Trust in God according to the Gra means not to do effort and not to depend on one's own thinking.

I would not say this except that I have found that when I do effort and or depend on my own thinking --either things don't work out or they get worse. To some degree I imagine that some people have a kind of ability to put their minds to something and it gets done. They have success embedded into their fates. But that does not seem to be the case for me. Rather I have found that when I in fact put my trust in God, and do no effort, things work out.

Moving from place to place seems to be an example of this. Once  I went to yeshiva with the idea in mind that God would take care of me. And  that is exactly what happened. God granted to me a wife and children and a living also. Other times I moved from one place to another --not based on trust, but based on the fact that I felt the first place was intolerable and the second seemed to be great.
This type of thinking just got me from the frying pan into the fire.

[See Proverbs chapter 3 at the Gra's comments. Also check  out the Alter of Navardok's book the מדרגת האדם ]. Don't take this the wrong way. I am not giving advice here because I have never managed to walk this fine line very well. Usually when I was trusting in God I was not doing so consciously. I simply did what I believed was God's will -and  I could have been mistaken- but still for some reason God still blessed me.  When I went to Israel I also was doing what I felt was God's will, I certainly was not thinking of how I would be making a living. Yet that was either the peak of my whole life or at least one of the major great periods.

What I suggest from all this is highly personal for each person according to their best understanding. It is not like a kind of thing that you can define well.

connection between Kant and the Ari

Just to give an idea of why I think there is a connection between Kant and the Ari I think it wise to show what Kant is thinking by these simple diagrams. And to mention some aspects of the Ari that reflect this system. The most obvious thing is the תשעה היכלין. The nine palaces. This is clearly here in which each power of the mind creates a representation in the order I have presented here.  [that is 1 to 1; 2 to 2; but reason leads to knowing  synthesis of representations-a kind of perception that does not come from sensibility. ]

. [This is a long subject in the Ari .]

At this point Kant does not stop, and nor does rabbainu the Ari. The mind has this further power of synthesis or Daat that acts on the representations that are given by the male aspect of the Mind.

Kant is going to make a difference upon what kind of representation the Daat {synthesis is going to work on.} This is what produces universals. The Ari himself does not put it in this way but it still is fascinating to see the connection between the Ari and Kant.

Synthesis/Daat is known to have two aspects דעת עליון and דעת תחתון. There is a essay by Reb Chaim Vital about this subject that formed the basis of the Reshash's interpretation of the Ari. But the interesting thing here is that Kant also sees two aspects of Daat. This forms the most fundamental idea in Kant; the Transcendental deduction. That is this synthesis perceives the self and also perceives  and combines universals. This forms the idea of Kant that we can trust synthesis because it gives us our own sense of identity.

[I might mention here that Hegel is most definitely basing himself on the structure of the Ari. He was quite aware of the Ari and even brings down the idea of Adam Kadmon. But he sees a dynamic aspect in the Ari  where each category [sephera] is unfolded. [This is the same as a logical progression of Aristotle's  logic where there is an unfolding - but not in time.] 

See here 

A Map of Hegel's Science of Logic

 http://autio.github.io/projects/scienceoflogic/     

Gra was going with Aristotle.

I have known for a long time that the Gra was going with Aristotle.  You can see hints of it here and there. But it is clearest when he says Genesis chapter one is all potential until the last word  לעשות.
That is God created everything in potential during the six days of creation. The everything in its proper time came into actual existence. A better way of putting this is there is  a ground of existence and there are existing things. When things that are only existing in potential hit the ground of existence they become actually existing things.
Clearly this is how he understood the Ari also. And you can see a hint of this in Shalom Sharabi.
[That is the רש''ש has the sephirot conforming to an Aristotelian pattern in the future after the final correction of all the worlds. He writes about this very little so it is not well known.]


In any case this gives us an idea of what the Rambam must have meant when he said Genesis chapter one is an allegory. We can be fairly sure he did not mean the sephirot like the Arizal. I suggest he meant it like this statement of the Gra.
So when it comes to explain Genesis we now have two ways. The Gra. This would mean that 15 billion years would just be the natural unfolding of potential that was put into place during the six days of creation. The other way is the Arizal.
I should mention that the Ari seems at first glance to be neo Platonic. He builds on concepts of the pre-Soctratics and  then adopts the answers of Plato to the problems they raised and then uses the Neo Platonic interpretation of Plato of Plotinus and then based on that framework he builds his vast and complete system. But the Gra held that the Ari in fact on a deeper level was going with Aristotle and the surface level was just allegorical.

I should mention that to me the Gra presents the path of Torah in an  authentic way. That is in a way that is faithful to original sources. He has no interest to pervert or change the message of Torah to his own liking. And that is rare. This is why I have recommended Lithuanian yeshivas from time to time on because I see them as presenting authentic Torah.

But just in case this is in doubt--I want to make sure no one thinks I am on this path. For reasons unknown to me I have not been able to stick with the path of Torah and my efforts to get back to it have always backfired and made things even worse. I simply do not have the merit needed to be able to stick with Torah. And my life style is completely contradictory to everything the Torah says from the first to the last words. But God has at least granted to me the privilege of recognizance the greatness of Torah and also of knowing what the Torah says. So at least I know how far I am from it. But not just that--I can see when others are far from it also but make a show about how they are keeping it.

I should mention that there is no reason to assume Kant would disagree with the Ari. For example: "In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant is primarily concerned with “pure” [rein] intuition, or intuition absent any sensation, and often only speaks in passing of the sense perception of physical bodies (for example A20–1/B35)." [From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.] That is Kant's anschauung is not the same as sensory perception.

And I should mention also: "All of the mental faculties produce representations." [From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.] That means even what Kant calls intuition produces representations.
We see Kant could easily be with parallel the Ari. And in fact it was my experience with learning the Ari and being in Israel that convinced me that Kant was better than Hegel. 

q61 A song to God.

BY

exodus4

This is a great title


mathematics

Kant and Hegel

It used to be that the world was divided between people that were unconsciously thinking like Plato and others that were thinking like Aristotle.This expressed itself in Religion and Politics from the time of Plato and Aristotle until Kant and Hegel. Since that time the world has been divided in this new way.


The old division was like you had some mystics like Rav Avraham Abulafia who were going with Plato and Neo Platonic thought as opposed to the Rationalists like the Rambam.
And this original division was based on the ancient question how is change possible? To Plato the forms were unchanging and this imperfect world changes. To Aristotle change is from potential to action.And action is the perfect thing. Aristotle  changed the old paradigm in which change was considered imperfect.


This expressed itself in Christianity also staring from Augustine (Plato)-and going largely towards the Russian Church.The west went with Aquinas (Aristotle) and based on his theory of natural law evolved societies of based on natural rights.


Since Descartes however the major question has been the mind body problem and this found its major type of solution in Kant and Hegel.
Before Kant the question was between the rationalist and empiricists which was a natural division considering the mind body problem. But both thought the mind perceives. To Kant the mind has a
 active part in the representation (that is the way Schopenhauer understands Kant). At any rate, Hegel did not think the mind had any limitations, but progress by a kind of dialectal process.



Since then the world has been divided between these two.

Where things are going to go from here is therefore simple. This same process will simply continue. There will be periods in which individual autonomy seems to be the dominant view. There will be other periods in which the State is the key factor.

I don't know why this is that after two great thinkers, that everyone after that seems to automatically adopt either one or the other's way of thinking,  and considers it totally natural and simple common sense. Clearly Rav Kook was thinking about the State as some kind of Divine goal.


To some degree it is true that Kant opened the door to faith by limiting reason , but he also unwittingly opened it for people to believe in noise and fury.


The ancient question on which all philosophy was based how is change possible seems silly to us today. But the "Mind-Body" question is at the center of all philosophy, and you can't ignore the question of the "State-as opposed to the Individual" either.

I believe this thesis  here is central to understanding the world we live in today and it is likely to be the key for the next thousand years of history. Then at some point some other question will arise and there again will be two thinkers that tackle it in two dramatically different way and they will determine the next thousand years of history etc.

That is the first question was how is change possible? That question had slow beginnings until it reached its peak in Plato and Aristotle. Then had a slow winding down process--resulting in the synthesis of Plotinus. Then the Mind Body Mind Soul problem came to its peak in Kant and Hegel and since then there also has been a kind of winding down process --trying to create synthesis of the approaches of both.  At some point some other unforeseen question will arise and the same process will begin again.

It is important to listen to the Rambam about the importance of learning the Written Law תנ''ך the Oral Law גמרא Physics and Metaphysics. Though the Rambam was referring openly to Plato and Aristotle and Plotinus, still I think Kant and Hegel should be added.

Hegel has been treated unfairly. In my mind, he excels and goes beyond Kant. He was not a statist in the sense that Popper accused him being. In fact Popper's critique on him is mainly false as Walter Kaufman pointed out.

Songs for the glory of the God of Israel

A song for the glory of the God of Israel L67 l67 midi  L67 nwc
 

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My parents had a polynomic theory of value. But not being philosophers they did  not put it in that way.

For me that means there is a continuum of positive value and an opposing continuum of negative value.

 Bu my parents added one value-balance. And the general scheme was called by one name "to be a mensch" i.e.  decent human being.

The way I see this is you could take almost any mitzvah and emphasize it. And that would be a good thing to do. Either mitzvahs between God and man  or mitzvot between man and man. Just to give you an idea of what I mean. Take  the importance of talking with God.
The Gra saw the prime value as being learning Torah. I think that no matter how you cut the cake it would be great if a person could spend all day long just talking with God an asking to come close to his service. Or doing some other mitzvah. Or learning Torah. Or doing kindness. Building a hospital or soup kitchen. But I try to strive for some kind of balance between all areas of positive value. And I try to discern in each area of value what its opposing value is --in order to avoid it.

That is there is authentic Torah. And that is holy. And there is pseudo Torah that is unholy. There are the natural  sciences that are good. And there are pseudo sciences that are bad. Same with Music. and Art and literature.