Why Da'at Tevunot Said Humanity Was the Point of All Creation

If the Holy One is wholly self-sufficient, why does humanity exist? Da'at Tevunot, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto's eighteenth-century dialogue, gives a startling answer.

Humanity, the Ramchal teaches, is the intended purpose of all creation. The Holy One did not create the universe so that humans would emerge as one species among many. The Holy One created the universe so that humans could exist, and the rest of the universe is the setting that humans require. Two passages from the dialogue establish the claim and explain the cosmic preliminaries that had to be in place first.

The Concealment of Singularity Before Creation

Da'at Tevunot 44 describes the preliminary step. Before any creation, there was only the Ein Sof, the Infinite. The infinite was, by its own nature, undifferentiated singularity. There was no division. There was no distinction between knower and known. There was no observer separate from the observed.

For creation to become possible, the Ramchal teaches, the singularity had to be concealed. Not abolished. Concealed. The infinite undifferentiated reality had to be temporarily hidden so that a region of differentiated reality could exist. The concealment is the tzimtzum of the Lurianic tradition, reframed in the Ramchal's terms as the necessary masking of singularity.

The teaching frames creation as the deliberate concealment of what was originally present. The Holy One did not make the universe by adding new things. He made the universe by hiding the unity He had always been, just enough to allow differentiation to occur in the masked region. Creation is therefore not a productive act in the ordinary sense. It is a curated hiding.

Humanity as the Intended Purpose

Da'at Tevunot 60 states the goal directly. The Intellect, in the dialogue, addresses the question of why creation occurred at all. The answer is that humanity is the intended purpose.

The Ramchal is careful about what this means. The Holy One did not need humanity. The Holy One has no needs. But the Holy One desired to bestow good, and the recipient required to receive that good in its fullest possible form is the human being. The human, by virtue of having free will and the capacity to choose against the divine will, is the only creature capable of choosing for the divine will in a meaningful way. The choice gives the bestowed good its highest possible expression.

The teaching reframes the rest of creation. The mineral kingdom exists so that the plant kingdom can have soil. The plant kingdom exists so that the animal kingdom can have food. The animal kingdom exists so that the human being can have a body, sensory environment, and ecological setting in which to make moral choices. The whole hierarchy, in this reading, is scaffolding for the human moment.

Why the Two Teachings Belong Together

Read the two passages together and the Ramchal's cosmology becomes legible. The concealment of singularity was necessary because the human being, who exists in the region of differentiated reality, could not exist inside the undifferentiated singularity. The differentiation had to happen first. The human, the intended purpose, had to have a region in which to be.

And the human, once present, has the capacity that the rest of creation does not. The human can choose. The mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms operate according to their inherent natures. The human can do otherwise. The human's choice for the divine will, freely made in a region of differentiated reality, is the form in which the Holy One's bestowed goodness reaches its highest expression. The whole cosmological apparatus, the Ramchal teaches, was set up to make this one kind of choice possible.

Why Humans Carry the Weight

The teaching has both honor and weight. Da'at Tevunot's reading places the human being at the operational center of the cosmos. Every other element of creation supports the human's capacity to make a free choice. The reader who carries this picture into a moral decision is making the choice that all of cosmology was structured to make possible. The weight is real. The honor is the responsibility the weight implies.