There was movement started by Reb Israel Salanter to learn books of Musar [Five books of Jewish Morality written by Medieval sages].
This had a core cannon of six books from the Middle Ages and one post  Renaissance book-the Mesilat Yesharim.The complaints about this movement were varied. The Chazon Ish asked "What good is Musar if you do not know Halacha?"

Clearly this is a good point but I have  a further complaint. What good is Musar if you do not know the philosophy behind the books? What I think is important about Musar  only comes because of the general paradigm of Musar i.e. it imbibes into tone the general world view of Torah.

Also I want to mention a few more flaws in the movement that should be taken constructive criticism not destructive criticism. Things that should be corrected to make the movement better than it already is. First get rid of all the moral busybodies



Second the are issues that come up in Musar that are not dealt with. The Ramchal emphasized learning Kabalah. The Rambam emphasizes learning Physics and Metaphysics [i.e. each on a set of books written by Aristotle]. The Ramchal puts down all secular disciplines  and is opposed to the Rambam in this issue. why are these issues not dealt with? and what about borrowing from Aristotle and Plato that Musar does but today this is ignored?

In spite of these complaints I agree that Musar is very important for religious and non religious Jews. We all need Ethics and to understand the basic point of view of the Torah concerning world view issues. Halacha gives us "Particulara." Musar gives us "Generala."

While people think many laws of the Torah seem counter to objective reason I think it can be shown that most of the time critiques of the Torah are based on ideas of morality that are based on false views like empiricism or moral relativism.

From a philosophical point of view  what is of value in the Torah and Talmud and what is not?First we have to establish a philosophical point of view to start with. and we have to establish a set of ground rules for what constitutes evidence.
I do not start out thinking that everything in the Torah or Talmud is true and then work backwards to eliminate things I don't like.  I start out like Descartes with zero assumptions and then build up.
This is a significant difference between me and Orthodox Jews.
But to get to my point I start with Moral objectivity. I holds that moral claims assert propositions that are at least sometimes objectively true. What is meant here by the qualifier "objectively" is that their truth does not depend on beliefs, feelings, or other attitudes of observers towards the things evaluated.
 I will not here try to counter moral relativism or relativism in general. Nor the lunatic American British Analytic Linguistic schools of thought. [Most serious modern philosophers have awoken to the fact that all twentieth century philosophy is "obviously false" (in the famous words the Professor of philosophy at Berkley John Searle) and so there is no need here to bother with them.]

So we start with Moral objectivity.. From that standpoint I think there are two things of great value in the Torah and Talmud: the Laws of Morality that can be defended by objective reason and Fear of God.

While people think many laws of the Torah seem counter to objective reason I think it can be shown that most of the time critiques of the Torah are based on ideas of morality that are based on false views like empiricism or moral relativism.


But I do not think that the fanatic  Orthodox approach is right either. We can't assume the whole tradition is right against evidence.  [For example where would the Tyrannosaurs Rex have fit into the ark? Afetr all Noah was commanded to take all living things into the  ark.]

I think the best approach is to combine the two approaches (1) start from the philosophical way from zero assumptions and work up. (2) Work with the basic content of Torah and Mitzvot and only reject what is clearly contrary to evidence. (3) Assume that even you evaluations of evidence and of the Torah itself are flawed and that we all have to listen to people smarter than ourselves.  None of anyone reading this blog are going to examine the Talmud with more rigor than the Tosphot or Rambam or Chaim Soloveitch. \


We are not going to understand evolution better that Stephen Gould or Steve Dutch. We all have to realize our limitations. Aish HaTorah is not going to disprove evolution.


Then you end up with Straightforward Conservative Judaism.

As Habermas has noted there needs to be some new thought concerning politics.
Frankly I was a bit shocked to see his basically positive approach towards Hegel and Marxism.
But to be frank I was shocked to see the famous critic of Marx, Karl Popper also seeing a lot of the good points in Marxism.


But being in a city of the former USSR where people are still afraid to break the law from the terror of the police or as they call it the "malitzia." Only after twenty year is this fear of breaking the law wearing away.



 And I have written before about main main complaint about John Locke and the American democracy--empiricism..Empiricism is false. we have knowledge of things besides what we know by our senses. Examples are out there by the millions
Some type of new political philosophy is clearly needed.

And what philosophers think does effect people. 100 years ago all philosophers in England were Anti Christian- some more openly than others. This was in spite of the fact that 99% of English people were starkly Christian.  Do you think that the Philosophers had an effect? clearly they did. Islam is the fastest growing most vibrant religion in england is is due to be the religion of the  majority in a few years.
Philosophers have an effect.

My opinion about philosophy is like that Kant, Leonard Nelson of the new Friesian School and Hegel are important. But I do not see philosophy as being able to see the truth in politics. The kind of evolution into liberal democracy--the Magna Carta, the establishment of Parliament, the Provisions of Oxford all became the blue print of the American Democracy which in turn became the model for all states that aspire to a realm of human flourishing. And not a single reform in the Magna Carta or the Provisions of Oxford or any later establishing of human rights in England came from any kind of reasoning or logic or philosophy, but from the broken friendships and bloody rivalry in medieval England. The person responsible for the provision of oxford was not a philosopher, but a crusader who spent years killing heretics in France.

What i mean by this is that there is a very wide variety of concepts of what the soul is starting with Plato  and on . An also there is a wide variety of opinions of what is the goal of human existence in this world.

I want to suggest that these two questions as linked together with super-glue.
I dare not here go into the complicated borrowings that went on in the Middle Ages among Christian, Jewish and Muslim philosophers.[i would love to but i have no time right now]


[1]  Only the sechel hanikne (acquired intellect) will be left of a person after his passing way. (acquired intellect) is when one know many things in one knowing
This from the Rambam. I suggest this is pure Neo Platonic thought. where the actual souls is included in the higher Intellect  Wisdom which is the first emanation of the G-d.
[2] An Aristotelian concept that the soul is the form of the body. This is not against the Neo Platonic concept of Torah lesson 25 but complements it. The in fact reinforces it.] the real soul is included after passing away in the highest form-pure form the form of the good.while the actual aspect of the soul that is tied to the body will not exist after death.
[3] The soul is the "I".

[4] And the purpose of all this is to be included in the Infinite One--pure Neo Platonic thought again.] where after the soul is included in wisdom it rises to the Infinite One

Being included in God? Is this the goal?  This is  a neo platonic idea.

To the Rambam  by sechel hanikne ones merits to the world to come.  

I have recently become interested in Musar and the seemingly extravagant claims made for it by Israel Salanter. I am thinking that perhaps the Musar movement was right and that there is something about that basic set of books [the six classical ones I mean] which instills good character traits in people. While I am not totally convinced,  I am still tending in this direction. In fact, I brought this up with one fellow I know and his thought that it sounds good and further that someone should put the basic Musar cannon into dots. What this would mean would be someone should get together the basic Musar books of the disciples of Israel Salanter and make a set out of them and put dots into them.
That would be the books of Reb Israel Salanter, "HaTvuna," "Or Israel" of Isaac Blasser, The second recent volume of the writings of Isaac Blasser that came out recently in Israel, The "Madgragat HaAdam," "Chachma and Musar" from Simcha Zizel. 


This maybe is not on the deep philosophical level of Kant or Plato but these are still very good books and perhaps in fact do instill something precious into people.

I agree learning is not everything.  I have long held that something like the Boy Scouts of America is very important for children  and this instills values into people that no books could ever do.

The problem is that it seems to me that this is not very workable in Brooklyn.  At any rate is it my suggestion to start the Orthodox Jewish Boy Scouts of America  that meet every week and would learn out door skills and survival skills and what things like “team work” and “loyalty” and “human decency” mean in real life.

 Also I must mention later books of Musar after the direct disciples of Israel Salanter are not very good. They became "frum" [in the non complementary connotation of that word].  In my recommendation of Musar i meant specifically the books of the first generation disciples

The interesting subject for today is what is called Musar. This has relevance for Jews and gentiles alike.
It is a subject that is built from certain foundations and then reaches its peak in the person of Israel Salanter.
The essence of Musar is the  idea that everyone should learn one of five basic books of Morality written during the Middle ages on the subject of ethics. To this is added the idea of the subconscious that Israel Salanter borrowed from Schopenhauer. The idea is this:by daily review of these books something of their ideas on ethics gets into the subconscious.

But there are a few unstated insights about this idea that are not stated explicitly. One is a very well known Jewish idea but sadly enough Christians seem to be completely unaware of it.It is the idea that during the Middle Ages people were very careful in what they wrote about philosophy and theological subjects. It is what is called in the Jewish world "Rishonim." It means not that people that wrote then were somehow divinely inspired.It does not mean that. It means that they were extremely careful not to write things that would be logical fallacies. This care and caution was shot to smithereens after the time of Hume who in spite of his great and original thought wrote in basic logically fallacies--so much so that it leaves me wondering if he did so on purpose. since then philosophy is dominated by circular reasoning including Hegel who assumes what he wants to prove. [As Habermas noted that in the phenomenology Hegel tries to prove the identity of Subject and Object--but in fact he assumes it right from the start.] You never see this in writing from Jewish Christian or Muslim philosophers from the Middle Ages.

Christians probably have some equivalent of Jewish Musar from the middle ages but i am not sure of what it could be. They should probably make and effort to dig it up. What I means is Musar may be based on philosophical thought but these are books that are specifically about morality, not philosophy.

This means that learning Aquinas would not be in this category of Musar.

At any rate back to the Jewish subject of Musar

This subject was highly misunderstood after Israel Salanter. The reason was that the divide between reform Jews and orthodox Jews had grown to such a degree that the emphasis of people like Maimonides on science and philosophy was ignored. So Musar was taken to be a radical anti science anti philosophy doctrine and any books from the actual Musar books that said differently were explained away.


Something is curious about Musar in terms of the treatment of the soul. This subject is too big for this blog right now. But just briefly let me mention that the Jewish treatment of the soul was influenced by the brethren of purity. In fact the whole move away from Neo Platonic thought in Ibn Ezra [who accepts the Neo Platonic scheme point black] and Saadia Geon to Aristotelian thought in Maimonides seems to have been influenced by the Muslim philosophers of those times.  But as we reach the Musar Movement of Israel Salanter it seems the idea of the soul have changed to the general Christian concept  of an ethereal essence.
 I really have no time to go into this right now but it would make a great term paper.

Reb Israel did borrow the idea of the self from Hobbes and the subconsciousness from Schopenhauer and other ideas developed by Enlightenment philosophers. Later on the Musar movement made a move to deny this debt. The prime directive in the Jewish Orthodox would today is never acknowledge a debt to a Christin or Muslim thinker.



 The Rambam (Maimonides) and Saadia Geon always acknowledged from where they borrowed their ideas. That is what makes them interesting and it helps to see what they are adding or improving on.