Dennis Prager & Jordan B Peterson on Lust, Interiority, & Pornography

Dennis Prager recently joined Jordan Peterson on his series discussing the book of Exodus with a panel of scholars. Dennis Prager is someone whom I have loved for many years, but in a clip Jordan Peterson released, Prager made this statement:

I am less interested in the interior person, morally speaking, than you are, and probably any of you are. And it’s largely, I do believe, because I come from a behaviorist, law-based religion. We care how you act. That’s why we don’t have a claim that if you look at another woman with lust, it’s as if you’ve committed adultery with her. Looking with lust is not a sin in Judaism. What’s the stance on pornography? I always ask, if a wife calls me and says, “My husband looks at pornography I found on his computer,” I have one question: “How is your life of intimacy with your husband? Is it good?” In other words, is the pornography in lieu of you, or in addition to you? And I know this is not a religious answer, and I’m not even giving a religious answer. I’m giving what I think is a moral and realistic answer. Men want variety. And if pornography is a substitute for one’s wife, it’s awful. If it’s a substitute for adultery, it’s not awful. Right? It takes action. There’s no ban in the 613 laws of the Torah on lusting. I don’t even know—ta’avah is the closest you can get to lust in Hebrew.

What is interesting about this is not just that I disagree with his stance on pornography. What is truly astonishing is just how laughably adolescent and basic, how underdeveloped, his moral thinking is here.

It is as if you struck up a conversation with a chemist and they did not know what the periodic table of elements was. Or as if you hired a contractor to put an addition on your house, and he neglected the absolute fundamentals of bringing lumber and fasteners.

What is so striking is the combination of his thoughts about interiority and his practical application to pornography and lust. I want to make five points in response.

1. The Two Halves of Moral Analysis

First, Prager is missing one of the most fundamental features of moral analysis: moral analysis encompasses both the interior and the exterior life.

If you were to take an Ethics 101 class and ask, “What is available here? What are the basic things we have to think about regarding ourselves as moral creatures?” one of the most elementary points is that human beings have an interior life and an exterior life.

This is one of the fundamental features of human nature: you have a rich, secret interior world. That is one of the things that makes us distinct from lower life forms. Inside each person is this astounding inner world.

One of the implications of what Prager is saying is that this interior world is somehow off-limits to moral analysis. That is like the old concept of the naked public square, or the classic error of libertarianism—imagining that there is an entire sphere of human life that is basically amoral. In reality, the inner life is one of the central arenas of moral existence.

This is why what he says is so befuddling. Isn’t it obvious to everyone that we have both an interior and an exterior, and that we are constantly moving back and forth between them? They continuously influence each other.

The whole structure of the moral life is that interior transformation causes exterior transformation, which in turn causes interior transformation. This is a two-way street. These are the fundamental coordinates of the moral life.

2. The Interior Structure of the Ten Commandments

Indeed, the very structure of the Ten Commandments communicates this.

The first and the last commandments are interior commandments. The first commandment—“You shall have no other gods before me”—and the tenth commandment against coveting are both interior, while the commandments in between are exterior.

There is a deliberate purpose behind this structure.

With the first commandment, you might initially think, “Well, having no other gods isn’t interior; maybe that refers to cultic action.” But it clearly points to the internal orientation of the heart, because the very next commandment explicitly addresses carved images, which governs the physical, cultic manifestation of worship.

Then consider the tenth commandment against coveting. Prager would claim that this does not refer to internal desire, but rather to taking outward action. It is true that the medieval Jewish commentators were divided on how to interpret coveting. Some, like Ibn Ezra, held the view that coveting does indeed refer to internal desire. When you look at the parallel in Deuteronomy, it uses another word alongside it for desire. When you examine the Hebrew word for covet, it can mean in other contexts—and I think does mean here—an internal state of longing.

The Ten Commandments move from the interior to the exterior, and back to the interior. That reflects the fundamental rhythm of the moral life: it goes from inside to outside, and back inside again.

3. The Architecture of the Torah

Furthermore, this relationship between the interior and exterior is visible in the architecture of the Torah itself.

Multiple biblical scholars, including Moshe Kline and Nahum Sarna, have noted that the entire literary structure of the Pentateuch moves progressively toward the Tabernacle—in fact, straight into the Holy of Holies—and then outward from it.

Everything converges on Leviticus. Leviticus is almost entirely God’s direct speech at Mount Sinai—the Old Testament equivalent of red-letter text. You are moving inward into the Tabernacle, into the interiority of God Himself.

Moreover, as James Jordan has pointed out, the Tabernacle itself is an image of the priest, an image of man. The structural movement is deliberately interior and then exterior.

4. The Moral Demand for Coherence

In addition, having coherence between the interior and the exterior is one of our primary moral goals.

When someone lacks coherence and unity between their inner thoughts and their outer behavior, we have specific names for those vices. We call that person a hypocrite, or in extreme cases, a sociopath.

That is precisely what makes a sociopath so deeply creepy and frightening. On the outside they appear completely normal, but on the inside they harbor a dark, hideous interior.

Compare that to aliens in the movies. An alien might have an ugly, terrifying exterior, but because they typically do not speak our language and we get little or no sense of their interior life, they are not nearly as frightening in the long run. They startle you for a moment, and then you have simply seen an alien.

The scariest movies are never about bizarre exterior monsters. They are about people who look completely normal on the outside—they talk normally, act normally, and blend into society—while inside they have inculcated a thoroughly evil interior world.

God is a unity, and we have been created to possess that same unity between our internal and external lives.

5. Words, Desires, and Actions

Finally, Dennis Prager’s entire life’s work is predicated upon targeting people’s interiority.

What does he do for a living? He is a radio talk show host. He speaks words into a microphone so that people will change their beliefs and desires, which will then cause them to change their actions. He is not merely trying to manipulate external actions mechanically.

In fact, I am not even sure what it would mean to say, “I don’t care about their interior life; I’m only trying to change their actions.” How can you possibly change someone’s actions without first addressing their interior life?

And for an older married man to argue that pornography is morally acceptable under these conditions is, in the vocabulary of today’s younger generation, pretty sus.

Watch the original episode.