Origin Tannaitic and Amoraic rabbinic literature, roughly the second to sixth centuries CE.
The yetzer hatov, the good inclination, is the rabbinic name for the impulse toward righteous conduct that the Mishnah holds to mature in a person around the age of religious majority. Mishnah Berakhot instructs that a person is to love God with both inclinations, the good and the evil, reading the evil inclination's energy as something to be directed rather than only suppressed. Later ethical literature treats the two inclinations as locked in constant contest, with study of Torah named as the good inclination's chief weapon.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodTannaitic and Amoraic rabbinic literature, roughly the second to sixth centuries CE. 1 Place of OriginPalestine and Babylonia, the two centers of rabbinic literary production in this period. 1 Origin of the NameHebrew yetzer, an inclination or forming impulse, from the root yatsar, to form or fashion; hatov, the good one. 2 LanguageSourced to the subject's own account Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 2 Doctrinal Status DetailThe Mishnah (Berakhot 9:5) holds a person is to love God with both inclinations, reading the evil inclination's energy as something to be directed rather than only suppressed by the good one; later ethical literature names the study of Torah as the good inclination's chief resource in a lifelong contest between the two. 2 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe impulse toward righteous, disciplined conduct, held opposite the yetzer hara as the two inclinations that together make up the human constitution. 2 Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Source The MishnahAnonymous (rabbinic compilers)
In Language
Opposes
Rabbinic literature reads the two inclinations as locked in a lifelong contest for a person's conduct, the good inclination gaining full standing only at religious majority while the evil inclination is present from birth.
Source The MishnahAnonymous (rabbinic compilers)
Originates in Language
Source The MishnahAnonymous (rabbinic compilers)
Held Differently
Both name the disciplined, well-ordered side of the self, but the yetzer hatov is one of two inclinations contesting a single lifetime, present alongside the yetzer hara from early life, while nafs al-mutma'inna is the last of several stations a soul may reach only after disciplining the lower self across the earlier ones.
Source The MishnahAnonymous (rabbinic compilers)
Sources
1. Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash
H. L. Strack and Gunter Stemberger, Fortress Press, 1992
2. The Mishnah
3. Yetzer hara (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026lead section, on the Hebrew phrase behind yetzer hara and its counterpart yetzer hatov
drawn from the phrase 'the inclination of the heart of man is evil' (Biblical Hebrew: יֵצֶר לֵב הָאָדָם רַע, romanized: yêṣer lêḇ hā-ʾāḏām raʿ)
section describing the balancing good inclination
In Judaism each person is said to also possess a yetzer hatov (good inclination) which balances the evil inclination.
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