Dear Dr  Ross, In one essay you indicate are going back to Plato and Plato coincides with  Kant in some ways. So Plato could have answered the question how the forms participate with individuals -he could have answered the representation makes the object possible and the object makes the representation possible. Is this in fact an answer that Plato could have given to the question of Aristotle?

Plato was thinking in metaphysical rather than epistemological terms.  So there is no "representation" in Plato's system, which is not a Critical philosophy.  The world of becoming consists of the objects of becoming.  Kant could interpret these as phenomena, but that would be, indeed, an interpretation.  At the same time, Plato's Forms as transcendent objects cannot be consistently represented in Kant's metaphysics, where a theory of transcendent objects will generate Antinomies.  In other words, God cannot be perfectly free and perfect just, yet He must be both.  But Plato's Forms are not God, or gods; and, like Socrates, the gods he does conceive hold no religious appeal.  In Kant, this does not mean there are no Forms, it just means that universals are abstractions whose ontological status is undetermined.  Since, if they exist independent, it would only be among things-in-themselves, Kant could even say that Aristotle was right, and that the Forms, whatever they are, are in the objects, but then as universals they are not accessible by experience or induction alone, as Aristotle thought.

KR

[Southern States of the Union]

Vilification of the south [Southern States of the Union][All States south of and including Virginia] has gone on long enough. I am not sure how a Christian defense of the south would work but from an Old Testament point of view it is fairly simple. One of the 613 Mitzvot is the set of laws that deal with a Jewish slave, and another one of the Mitzvot is the set dealing with a gentile slave. The reason you have a Mitzvah dealing with each is that the laws are many. It is like we have  a  law dealing with a burnt offering. There are plenty of rules dealing with it [as you can see in the very first chapter of Leviticus] but it all comes under one large category. In any case Slavery is allowed in the Torah. But one is not allowed to be inhumane to ones slaves.
You can see in in the Rambam in "Laws of Slaves" in the Book of Laws 
ספר המשפטים.

Kant wanted to redefine morality

Kant wanted to redefine morality in ways that lessened the importance of self denial.
This effected the world of Musar [Jewish Ethics] where fasting and self denial became considered less important. So to some degree you can see that the Musar movement was based on the Old Testament and Oral Law but also you can see it  gained lots of Kantian elements and also other elements from other streams of thought. The Kantian elements are perhaps more in accord with the Talmud. But the memes from other streams of thought seem foreign to me and more based on the Sitra Achra than on Torah.

In short, whatever is left of the Musar movement today has been so infected with foreign elements it scarcely has any resemblance to what the original books of Musar were talking about.

Blacks are the masters, and whites are the slaves.

Isaiah Berlin explained this best by the idea of negative rights. Negative rights are things like what we have in the Bill of Rights. Things that government can not do. This can be expanded to what other people can not take from you. But today when instead of negative rights, we have positive rights, that creates slavery.If someone has a right to things like housing or food, then that means other are forced -forced labor- to provide it. Forced labor is what is usually called ''slavery.'' And so now Blacks are the masters, and whites are the slaves.


Right do exist in Nature. They are the more modern way that ''natural law'' exists. That is;- instead of saying "Thou shalt not steal," John Locke used a concept that means in essence the same thing, but puts the emphasis on the person himself. The ''Right'' is what the man has himself. ''Thou shalt not steal'' is what others can not do to him. He based this on Natural Law which began with Saadia Gaon and the Rambam, and was developed in detail by Aquinas.

I could say simply to read the Two Treaties of Government by John Locke, but even there he does not spell this all out in simple words, so I thought it is upon me to explain this.

Really you have to go in your mind to consider  the "State of Nature." In the "State of Nature" man has full rights. But there is a disadvantage. He can not protect himself. Even the strongest man needs to sleep. Thus, in order to form a community, man gives up some of his rights --property etc., whatever is necessary in order to form that community;- so that the rest of his rights and person will be protected.

This concept of rights is the exact opposite of Rousseau. The John Locke concept gave birth to the American Democracy.  The Rousseau  concept of the "general will" [where the community has all the rights, and give only what it wants to the individual] gave birth to totalitarianism.

Slogans are important. Men's minds are ruled by slogans. Thus I though to suggest two simple slogans. One for the above essay and another for women.

To put this all into a simple slogan: "Black is Ugly"

You could add another complementary slgan for women "Fat is Ugly and Disgusting." 

[In any case this is a very brief account. And you can not learn this in philosophy courses nor in political science. You have got to trace the development of the ideas yourself from Saadia and Maimonides through Aquinas to John Locke and the read very carefully the Two Treaties along with the whole context of the state of nature thinker Hobbes.  Or you can take my word for it that John Locke's approach is the polar opposite of Rousseau.]

" Remember the Law of Moses"

At a certain point you have to stand for what you believe in. The very end of the prophets Malachi ends his prophecy with: " Remember the Law of Moses" {In Hebrew that is: "Remember the Torah of Moshe"}. There is so much idolatry that has sunk into what is called Judaism --especially in the religious world that at some point you have to draw the line.
I mean we have a good idea of what the Law of Moses says. And it is fairly clear that worship of human beings does not have much place in it. That is to say I just have to agree with the Gra that something is wrong with worship of people and I think he was right for putting that group into excommunication. This may not be a popular opinion but still it seems to me clear as day.

i recall a beggar woman in the neighborhood of Geula who told me Moses came to her in a dream and asked her: "What is it about my book that people do not like? why don't they pay attention to what I wrote?"  So every day as she was sitting there, she would read the book of Deuteronomy.

Ideas in Tracate Bava Metzia  

I need to look over the ideas on page 104. Today it looks to me that what I wrote was sloppy logic on that page concerning an answer to the Rambam. I might just erase it. It is that part where I talk about הפרישה on the Tur. But looking at it again it seems it might make sense. After all if there is no work to be done then the צמית serf ought to just pay according to the amount the field was approximated to yield according to present conditions.  But with no Gemara Bava Metzia or Tur to look it up I can not tell.


 I recall that my learning partner had suggested this and I also saw something like it in the "Prisha." But to be quite honest it seems really funny to me. To me. it seems that if you pay a percent then you pay a percent. If a fixed amount then it is  a fixed amount. I am tempted to throw out that whole paragraph.

Thinking about it today I might leave it in the book. The thing is it is  a proposed answer to the Rambam. But there might be a better solution. Perhaps based on the fact is that I noticed already that the two statements of Rav Papa contradict.

[After the above i think I corrected it and made a link to the new version. Still it would be nice to have a Lithuanian Yeshiva or Beit Midrash where I could go to look this up.]

Music for the glory of God

r60 G minor q96 e major [q96 midi] r61 D major  midi [r61 nwc]

r3   

 [r3 midi]  [r3 nwc]

r60 midi  [r60 nwc]