafos, behaviorism, B. F. Skinner, CBT, psychoanalysis, middos, intention, action, avodas Hashem, and Torah psychology.