What would be the response of Aristotle to Thomas Reid. [that knowledge that a flame is hot is not similar in any way to the hotness of the flame.] And does Aquinas hold by the approach of Aristotle in this regard?
Rishonim were going with the basic world view of Plotinus as you can see in Ibn Gavirol and Saadia Gaon. It was the Rambam that made the turn towards Aristotle. That had already been the world view of the Muslims. The Christians were the last to go with Aristotle starting from Aquinas. before that they had been totally Neo Platonic.
So the question is with all. Do they have any answer about the questions of Thomas Reid.

My opinion is that they do not. That is to say that it is unavoidable to get to the synthesis of either Hegel of Kant or some synthesis of Kant like in Leonard Nelson.

To trust in God was a major element of the Musar yeshivas of Navardok. But it is implicit in almost all Litvak yeshivas. Where I went was the Mir in NY and before that was Shar Yashuv. But in both places there was a basic idea that all you need to do is to learn Torah and God will take care of the rest.

And trust in God had other benefits. It is brought in the Sefer HaMidot of Rav Nahman that by trust in God good thoughts are drawn to you. That is it is a shield against evil thoughts and evil world views.

In spite of this, in some places Torah is used to make money. But that is not the idea behind a Litvak yeshiva in its original sense.

But the point is that to learn to trust in God depends a lot I think on being in a Litvak yeshiva where that is the prevailing world view --that trust in God is the main thing in life. By being with like minded people one can gain that kind of world view himself.

In Israel I have very little familiarity with the situation, but the best and are Ponovitch and Brisk.

In terms of the issue whether all one is supposed to do is to learn Gemara I have found it helpful to depend on the opinions of Ibn Pakuda and other Rishonim that include Physics and Metaphysics in the category of learning Torah.

w26 G Minor Slow.   w26midi  w26 nwc

trust in God

The idea of trust in God that is Torah based is trust without effort. You see this in the Levels of Man
Madragat HaAdam of Navardok. And he brings the idea from the Gra.
But in a practical vein what does it mean? My impression is that when there is something immediate that one needs to do, then he does it. But in terms of planning for the future that is where trust in God comes to play its role.

  That is the way trust in God was understood in the Mir in NY. That is to say you sit and learn Torah and do not worry about money.

  [And now that at least for myself I expand the definition of learning Torah to include Physics (as brought in the Guide of Maimonides), I would have to go with the same idea. To do the Physics for its own sake. ]
In any case the idea is that you do what you should be doing to serve God and do not worry about money. That seems to be the basic idea.
In fact I do not have much trust and realize that that is an area I need to work on. So how does one go about working on trust in God. One idea I thought makes sense is to say over that very part of the Madragat HaAdam itself every morning right when you get up--before saying or doing anything..\
Another idea is to encourage others to trust in God and to learn Musar. That is an idea I got from reading a disciple of Rav Israel Salanter.


[I have not made a major issue for the last few years since I have been afraid of self deception. I can imagine I am trusting in God and then when things do not go my way I am afraid I can deny the very validity of trust in the first place. The fault would be clearly my own self deception. So I have not emphasized this for myself. But recently it is looking like an issue that ought not to be ignored.

My impression of the best places to go to learn Torah --at least in terms of what I am familiar with is for beginners Shar Yashuv in NY, and for advanced levels the Mir [ of NY]. I am really not very much familiar with yeshivas in Israel. If, of course, Ponovitch [in Bnei Brak] is still represented by anyone like Rav Shach, well that stands to reason that that is the top. He was the Mount Everest of the Torah world.

The things that were amazing to me about Litvak yeshivas in New York was their depth.
Israel is great in many ways, but too many people come because they imagine they will get some level like what you have in Litvak yeshivas in NY. That is usually not actually what happens.

The idea of Rav Nahman of Breslov to do "hitbodadut" [talk with God] the whole day seems to me to be  a good idea. You see this idea in the very end of his book the LeM where he says the main thing is to do hitbodadut the whole day, but for people that are weak the minimum is for them to do an hour a day.

There seems to many great results of this. But one is that to choose between good and evil requires a  kind of common sense that is anything except common. It needs a special kind of help from above.

w25 music file

w25 G Major mp3 fast. i.e. Allegro, with Rondo at end. w25 midi   w25 nwc

"It is possible to serve God with everything."

Grace and Law. The thing is you need a balance between these. You see a kind of balance between these two areas of value in Rav Nahman. In fact in two lessons in his LeM he brings the ideas "Not to be strict" and  "It is possible to serve God with everything." [ LeM II 44.]

The idea is that God's light fills the world. So the idea is not that everything is good. Rather that it is possible to find the Good.

The thing about two different areas of value is you need each area to get to its perfection before it can be integrated successfully with the other. An example would be Newton's Gravity with Maxwell. Each needed to get to the peck until Einstein could see the way to combine, or better said to modify Newton. Same with Einstein and Heisenberg until you got Feynman and Schwinger with QFT. Same with String Theory. So it is with other areas of value.
The way you can see this is with spectral lines. Each one is sharp and defined for every element and molecule. But each has its own signature. so the same element will have very specific lines and nothing in between. No penumbra.

The problem is implanted knowledge. There is no reason to think it is true.

Dr Michael Huemer has a kind of point that he answered to me long ago about a kind of problem in the Kant Friesian approach of immediate non-intuitive knowledge [i.e. faith.] [note 1] The problem is implanted knowledge. There is no reason to think it is true. So what can you do with that. In my own mind I have thought to answer this by the idea of Hegel of the dialectic. That getting to truth is this process between empirical knowledge and a priori knowledge.

[I mean to say that as Dr Huemer has argued that even the most straight forward empirical knowledge has hidden a priori assumptions. I would say faith has also this aspect. That is the old mediaeval approach of balance faith with reason.]


[In case it is not clear what I am saying it is that moral principles are objective universals. And that Reason's "thing" is to recognize universals. But as Huemer mentions that sometimes even for pure reason to get the concept in the first place requires an empirical element.]

[I am really not able to take any sides here. It seems to me that Hegel, Kelley Ross, and Huemer all have good points. I imagine the Kelley Ross answer to Huemer would be that your prima facie assumption would have have to have a starting point before reason can even start, plus that it can be checked empirically. thus even flat space time which for kant was the start of reason without which reason could not even start, had to be sacrificed to general relativity. this in fact caused the major crisis of the friesian school. but as kelley ross pointed out, it did not have to be so. and here the insights of michael huemer are helpful for if you see your starting principles cause problems, you might as well find other tarting principles--just as Einstein did.   [he assumed Maxwell's equations were  more fundamental than newton's, so with Einstein the starting principle had to be that the speed of light is constant in all non accelerating frames of reference --as is the case with maxwell ] 


[note 1] "Non intuitive" is not sensed by any of the five senses. "Immediate" means not through anything. I.e. no mediate step. That means not derived by some logical deduction. So "immediate non-intuitive" means knowledge that you know not through the sense and not by some logical derivation. 

w24 music file

w24 G Major

THE LEFT: "The U.S. is always wrong, therefore the Gulf War was wrong."

Abelard Rules for thinking straight

The basic problem is this. The left takes the view that whatever the USA does is wrong. That includes any and all white, males. Especially if they are Protestant.

The question is not weapon quality Uranium being shipped to Iraq.[See the whole history of the Iraq acquiring.] Or N. Vietnam massacres of civilians in S. Vietnam after they took over. The issues are all easy to decide. As long as it is on the side of the USA and/or  democracy,- then it is wrong. The left just needs to think how to argue the point. But the beginning assumption is always the same. White, Protestant, American is always wrong. That is three strikes and you are out. If only one or two of these three evil categories, then one is only part evil. But put all three together, and you get the whole.

It gets tiring to argue when you know the conclusion anyway.

The truth be told, it is hard to get something like justice. But my feeling about it is more or less like Allan Bloom [Closing of the American Mind] said in so many words. The political question is settled. The Constitution of the USA is the best you can get. That does not mean it can not be perverted. But it is the best anyone can get.And countries that follow that basic English British model have done extremely well.  Just take a look at all former colonies of the British. The amount of success and respect for human rights is astonishing.--as compared with any other system that has ever existed in human history.

The issue with the USSR was that sometimes there is such a thing as exploitation. That does not make it right to steal someone else's money. Stealing is still stealing. To exploit was more or less the basic reason that the revolution happened in Russia. But that was not a good reason to go in the opposite direction. You need a kind of balance between private property and government protection of workers. 

Villagers in New Guinea. Should you full their request to send "a satellite phone, a flashlight, and the equivalent of about $20,000 in cash."

Villagers in New Guinea. Should you full their request to send  "a satellite phone, a flashlight, and the equivalent of about $20,000 in cash."

A comment by Dr Kelley Ross on

A Death in the Rainforest, by Don Kulick

A fascinating update to the story of the Cargo Cult, and its reception by a Western liberal, is A Death in the Rainforest, How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick [Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2019]. Kulick is a scholar in linguistics and anthropology.
Kulick is apparoached by a villager, and is asked him to send various goods, like a satellite phone, a flashlight, and the equivalent of about $20,000 in cash. Oh, and don't forget to let him know his mobile phone number. Kulick can only tell him that "I'll do my best".
This occasions painful reflections on the part of Kulick for the tragedy of life in the village of Gapun:

"I read Luke's letter as an entreaty to white-skinned people everywhere. I see it as an appeal. I think it is a guileless call to acknowledge the privilege that white skin has acquired, and a gentle request that white people recognize that vast inequalities that we have begotten around the world. Most of all, it seems to me that Luke's letter is a heartfelt plea to begin to redress those inequalities by giving something back. "[p.238]

From this, we might wonder what Kulick expects "white" outsiders to do -- forgetting that globalization and development in the Third World now often involve the Chinese, if not the Japanese, Koreans, Indians, and other people arguably not "white." And we get the cliché about "giving something back," which ought to raise the question exactly what has been "taken" from Gapun. No one has come in to loot their limited possessions, certainly not white people. Arguably, they have been "robbed" of their traditional culture; but then their way of life, daily farming, hunting, and eating, actually have not been changed that much (contrary to the "a Way of Life Came to an End" in the book subtitle). What has changed are their expectations. They know that a better life exists, and they would like to be part of it. But giving them these ideas is part and parcel of "robbing" them of their traditional culture. Does Kulick think that they should have been kept in ignorance of the outer world? Does he believe, as the saying goes, that "the Wogs should stay Wogs"? But this is otherwise regarded as one of the worst, most condescending, colonialist attitudes.

Thus, the "rainforest" is a wonderful place, the "lungs of the planet," with marvelous diversity of life, etc. Nature at her best. On the other hand, a "jungle" is a threatening, dangerous place, probably populated with head hunters. Obviously this is the result of some kind of racist smear. However, Kulick points out, the environment of Gapun is much more like the dangerous "jungle" than like the romanticized "rainforest." The people of Gapun suffer from endemic malaria and rarely live to old age. Their environment is on land that is largely mud, frequently flooded, with leeches, snakes ("Death Adders"), and crocodiles all over the place. And the villagers used to be actually be head hunters, in a culture of constant warfare with neighboring villages. The villagers know that there is a better life elsewhere, but their isolation, many hours up small rivers and through swamps, prevents their full participation in the modern world. Nevertheless, they benefit from artifacts like cooking pots, steel knives, mosquito nets, and even flashlights -- but replacing batteries can be a problem.

Western Civilization as opposed to religious fanaticism

The issue of religious fanaticism is best addressed by Kelley Ross. [That is the Kant-Fries school of thought based on Leonard Nelson]. That is simply this: you have an array of positive values from one end of the half circle of no value but all form [logic] going through various middle stages of partly adding value but lessening form until you get to the peak of all infinite value and zero form [God].


But so you have to have a hand in all the areas of positive value. But you just as much and even more so need to avoid every equal and opposite area of negative value.

Certain people were able to hold onto one particular area well and open up a path through that area into ultimate holiness.
Those are individual great people that hand a hand in perfecting some area of value.And there are people that Allan Bloom calls "civilization founding people" that go beyond one or two specific areas but are able to hold the entire superstructure in the first place like the basic foundations stones of Western Civilization.

Hegel also has the same kind of array of value, [http://autio.github.io/projects/scienceoflogic/] but connects them through a process of dialectic. Hegel is quite interested in fact in doing the same kind of defense of Christianity that Aquinas was doing, but somehow or other his ideas got to be used in the exact opposite ways he was intending them to be used. [Incidentally the opinion of Rav Avraham Abulafia, a mediaeval mystic was also very positive towards Jesus himself but not toward the actual functioning Catholic Church. In that way he was very similar to Hegel.]] But if in fact he is all that different than Leonard Nelson, I am not so sure of. [McTaggart answers a lot of the question son Hegel. Some he admits openly are a problem. Some he adjusts Hegel. Some he shows the questions are based on misunderstandings.] 

religious fanaticism.

My parents were very much against any kind of path that reeked of religious fanaticism. While having great respect for Torah. but anything that would take a person out of a path of balance and sanity was totally off the radar for them.
So with due respect for the Gra and Rav Shach, and Rav Nahman,-- they would not have agreed with elements of fanaticism that one might find in their writings. And the result of this kind of thinking would mean [at least in our present day and age] to stay away from the religious world as far as possible.

Their path was to send their children to public school, and emphasize getting a good education. Going for weekend excursions to the ocean etc. I.e., a normal, wholesome American home (in those days when there was such a thing). I am not so sure any such thing exists anymore. But it once did.

[Nowadays the secular world seems to be a kind of secular fanaticism. I am sure  my parents would never send me to public school today. They would find some private school. In fact, I almost went to a private school. My parents were willing to send me there. But in the end I backed out and continued in my regular high school which in those days was also excellent.]

 My basic orientation is not to follow any religion as a belief system, but rather to follow Reason. Sometimes Reason points out that some points are valid. Sometimes there are in other questions not. So the standard ought to be the question what does reason require? Not what does any particular religion require. There are no package deals. 

 However reason is a hard. But that only means that to reason well is hard. It does not mean that there is any better standard.

w23 music file

w23 Allegro and Rondo F Major for Orchestra   w23 in midi  w23 nwc

to get to authentic Torah in any sense whatsoever the only way is through the path of the Gra.

The importance of the signature of the Gra on the famous letter of excommunication is that often one without knowledge or experience can not tell what is authentic Torah or not. It is the same reason a mother warns her children not to put their hands on a hot stove.

It is somewhat of a shock that though "faith in the wise" is one of the most important principles of how Torah is acquired, still the Gra who was on the top of the list of the top ten, still is ignored.

I only saw one place alone that goes by the Gra with no compromise the yeshiva of Rav Silverman in the Old City of Jerusalem. [pronounced "Zilverman"]

I can only recommend such a kind of yeshiva. To me it seems of ultimate importance this one basic fact about the Gra. To me it seem clear that to get to authentic Torah in any sense whatsoever the only way is through the path of the Gra.

[So even if I do not have the merit to stick with the path of the Gra in ever detail, at least I can try to stick with it in areas that are within my control.]

F Major Winds and Violin w22

The greatness of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri

The greatness of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri is that it combines an aspect of simplicity along with the basic meaning of what it means to "be able to learn". Even though I have not been able to finish it myself, still I want to recommend a way of finishing it. That is to read each chapter a few times until it is fairly clear, and then move on. So you do not have to get every single detail, but you also do not move on until you have gotten some basic idea. This is in fact how I used to learn Gemara.
 [This did not seem to work when it came to Physics in which it seemed better just to do straight "Girsa" (saying the words and going on with no review at all) a few times through the whole book from cover to cover until I could get the basic idea, and even be up to any level in which review would be helpful.]



Even though I am not much of a Litvak, I still want to leave the name of this blog as it is since I wish I would have the merit of learning Torah and walking in the path of Musar.
 Even if I can not be as good as I ought to be, at least I can want to help and encourage my friend to be as good as he can be.(This idea is from Rav Nahman.)


As for myself, I have to admit I did not appreciate the straight Litvak approach of the Gra and Rav Shach as much as I should have. But today I have begun to see what is special and important about the straight Lithuanian yeshiva approach, and also to see that as much as modeled on the authentic approach of the Gra, the better it is.

Litvak Yeshiva path

The Litvak Yeshiva path is not exactly the path of Musar. There is a certain amount of discrepancy. What would be called secular studies is one area. Another is Torah for money.
However the areas of agreement are more that the areas of discrepancy.

The secular studies area is easily divided into two parts. One part is where in fact secular studies are ridiculous.  Obviously pseudo science. And anything with the word "studies" attached to it.
On the other hand, there are areas in which the Rambam and other rishonim held they are even higher than traditional "learning Torah" i.e. Physics and Metaphysics.
But this is clearly an area of disagreement among rishonim. The Ramban/Nahmanides clearly was no fan of Aristotle. Even in his defence of the Rambam, he did not go so far as to advocate the Guide for the Perplexed itself. [I.e. I mean to say that there is a letter from the Ramban/Nahmanides defending the Rambam, but in spite of his impassioned plea for the defense of the Rambam, he did not actually defend the Guide as being "right."]



The nice thing about being in Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY was the fact that almost no one was there in order to be using Torah to make money. In both places the clear intention for everyone was "Lishma" (i.e., Torah for its own sake). And besides that, there was also a kind of feeling of, "if everyone would be doing this the whole world would be a better place." There was a feeling of doing something for all mankind just by sitting and learning Torah. [You can actually see this stated as such in the Nefesh HaHaim of Rav Haim of Voloshin, a disciple of the Gra.] [I ought to add the fact that in both Shar Yashuv and the Mir I was very happy. There is a kind of "synergy" when you are learning Torah in the path of the Gra that everything seems to fall into place. Just like the sages said, "One who receives the yoke of Torah on himself the yoke of government and work is removed from him."]


I have really no good ideas about the Metaphysics. Leonard Nelson of the Kant Fries School looks pretty great to me  --but ironically enough I also think Hegel has some great ideas. Nowadays, there are some really great people like Kelley Ross, Huemer, Ed Feser. Steven Dutch I think is gone, but his web site is still up--thank God.
The way to put that all together is basically this. Moral principles are universals. And the function of reason is to recognize universals. But to start reason, you need some kind of starting point that is not itself based on reason. So you have to know your starting points, or at least accept them as prima facie unless something even more clear overthrows it.
 But reason without faith is empty. It can easily come up with all kinds on nonsense. So you need a kind of immediate non intuitive perception [faith].


[Mainly I believe that the Leonard Nelson approach makes the most sense because the transcendental deduction of Kant never really worked to be able to combine reason and perception. As Kelley Ross put it both must  have a deeper source  That is non intuitive immediate knowledge. But as Michael Huemer pointed out, that there is no reason to believe implanted knowledge has any relation to reality.  Therefore that immediate non intuitive knowledge-the axioms by which knowledge starts must be open to correction. It is not infallible. And if one asks-- that empirical facts ought not to be able to correct a priori knowledge that is where Hegel comes in handy. There is a point where knowledge itself gets to a plateau and gets above it by contrasting two points where separate series of reasoning led to and end up in a contradiction by which one starts the whole process again. Something like electromagnetism and newton that contradicted until you got special relativity,-- and relativity and quantum mechanics contradicted until you got quantum field theory and to sew up gravity you get string theory.

Winds, Brass, Violin, Organ in F Major [index name w21]  w21 midi   w21 nwc

Johann du Toit • 7 hours ago

People seem to think that the State can solve all fulfill all their desires and solve all their problems by simply issuing a diktat. Want free stuff? The state will provide it/ Want to end Global Warming? The state will pass a law to end Global Warming (yes, it sounds ridiculous but this is exactly what the "Extinction Rebellion" and Climate Change Alarmists seem to think will solve the problem.....along with shutting down our economies, banning private cars and air conditioners,

https://www.crisismagazine.com/2020/the-politics-of-sorrow

Modern intellectuals

Ed Feser:"Modern intellectuals tend to be spoiled and ungracious creatures, whose inclination to bitch and moan seems only to increase the better things get, and who seem to occupy themselves concocting ever more recherché reasons for badmouthing their society and their forebears. "

Gemara Kidushin A poor person is looking over a cake to buy it

A poor person is looking over a cake to buy it. One that comes over and grabs it and buys it himself is called "wicked."

This is brought in Kidushin Rav Gidal wanted to buy a field. R. Aba went and bought it. R. Gidal complained. R. Aba said, "I did not know you were going to buy it."
Rav Aba offered to give it to Rav Gidal as a present. Rav Gidal refused to accept it as a present because "He who hates gifts will live." [Proverbs]
But Rav Gidal would have agreed to buy it. But R Aba sis not want to sell it for money. He said that is is fist purchase of  a field and it is not a good idea to sell your first purchase,.

So neither R Gidal nor R Aba used the field and it was left fallow.

[Rav Moshe Feinstein brings this in his correspondence].

G Minor. Violin and Winds[g20]

[w20 in midi format]

 w20 in nwc

not giving rebuke

I wanted to bring for a second time the vast importance of not giving rebuke in the thought of Rav Nahman of Breslov.
I mentioned this I think once before but probably not with the degree of emphasis that he places on this.
The idea is simple. The last Torah lesson Rav Nahman ever gave starts with this: אף על פי שתוכחה היא דבר גדול ומוטל על כל אחד להוכיח את הבירו כשרואה בו דבר שאינו הגון אף על פי כן לאו כל אחד ראוי להוכיח כמו שאמר ר' עקיבא תמה אני אם יש בדור הזה מי שיכול להוכיח ואם ר' עקיבא אמר זה בדורו כל שכן בדורות אלו.
Even though rebuke is a great thing and it is incumbent on each person to rebuke his fellow man when he sees in him something not proper, still not everyone is fit to give rebuke. As we see that R. Akiva said I would be surprised if there is anyone in this generation that can give rebuke. And if R Akiva said this in his generation all the more so in this generation. Because when one (who is not fit) gives rebuke he can make the person he is rebuking even worse.

So how do you know that this is one of the most essential fetures of the thought of Rav Nahman? Because of how this Torah lesson was given. He held that he was rising from spiritual level to a higher level because of his practice of talking with God as one talks to a friend. No formulae. Also because of his general practice of serving God by learning Torah. But he was rising from level to level at an accelerated rate. So every Torah lesson was on a higher level than the previous ones. So the very last lesson has to be thought of as the peak of all his Torah lessons. The very summit. And since its major theme is not to give rebuke, this you have to say is most important of all his lessons.

Violin French Horn, English Horn, Timpani and Basson in G minor

the Mir in NY some books of Ethics

I learned in the Mir in NY some books of Ethics. That is besides the regular two Gemara sessions which went from 1000 AM until 200 PM and then from 4 PM until  8 PM. Then an evening session for students who were not married went from about 830 until 1100 or 12 AM for the students who were "masmidim" [diligent.]

So the Musar part was almost negligible. [ 35 minutes per day]. Yet, still I was affected deeply by the Musar part of the yeshiva. In particular the Gates of Repentance of Rabbainu Yona.

And in that book I recall was brought a statement of the sages that, "There are no problems without sin."אין יסורים בלי עוון

Thus, the best way to get out of his problems is not to sin. Easier said than done. Thus the disciple of Rav Israel Salanter [Isaac Blazer] brings the idea of encouraging others to learn Musar [mediaeval books of Ethics] as a cure for sin which in its turn is a cure for ones problems.

[How to define "sin" is a hard issue. There always seems to be areas of doubt as to what is the right course of action. Torah gives gernral guide lines but even with that there is always doubt. So to encourage the learning of Musar.]

music file G major

G major Allegro Winds and French Horn  w18  [w18 in midi format]

path of balance

I see the paths of great people often seems to go in opposite directions from each other.
[Rav Nahman refers to this as the argument between tzadikim.]
From what I recall this is one of the questions raised by Socrates. What is virtue "arete" , i.e. human excellence. He meant to ask this: that even though human excellence seems to vary according to the person, still is there some basic essence of "arete" [in ancient Greek] that all these great people share?
Something in common between the Gra,-- (Eliyahu of Vilna), Rav Israel Salanter, Rav Shach, Einstein, Mozart?

In Musar you find two areas of value,- moral virtue, and intellectual virtue. [Kelley Ross postulates a whole spectrum of value, -along a half circle.]

What my parents recommended was a path of balance. That is since there is a whole spectrum of virtues that are all important but each person seems to be able to excel only in one or two areas so the best idea is balance. That way you hold on to all the areas of value to some degree but you find the areas that are specific to your soul.

There is an opposite area of negative value for every area of positive value. [This is like Rav Nahman said about truth. He said there is only one truth but lots of lies. For example, if you have blue paint and someone asks what color is the paint there is only one right answer. Blue. But there are an infinite number of lies one can say. E.g. one could say it is red or green or any of the continuous wave lengths on the color spectrum. So even though in every area of value there is one true path, there are many ways of getting it wrong.

[This gives a good reason why the Gra would sign the letter of excommunication--to give warning to people like me that would not know how to avoid the dark side.]

So when it comes to Torah I would like to suggest for myself and others to be careful you go to an authentic Litvak yeshiva where you can get the real thing. [But I should add that even in the straightest of Litvak yeshivas one needs to avoid fanaticism. And also concentrate on the classes of the roshei yeshiva in order to get to a point where you "know how to learn".]

Rav Israel Salanter

Rav Israel Salanter brings the idea of bringing merit to many as being a way to bring merit to oneself in his "Letter of Musar". ["One who brings a merit to many, no sin comes to him."]

His idea of how to do this was to make a kind of library of Musar [Books on Ethics]. The difference between a regular library and this library of Musar would be that learning Musar of any Torah requires one to say the words. So it would be more like a regular place of learning Torah except that it would be devoted to Musar (books of Ethics).

The thing is this idea never took off at all. Musar was totally absorbed into the Litvak Yeshiva [Lithuanian type of Yeshiva]. And to me this seems right. Musar can get people off track unless connected with the straight Litvak yeshiva approach.

[The reason however it seems that Rav Israel Salanter wanted to keep things seperate was that the Litvak yeshiva approach can also get one off track. ]

G Minor Allegro Violin, French horn, Winds, Timpani. edited version

w17 edited version  w17 in midi format

Communism was founded on reason, and yet had become a totalitarian regime.

It was thought to be a truism a few years ago in the USA that Communism was founded on reason, and yet had become a totalitarian regime. Thus Reason is not always [or maybe very rarely] a good guide towards morality.

Whether you can find flaws in the system is not so much my point. Rather, that communism was based on the best the intellectual world had to offer, and yet was clearly causing mass murder and poverty wherever it was implemented.

So even though I did study leftist thinkers and philosophers, I was always aware that even pure Reason has limits.` And even if Reason recognizes moral principles, it does not know them automatically. You might take many examples violent tribes that still exist as mentioned in the book by Howard Bloom [The Lucifer Principle], though there are many more examples than the ones he picks.


This suspicion about the limits of human reason can give you an idea why I appreciate Dr Kelley Ross's web site about the Kant Friesian school based on Leonard Nelson. He seems to have an amazing defense of faith, i.e. immediate non-intuitive knowledge.


So on one hand, I can see the point of Dr. Michael Huemer that reason recognizes moral principles. But on the other hand, I also see that for Reason to be awoken, it need Divine revelation as the Rambam wrote in the Guide about Abraham the patriarch. Or you could go about the issue of faith with the idea of a dialectical process. A slow progress towards truth.

In the Guide of the Perplexed of Maimonides you have a allegory which makes the point that Physics and Metaphysics are above learning what we would call "learning Torah" i.e. Gemara.
It is the allegory of the king in his country. And you have there people outside the country, inside, near the palace and inside the palace. And right there the Rambam says people outside the palace are the "Talmudim" those that learn and keep the Oral and Written Law and learn Gemara all day. Inside the palace of the King in the outer sections  are the Physicists. In the inner section you have the prophets and philosophers.

So it does seem that the Rambam is making a value judgment about what is better to be spending your time at. Given a choice he seems to be saying one ought to learn Physics and Metaphysics rather than be sitting a learning Gemara.

However he certainly is not disparaging the importance of Gemara. Rather the idea is one ought to have  certain amount of time in Gemara and allot another larger section of his time to Physics.

And we know what the Rambam means because he defines his terms in the beginning of the Guide. Physics and Metaphysics he says mean the subjects so described by the ancient Greeks.

Philosophy today however I would have to say is probably better to avoid. It is known that Rav Nahman thought ill of philosophers and from what I can see today he had a point. So kind of by default I have gone more into Physics. [But in philosophy, I like Kelley Ross of the Kant Fries school, Michael Huemer, and Ed Feser.]

[Hegel to me seems important also although there is some friction between him and the Kant Fries school. See McTagart who answers some of the problems that Dr Kelley Ross raises. See Walter Kaufman on Hegel

The major advantage of the Litvak Yeshiva approach

The major advantage of the Litvak Yeshiva approach as exemplified by Rav Shach is that people do not have automatic access to moral knowledge.

This is how the Rambam understands the laws of the Greeks, natural law. He says unless it is revealed people would not know it.

So you might guess that people could guess at morality through their inherent reason, but that does not seem to be the case. Even natural law needs to be revealed.

That is what the Rambam says in regard to Abraham the patriarch--that he knew natural law but only because God revealed it to him.

But the interesting thing about the Litvak yeshiva approach is they did not accept the Musar idea in its entirety. 20 minutes before mincha and 15 minutes before the evening prayer is no where near the hours of Musar learning that Rav Israel Salanter was advocating. Probably the reason was that it can and does distract from Gemara. It shifts the center of gravity. But that would not be a problem if not for the fact that it shifts it in a way that is usually not really accurate in terms of Torah. So to learn some was looked on as a good compromise.

[It is possible that I was sidetracked by Musar, but I am not sure. In any case I did learn some of the books of the Ari [Isaac Luria] and Sar Shalom Sharabi which are commentaries on the Ari. But of all the books of mystics I found Rav Avraham Abulafia of the Middle Ages to be the most interesting.

Another important advantage is that the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication is paid attension to at least a little bit. That tends to save one from the Sitra Achra if one pays attension to it.

F Major Violin, French Horn, Winds

w16 F major Rondo [w16 in midi format] [w16 in nwc format]

Rav Shick [known in Yavneal as one of the great Breslov sages of the last generation] brought an idea of שיעורין כסדרן learning sessions in order. He attached this to the "seder halimud" of Rav Nahman of just saying the words as fast as possible and going on. [No repeats until one has finished the book].
[Rav Nahman of Breslov would not be in the excommunication of the Gra as you can see by the actual language of that letter. So I feel free to quote from him.]

The idea was to take e.g. a Gemara and just go through a lot of pages in one sitting. And then put in a place marker, and take a mishna and do the same. Go through a few chapters. Same with Rav Isaac Luria's Eitz Haim and his Eight Gates.[And the next day to start where you left off. This way you finish a lot and in the end you understand a lot more than if you had stopped on every little problem.]

This method I have used also for a wide array of subjects like math and I have found that combining these two ideas has been very helpful.

I also tried doing this with Rav Haim of Brisk's Hidushei HaRambam and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri. However in those last two books I found doing review after going through one section was more satisfying since in one reading alone I would generally not understand anything but then in the next reading it would all become clear.. So I would do review and then go on. In that way I guess I was combining the idea of Iyun [in depth] and Bekiut [fast learning] togther.

[Both idea have previous sources. The saying the words and going on is from the Gemara Shabat page 63 I think. The sessions in order is from Rav Isaac Luria.

I did this also with Hegel in his Greater Logic from his Encyclopedia.

So in short what I am recommending is (1) saying the words and going on (2) sessions in order.
This learning I would say to in such a way that you get through the two talmuds with Tosphot, and the Pnei Moshe and Karban Eda on the Yerushalmi. Also the main texts of math and Physics.
Also if I could I would try to do this with Avraham Abulafia's books [from the Middle Ages]

There are moral propositions. From Michael Huemer

ETHICS IS A PRIORI

That knowledge of moral principles is also a priori follows from the following two theses:

(1) Moral principles are not observations. The content of every observation is descriptive.

That is, you do not literally see, touch, hear, etc. moral value.

(2) Moral principles can not be inferred from descriptive premises. This principle is just an instance of the general fact that you cannot derive a conclusion within one subject matter from premises in a different subject matter. Just as you cannot expect to derive a geometrical conclusion from premises in economics, or derive a conclusion about birds from premises that don't say anything about birds, you should not expect to derive a conclusion about morality from non-moral premises.

(3) Therefore, moral knowledge requires an a priori basis.

(1) There are moral propositions.
(2) So they are each either true or false. (by law of excluded middle) (3) And it's not that they're all false. Surely it is true, rather than false, that Josef Stalin's activities were bad. (Although some communists would disagree, we needn't take their view seriously, and moreover, even they would admit some moral judgement, such as, "Stalin was good.")
(4) So some moral judgements correspond to reality. (from 2,3, and the correspondence theory of truth)
(5) So moral values are part of reality. (which is objectivism)

And we have some knowedge of moral propositions

As far as I can tell, this claim follows from the proposition that there is moral knowledge, just as some analogous, more general claim follows from the premise that there is any knowledge at all. For if we know some particular thing, then there are only three possibilities as regards its justification:

(a) it is infinitely regressive. That is, there is a reason for it, and a reason for the reason, and then a reason for that, and so on indefinitely.
(b) it is circular. That is, it is based on some chain of reasoning in which something ultimately is supposed to (directly or indirectly) justify itself.
(c) it is foundational. That is, the item of knowledge itself is, or is based upon, a fact that is known directly and without any argument or reason given.

We know moral principles not based on Empiricism. Empiricism--roughly, the idea that all 'informative' knowledge, or knowledge of the mind-independent, language-independent world, must derive from sense perception--has been fashionable for the last century, though less so, I think, in the past decade. I cannot do justice to this subject here; nevertheless, I will briefly report how things seem to me. First, it is so easy to enumerate what appear on their face to be counter-examples to the thesis of empiricism, and at the same time so difficult to find arguments for the thesis, that the underlying motivation for the doctrine can only be assumed to be a prejudice. Second, I think that in the last several years, if not earlier, the doctrine has been shown to be untenable.⁽²⁹⁾ Here, I will give two of the better-known counter-examples to empiricism.

First example: Nothing can be both entirely red and entirely green.⁽³⁰⁾ How do I know that? Note that the question is not how I came upon the concepts 'red' and 'green', nor how I came to understand this proposition. The question is why, having understood it, I am justified in affirming it, rather than denying it or withholding judgment. It seems to be justified intuitively, that is, simply because it seems obvious on reflection. How else might it be justified?

A naive empiricist might appeal to my experiences with colored objects: I have seen many colored objects, and none of them have ever been both red and green. One thing that makes this implausible as an explanation of how I know that nothing can be both red and green is the necessity of the judgment. Contrast the following two statements:

Nothing is both green and red.
Nothing is both green and a million miles long.

________________________________________________________________


The way I wrote about this before is this: There are universals. Morals are universals. Function of reason is to recognize universals. How do we know there are universals. Prime facie. E.g. There are trees.

I did not have a chance to look at the sugia [subject] in depth, but I did look briefly at Nedarim around pages 5-6 and saw that a neder can forbid speaking to someone. You see this towards the end of the sugia about Shmuel. He says if one says מודרני ממך אסור I am forbidden to you by a neder [vow] he is forbidden. The Gemara there concludes that he would be forbidden if Shmuel holds ידיים שאינן מוכיחות הווין ידיים. [An indication or hint of a neder/vow even if not perfectly clear is  still a neder/vow.] So we see if he would say openly, "I am forbidden to you to talk or do business or sit in your four yards," these all would be forbidden.

So since the laws of herem [excommunication] derive their power from laws of vows, we see that all these things can be forbidden by means of a herem.
So why is the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication ignored? Even to the degree that it is thought to be totally irrelevant.

[And you can see in laws of vows that it makes no difference why one person might say to another: "I am forbidden to you under a vow." Since the Gra was qualified to make a decree of excommunication then it is valid for whatever reason he saw to do so.
Furthermore, it seems unlikely to me that it was a mistake.

Musar refers to books on morality of the Middle Ages

Musar originally was not supposed to be part of the Yeshiva thing. [Musar is a movement begun by Rav Israel Salanter that holds that people ought to learn much Musar --hours in fact--every day. Musar refers to books on morality of the Middle Ages. There are about four canonical ones and after that about 30 in the penumbra.]

[The yeshiva as an independent institution was begun by a disciple of the Gra. [in the beginning of the 1800's]. [It is not known what the Gra's reaction to it was. There are different versions of the events.] Before that, there was no such thing. The local place where people prayed in the morning simply stayed open during the day and whoever wanted to learn did so. If it was more organized, then it was the rav who was hired by the home owners who was in charge.
Kollel as such was begun by Rav Israel Salanter much later around 1860.
But Musar was eventually absorbed into the Litvak Yeshiva.

I had a very good time in two excellent places--Shar Yashuv and the Mir. So the "Litvak yeshiva thing" I know can be an amazing experience and also a good way to gain objective morality.

Impeachment

Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind explains the situation well. He traces it back to a basic contradiction in the Enlightenment itself.

He sees the conflict left vs right as rooted in the Enlightenment coming into some kind of blocked alley.
The main theme in his book is that we find a way out of this dead end or else civilization is doomed.

Torah with Derech Eretz. [Torah with Work].

The path of my parents was that of balance. That is Torah with Derech Eretz. [Torah with Work]. They would not have agreed to the idea of accepting money to learn Torah, but they would agree to the idea of trust in God in order to learn Torah.
These are two different concepts that are confused nowadays very often. They are not the same thing.
One thing is to trust in God that somehow he will make ends meet when you devote yourself to learning Torah.

E Flat Major for violin and winds. file name w15

The Litvak yeshiva is largely based on the Gra--at least in its world view. But also to some degree in its actual workings.

That it is looks upon Torah as being a 24 hour per day, seven days a week as being the goal.

But it does this with a high degree of keeping Torah and creating good character also.

The reason or reason I do not exactly walk on that path are more or less because something it seems I lacked the merit needed for it to work for me. [That is my considerations were mainly practical. If something does not work for me, even if it is in theory the best approach, it still does not change the fact that there is something that I simply can not change about my situation.]

So I have had to depend on the rishonim like Ibn Pakuda and Saadia Gaon that saw Physics as a part of Torah. 

C Major Allegro file name w13    w13 in midi

violin and winds

Aristotle was considered well by the author of the Obligations of the Heart [Ibn Pakuda]

Aristotle was considered well by the author of the Obligations of the Heart, Saadia Gaon and most rishonim that followed Saadia Gaon. So I have a tendency to want to justify Aristotle when possible.
[Nahmanides however had a very negative opinion of Aristotle and you see that in all those who followed his lead. That is in fact a lot of the later rishonim. So you see this even in the commentary of the Mishna by the Rav from Bartenura. However the Rambam certainly held quite differently and you can see that in everything from his commentary on the Mishna to the Guide. He held Metaphysics is a part of learning Torah and he certainly meant the books of Aristotle called Metaphysics. But he probably meant to include the later commentaries on Aristotle]


Telos [goals] in Aristotle is not as far as people think from the way the world works.
Dr Michael Huemer brings that it is refuted. However at least in the way physics is usually understood nowadays is that things tend towards a minimum energy level. [i do not mean to be critical of dr huemer. Rather just to raise one point. But his essay on this or on most other subjects is usually amazingly insightful and shockingly so.]
[An example of this comes to mind in terms of atoms and electrons. They try to go towards a state where the action disappears.]




Dr Kelley Ross [of the school of Kant and Leonard Nelson] also mentions that telos [goals] is something we see in biology.

[I forget offhand the way telos fits into Aristotle's system. Mainly I think the idea is  for things to some to their essence--from potential to action. That is how he modifies the universals of Plato]

Rav Nahman does bring an interesting idea: that מסיטרא דימינא מוחא חיוורא ככספא which means from the side of kindness one's mind is made  white as silver.

He expands on the idea but you can see that he understands the simple explanation to be that by doing acts of kindness, one mind is made pure.

(I do not recall which chapter in his LeM brings this).

So it seems to me that he is suggesting a good strategy to gain mental health. When an act of kindness presents itself, do it.

But he would not be advocating socialism: i.e. the idea of taking from the rich and giving to the poor.
[Or "government control of industry" which is just a fancy way of saying the same thing.]
 The reason would be that taking people's money from them even with a good motive is theft. So you do not do theft even in order to do good with the money later. Another reason is that socialism means to take away people's freedom. If you take people's money you take away their freedom because without money you are automatically a slave. You have to do what the boss says or you don't eat.

Also I should add that the idea of Torah about what one should be doing with his time is to learn Torah, and that is the biggest kindness for oneself and all others. You see this in the Yerushalmi where the incident is brought that one person sent his son to Tiberias to learn Torah and heard that he was burying the dead. He sent to him, "Did I send you to learn Torah or to bury the dead?" The Yerushalmi concludes that if there is some kind of mitzva that can not be done by others then one can interrupt learning Torah and do the mitzva but otherwise not.
[I saw in the Even Shelema which brings quotations for the Gra that the meaning of the Yerushalmi is that one can interrupt one's studies for a mitzva that can not be done by others. Not that one must. The reason the Gra says this seems clear to me to be העוסק בבמצווה פטור מן המצווה One who is doing one commandment is not obligated to interrupt in order to do another.

I think that the idea of a "herem" [excommunication] is more of a serious  issue than most people are aware of. I was looking at the first chapter of Nedarim and I noticed there where the subject is brought.

The short and sweet of the subject is this. One under a  Nidui can learn Torah. But one under a "herem" can not learn nor teach. [That actual law is from Moed Katan]. So even if one would think the herem was based on a mistake it would not matter in terms of its validity.

So I try to avoid the religious world which seem to ignore the herem. And I can not figure out why the signature of the Gra seems to count for nothing for most people. [He who ignores a herem is under the same herem.]

Rondo for violin and winds

D Major Rondo  w14 file name mp3.  w14 in midi format  w14 in nwc format

Hegel thought somewhat as Dr Huemer said that just knowing what people thought [history of Philosophy courses] is not worth anything. But Hegel also thought that philosophy makes progress. This he thought happens by a "give and take" kind of conversation along the lines you would see Socrates do. Except Hegel expanded Socrates to say that that same process happens even after Socrates.

The fact is it is hard to get a good idea of the world view of the Torah even if one would know the whole Gemara. The reason is there was an aspect of things that the Rishonim [mediaeval people] were good at and that is to get at what the actual world view of Torah is in a general sense and then also to work out the details so that you iron out any seeming contradictions.
So to get an idea of the working world view of Torah--what it actually holds is right and wrong you really need the Musar Movement of Rav Israel Salanter who emphasized that aspect of the Rishonim.