The headline in the Sunday Times read: ‘Stop feeling guilty: lust is good for you’. I was intrigued and read on. But I was disappointed; the article did not actually say that lust itself was good for you. It was predicated on an essay written by Professor Simon Blackburn saying that lust should be separated from excess. Most things can be harmful in excess, he maintains, but good in moderation, and lust is no exception. However, this is not new. Maimonides in the twelfth century wrote, ‘One should not have lust except for those things which the body needs and without which it cannot survive, as it is written, “The righteous eats to satisfy his soul”’ (The Laws of Temperaments 1:4). So, can pure lust be good for a person?
According to the Kabbalists each individual has a vital soul that is the source of human instinct. Thus, for example, it is human nature to get angry when one is insulted. This instinct is programmed by the vital soul. Lust is no different. A person lusts after physical pleasures because it is an instinct that arises from the nature of his vital soul.
The Kabbalists maintain that the soul is not essentially impure. The vital soul is ensconced in klipat nogah, or the ‘Nogah shell’. The term ‘shell’ implies that, although it has no value of itself and is to be discarded, it does serve the purpose of protecting the fruit and is therefore an entity that can be used for good. This is the nature of many things that we encounter in the world. The internet is an excellent example. Without it you would not be reading this article. Because it has become so easy to publish online, many people – including my good self – have started to circulate positive and holy material on the internet. Equally, some have used the internet for negative purposes, for extortion, pornography or paedophilia. Thus, if you ask whether the internet is a good thing the answer must be: it is a good thing that unfortunately has been misused by bad people. The vital soul is similar in nature. Its instincts can be used for good or misused for bad.
Lust – which comes from the vital soul – also falls into this category. Its source is the Nogah shell and as such it has a positive purpose. Lust is the glue of marriage; it gives the opportunity to generate positive feelings between husband and wife. Positive feelings generate and strengthen love, which creates happiness – an altogether healthy state of being. Without lust one could never have a proper loving and intimate relationship with a spouse. A loving relationship is the foundation of a happy family, which in turn is one of the building blocks of any decent society.
Lust can have disastrous effects too, if it gets out of control. One has only to look at the sorry state of celebrity culture to see how pernicious it can be.
But when lust is channelled in the right way and the right circumstances it is not only good for the individual but good for society as well.