But other sayings on the same page of the Talmud (and in many other places [Porter 1901, 128]) indicate that Torah is the cure for the Evil Desire, suggesting a dualistic notion in which Desire is not the driving force of Torah but its enemy. My hypothesis is that the anthropology more generally held among Jews of this period was the dualist one, and that the dialectical one is an antithesis to that widespread construction (Porter 1901, 125). The use of the term Evil Desire, then, to refer to this dialectically composed force of Good and Evil would be partly a relic of the other structure and partly a purposefully paradoxical way of undermining that structure.
5
What could be more dramatic than the declaration that the Evil Desire was declared by God to be "very good"? Indeed, there are many rabbinic texts that reflect the dualist psychology, whereby the human being possesses two opposed inclinations, one good and one evil, which are at war in his or her breast. Typical of such a psychology is the quotation, "Let a man always incite his Good Desire against his Evil Desire" (Berakhot 5a). And it is on this version of rabbinic psychology that the Talmud could declare: "There are four things that God is sorry that he created: exile, Chaldeans, Ishmaelim, and the Evil Desire" (Babylonian Talmud Sukkah 52b; also Palestinian Talmud Ta'anith 66a, but
|
(footnote continued from the previous page)
|
 | | have not studied Torah and therefore do not know of the terrible power of Desire, are also not so plagued by precisely that power. The study of Torah, with its system of controls on sexuality, arouses and strengthens desire as effectively as (or even more effectively than) it restrains and constrains it. Therefore, one who is greater in Torah than his fellow has greater sexual desire as well. This is a perfect example of Foucault's "effects that may be those of refusal, blockage, and invalidation, but also incitement and intensification: in short, the 'polymorphous techniques of power'" (Foucault 1980, 11).
|
| | 5. I do not attempt to place the two concepts in a chronological order. On the one hand, the monistic, dialectical view may be a survival of an earlier biblical conception. On the other hand, it may be a reaction against Hellenistic or Persian dualist anthropologiesor it may be both at one and the same time! Compare the view of Porter:
|
| | The good impulse is rarely spoken of, and probably cannot be traced so far back, and
yeçer
frequently stands unmodified and always in the evil sense. This in itself suggests the error of connecting the evil
yeçer
with the body, the good with the soul, making them expressions of the character of two equally essential parts of man. Rather it is the nature of man as a whole that is in mind, and in it the evil tendency, or disposition, dominates.
|
| | (1901, 109)
|
| | I am inclined to think that a good monographic study would be able to introduce more precise chronology, but that lies beyond the scope of the present work. My only dissent from Porter here would be in his assumption that for the "dialectical" or monistic position it is clear that the evil tendency dominates. Porter's work remains excellent and ought to be referred to more often.
|
|
|