2.11.15
Sometimes people get involved in books that are pseudo Torah and this slowly draws them away from Torah. And then they get to be experts in pseudo Torah and then get called תלמידי חכמים Torah scholars, though they can't learn legitimate Torah.
The Gra I think was advocating a kind of system in which people would learn Torah all day. And in his commentary on Pirkei Avot he says that learning Torah is a mitzvah in itself even if one does not keep anything at all--zilch of what it says. This is on the Mishna [ch. 5] that one who goes to the Beit Midrash to learn but does not keep Torah gets the reward for learning.
In the Lithuanian yeshivas today that are built on the model of the Gra you can see this attitude played out in life.
The Gra did not write Musar, rather he wrote commentaries on every part of Torah. So you can't really find direct statements of what he holds on lots of issues. But you can see something of what he must have been thinking in the writings of his disciple Chaim of Voloshin. And in his writings you find this statement דבר מנוסה כשישכים אדם בבוקר ויקבל על עצמו עול תורה באמת היינו שיגמור בליבו שלא ישמע לשום אדם, ולא יבטלנו שום טירדה, אזי יצליח ביום ההוא בתורה. וכפי גודל ההסכמה ותוקף הקבלה כן יסירו הטרדות
והביטולים ממנו
The literal translation of this is this: It is a tested fact that when one gets up in the morning and accepts on himself the yoke of Torah in truth, that is, he decides in his heart that he will not listen to any person and he will not allow anything to distract him, then he will succeed in Torah that day. And according to how strong his conviction is and the power of his commitment, to that same degree there will be removed from him the distractions and everything that is wasting his time.
Personally I have found an enormous amount of obstacles in reaching this goal. I still spend practically all my day not learning Torah. And I don't have much of an excuse either.
There is very minor part of my day that I try to do things that might be considered as reasonable excuses for not learning Torah. But if you add them all up they would amount to minuscule amounts of time. Most of all the obstacles are mental and physical.
There are in my mind lots of reasonable things that would require me or others to stop learning Torah for a few minutes in order to attend to these matters, and then return to learning Torah. But what seems to happen is the entire idea of ביטול תורה (wasting time from Torah) gets thrown to the winds.
While I agree that one should learn an honest profession, get a real job, and not depend on charity. But what happens is that Torah is thrown out completely. Guys are capable only of concentrating on one thing at a time. If it is Torah, then it's Torah. If you try to combine that with something else, the "something else" becomes primary, and the Torah get shoved to a very secondary place. [I think the Gra was defining Torah in a limited sense. We find the Rambam also saying this remarkable statement, "Just as anything that one adds to the Written law is not Torah so anything that one adds to the Oral Law is not Torah." Today it is common to teach things that are not a part of the written Law or the Talmud and to say that one is teaching Torah.
Part of the problem is mental. I have a hard time along with many other people in seeing the point. It takes a large degree of faith to believe that one is accomplishing anything at all by learning Talmud which at first glance is about as interesting as the New York Phone Book.
It is tempting to learn other things and call them "Torah" --even if for no other reason that they are more fun.
But there are many other reason to not learn Torah. It does happen that just when one starts to learn that the obstacles gain in strength. And people come up to him and say, " Let's go and do some mitzvah." You can't see the effect of learning Torah until a lot of time has passed.
It is funny that there are so many distractions that seem perfectly legitimate. Sometimes people get involved in books that are pseudo Torah, and this slowly draws them away from Torah. I see this all the time. Then they get to be experts in pseudo Torah, and then get called תלמידי חכמים Torah scholars, though they can't learn legitimate Torah.
So what I suggest is this: learn Torah. I can agree with an hour a day of learning a profession in order not to have to use the Torah for money as is so common. And a certain amount of Physics and Metaphysics is also important to the Rambam. But that is not an all encompassing excuse to spend the whole day in extracurricular activities. And drop all pseudo Torah. You know exactly what I mean. I don't have to spell it out.
The justification for this is this learning Torah produces a type of consciousness. And this consciousness is the source of one's deeds.
In any case I got involved in extra curricular activities a long time ago and so it makes plenty of sense to me that I have found so many problems in my life. I think it all flows from ביטול תורה--wasting time from learning Torah.
In the Lithuanian yeshivas today that are built on the model of the Gra you can see this attitude played out in life.
The Gra did not write Musar, rather he wrote commentaries on every part of Torah. So you can't really find direct statements of what he holds on lots of issues. But you can see something of what he must have been thinking in the writings of his disciple Chaim of Voloshin. And in his writings you find this statement דבר מנוסה כשישכים אדם בבוקר ויקבל על עצמו עול תורה באמת היינו שיגמור בליבו שלא ישמע לשום אדם, ולא יבטלנו שום טירדה, אזי יצליח ביום ההוא בתורה. וכפי גודל ההסכמה ותוקף הקבלה כן יסירו הטרדות
והביטולים ממנו
The literal translation of this is this: It is a tested fact that when one gets up in the morning and accepts on himself the yoke of Torah in truth, that is, he decides in his heart that he will not listen to any person and he will not allow anything to distract him, then he will succeed in Torah that day. And according to how strong his conviction is and the power of his commitment, to that same degree there will be removed from him the distractions and everything that is wasting his time.
Personally I have found an enormous amount of obstacles in reaching this goal. I still spend practically all my day not learning Torah. And I don't have much of an excuse either.
There is very minor part of my day that I try to do things that might be considered as reasonable excuses for not learning Torah. But if you add them all up they would amount to minuscule amounts of time. Most of all the obstacles are mental and physical.
There are in my mind lots of reasonable things that would require me or others to stop learning Torah for a few minutes in order to attend to these matters, and then return to learning Torah. But what seems to happen is the entire idea of ביטול תורה (wasting time from Torah) gets thrown to the winds.
While I agree that one should learn an honest profession, get a real job, and not depend on charity. But what happens is that Torah is thrown out completely. Guys are capable only of concentrating on one thing at a time. If it is Torah, then it's Torah. If you try to combine that with something else, the "something else" becomes primary, and the Torah get shoved to a very secondary place. [I think the Gra was defining Torah in a limited sense. We find the Rambam also saying this remarkable statement, "Just as anything that one adds to the Written law is not Torah so anything that one adds to the Oral Law is not Torah." Today it is common to teach things that are not a part of the written Law or the Talmud and to say that one is teaching Torah.
Part of the problem is mental. I have a hard time along with many other people in seeing the point. It takes a large degree of faith to believe that one is accomplishing anything at all by learning Talmud which at first glance is about as interesting as the New York Phone Book.
It is tempting to learn other things and call them "Torah" --even if for no other reason that they are more fun.
But there are many other reason to not learn Torah. It does happen that just when one starts to learn that the obstacles gain in strength. And people come up to him and say, " Let's go and do some mitzvah." You can't see the effect of learning Torah until a lot of time has passed.
It is funny that there are so many distractions that seem perfectly legitimate. Sometimes people get involved in books that are pseudo Torah, and this slowly draws them away from Torah. I see this all the time. Then they get to be experts in pseudo Torah, and then get called תלמידי חכמים Torah scholars, though they can't learn legitimate Torah.
So what I suggest is this: learn Torah. I can agree with an hour a day of learning a profession in order not to have to use the Torah for money as is so common. And a certain amount of Physics and Metaphysics is also important to the Rambam. But that is not an all encompassing excuse to spend the whole day in extracurricular activities. And drop all pseudo Torah. You know exactly what I mean. I don't have to spell it out.
The justification for this is this learning Torah produces a type of consciousness. And this consciousness is the source of one's deeds.
In any case I got involved in extra curricular activities a long time ago and so it makes plenty of sense to me that I have found so many problems in my life. I think it all flows from ביטול תורה--wasting time from learning Torah.
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.
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.
1.11.15
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
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.
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.
31.10.15
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)