What Is Greatness?
On Virtue and Complexity
I was struck by the question, “What Is Greatness,” when I revisited this passage in Pirkei Avot:
Greater is learning Torah than the priesthood and than royalty, for royalty is acquired by thirty stages, and the priesthood by twenty-four, but the Torah by forty-eight things…
Of course, the statement is offered by sages who devote their lives to learning Torah, and so is self-justifying. But that’s not what interests me. I’m intrigued by the presumption that the more complexity a task requires the greater it is.
Since Torah learning requires one to have 48 things in place it is superior to royalty and priesthood.
Another interpretive option is that priesthood and royalty are attained progressively in stages (maalot) whereas Torah learning requires one to have all the right attributes in place simultaneously, like surfing.
The passage can’t simply mean that any task is great by virtue of its complexity alone, though, because then the process of learning Torah would pale in comparison to most modern industrial processes.
Perhaps the text suggests that “greatness” is a function of individual virtue. It takes more virtue to be a scholar than a ruler or a priest, surmises the text.
In any case, what do you think makes something “great”? By what method would you rank the relative greatness of things?
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