Universals, Aristotle, Rambam

Avraham rosenblum
Sep 7

to Kelley
Dear Dr Ross. You wrote here : However, a stricter empiricism again creates the difficulty that the apparent "form" of an object cannot provide knowledge of an end (an entelechy) that is only implicit in the present object, and so hidden to present knowledge.

This seems to be the only statement in that essay about the problems with Aristotle.
I thought there were more serious problems with Aristotle like this: from Stanford: Some maintain that Aristotle’s theory is ultimately inconsistent, on the grounds that it is committed to all three of the following propositions:
(i) Substance is form.
(ii) Form is universal.
(iii) No universal is a substance.
This seems important because the  Maimonides is considered to be going with Aristotle. It does not seem that he would have missed these problems. Is there perhaps ways to answer these things? Or Perhaps Maimonides was aware of these problems and therefore took a kind of Middle path between Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists. Sincerely Avraham Rosenblum


Dear Mr. Rosenblum,

Aristotle’s forms must be hidden in part, for we cannot tell from the inspection of an acorn what the grown tree will look like.  The Aristotelian “form” thus becomes separate from its obvious meaning in Greek, i.e. eidos as image.  Since Aristotle wants to be a kind of Empiricist, with the “form” derived in some way from the perception of the object, the universal that is mentally abstracted from the image carries with it things that are not actually visible.

In a Kantian theory,  what we know about universals will only apply to phenomenal objects.  The status of abstract (universal) objects among things-in-themselves is left open, as with other matters of transcendence.  At the same time, hidden features of universals obviously cannot be abstracted directly from perception.  Thus, what the oak will look like is a matter of speculation, scientific investigation, or just waiting around for the tree to grow from the acorn.  What scientific investigation has learned, of course, is that the form of the oak is determined by the DNA in the acorn.  The “entelechy” has a physical basis, but this could be not gathered from the mere inspection of the acorn.  Aristotle’s “entelechy” was thus for real, but not in the way he thought.

I would agree that Aristotle affirms (i) and (ii), but I don’t really see (iii).  Universals are forms, and forms are substance.  I think that Maimonides is actually a Neoplatonist, where the chain of Being is grades of form, and universality, from the four elements up to the One.

So I am curious why you, or anyone, would say that “No universal is a substance” in Aristotle.

Best wishes,
KR

In my apartment [in Ukraine] besides the home owner here coming in every few days to steal money and any kind of alcohol he had a son who is criminally insane who made it his business to steal from me and break down my door and steal from the other students in this dormitory.

For one one year things went kind of unnoticed. [The criminal was stealing but not too much.] I was basically alone. The second year students started showing up. and the criminal would steal stuff from me and them on a constant basis--a computer, cell phones, money, products in the refrigerator and basically anything of value. [a motor cycle that one fellow bought and lots of other stuff.]. How did it become clear who was doing it? He asked money for the stolen good in order to return them.

Dealing with the criminal made the actual home owner seem like a saint to me.

I told the landlady that her son is a problem, I called him the "Narcoman" because the first year I was here he came up every night with his friends to do drugs.

At one point I asked God for guidance. I have a "girl friend" that invited me to stay with her. There is a pastor in this city that made it clear I could live in his guest room. He had already invited me before,   but when I actually had to move it was the winter and he said it was not heated and and he was just then finishing to build it.

[My mental state was such that also because I was going to Reb Nachman's grave site and there is a profusion of insane people that that I was very tense.I like Reb Nachman's teachings but there are kelipot [evil forces] there and I would have to go into the mikveh with my clothing to get off the bad feelings I had from the people there. [I do not go there anymore.]



It was at that time that had begun to learn Musar/Ethics. I asked a fellow from Israel to bring to me a few books of Musar/Ethics.
I saw in a book of Musar/Ethics the idea of trust in God so along with prayer I decide not to move unless actually physically forced to. That is I trusted in God to do for me hat needed to be done. That is trust with no effort.

The land lady asked me to stay when I told her I was thinking of moving. It was she was kind of pleading with me. Not just asking.
For two more years the criminal kept coming up to see what he could steal and I was growing more and more unhappy and getting OCD.. The more he would touch stuff the moire I felt I had to go to the mikveh when I touched something that he touched. That is I felt he is possessed by an evil kelipa.
[Because theft was considered OK to him I did not think he would ever get any better. I think once a person believes theft is OK then nothing will help him.]



Right before Rosh Hashanah he was put into the local home for the insane.

Now I am in a situation of great thanks and gratitude towards God. Ho I feel recovery will be a slow and difficult process.

Thanks for reading this and sharing my experience with me.


I am still very nervous when I hear any kind of male voices outside my door. I should however mention that trust in God and also the fact that God was granting to me to be basically productive in my room caused me to hesitant. God has granted to me great gifts that I am eternally thankful to Him for like Music and learning Physics and Torah and even writing some ideas in Torah.

Experience frum [religious] world

Experience. I saw the frum [religious] world was not as great as I had thought it was, so I had to reevaluate my priorities to see what is valid and what to disregard. Also further study. That is it was a combination of further study, plus experience. I began to see what is valuable in the Torah path, and also to see a lot of what the frum world is about was not really Torah.

It was a lot of observation and a lot of study.

How to put this in a more simple form? I saw discrepancy between the claims and the reality.

I also saw discrepancy between what the Torah [the Oral and Written Law] actually says and what people were claiming in its name.

The religious world [frum] is kind of a nasty place. That was clear always. Religious fanaticism does not equal moral decency. But the Litvak yeshivas were very different. I had thought that in fact the Litvak yeshiva was a place where human perfection could be attained or at least striven for. That is I was expecting too much from the Lithuanian Yeshivas. 

In the realm of thought I also needed to do more learning.

In any case my conclusion from it all was that the Torah path is valuable and touches on a very important realm of value


Abusus non tolit Usum
Abuse does not invalidate use
You are right that my experiencing things caused me rethink my path
I had to sift through things and try to decide what was valid and valuable and hat was not.




Abusus non tolit Usum
Abuse does not invalidate use
You are right that my experiencing things caused me rethink my path
I had to sift through things and try to decide what was valid and valuable and what was not.

However there was some interaction between my thoughts about what I was doing and what I thought my service was about. 

In the Mir I was very happy very very happy.


For example sometimes a claim is made for a certain kind of Divine service--that is a service towards God. For example Hisbodadut which is in theory great enough to bring people closer towards human perfection When the actual result is the opposite as can been seen in people deterioration in character this case one to wonder.

   

Introspection can cause insanity.. Though Reb Nachman's idea of hisbodadut and speaking with God from one's heat in one's mother tongue is a great idea but it can be overdone and lead to insanity as we can in fact. The point here is it is possible and desirable to generalize about groups.There is such a thing as a Bell Curve and average behavior. If a group on the average displays a high degree of mental instability then it is permissible and desirable to generalize about it and ponder what is the cause?

  

s56 6-8 time mp3   s56 midi  s56 nwc

introspection of one's self can cause insanity. I think Rav Eliezer Shick must have been aware to some degree of the problems involved with התבודדות.

I think Rav Eliezer Shick must have been aware to some degree of the problems involved with התבודדות. (That is a practice of talking with God in one's own language. This might include prayer but most often simply means talking about one's problems.) One thing you can easily see in his writings is the idea of unifications of the Ari.[[Issac Luria]]
So even if he did not say so openly his must have been aware that introspection of one's self can cause insanity.

That is he certainly saw the importance of prayer and talking to God in one's own language and asking him for help and thanking him for his blessings.  Still there is the danger of just talking with God as a friend can get to be just going on and on about one's miserableness and state of affairs.

And besides that he had been learning the Ari. So at some point he realized the unifications of the Ari were just the thing to be doing while spending time with God as a kind of Dekakut [attachment with God in fulfillment of the verse ולדבקה בו].

This seems to me to be an important point. In fact I had been looking at the Ari [Issac Luria] for some time before I got to Israel but did not see how unifications were practical.  So Rav Shick's approach to this was an eye opener for me and that is in fact what I spent a lot of time doing In Safed.

Still I should mention I am not overly impressed with Rav Shick. To some degree, I see him as setting a stumbling block in front of people. Going into places where people were learning Torah and getting them involved in the books of Reb Nachman had the effect of getting people to throw away their Gemaras and stop seeing learning Torah as the highest ideal. Plus many  many other problems that came along with the whole business, Still from Rav Shick's approach I learned some very important lessons.


Appendix:

Note 1: Unifications is a subject that comes up mainly in שער רוח הקודש. You really do not see it in the עץ חיים itself of the Ari except as simply giving over the different Divine names that are in the interior of each world. And  even that he does not get into until Volume II of the עץ חיים.
In any case what Rav Shick noticed in the book of Reb Nachman in Vol I ch 2 was a hint to a simple way of doing unifications. Reb Nachman simply  mentioned the 686 lights  (תרפו אורות).
Rav Shick realize at that point that simply concentrating on the 686 lights was easy to remember and also provided a way to be thinking about God all the time without the general problem of moaning and groaning about one's problems that even when done in talking with God generally causes a kind of insanity.

Note 2: In short the 686 lights are these:

יוד הי ויו הי

יוד הי ואו הי

יוד הא ואו הא

יוד הה וו הה

אלף הי יוד הי

אלף הא יוד הא

אלף הה יוד הה

The Lithuanian Yeshiva world is asleep

The Lithuanian Yeshiva world is asleep during a time it needs to be the most alert; the following blog will begin by tracing how the yeshiva world has been lulled into this stupor. The Sitra Achra Dark Side poison has devastatingly seeped into most of our yeshivot today. 

In the mid to late 1960's, there were profound changes taking place in America - changes to our social, political, and spiritual institutions. The entire cultural landscape was in upheaval. All the old assumptions, i.e., the Western-rational, science-based understanding of the universe and our understanding of social relationships were challenged and discarded by the "elite." There was a concentrated assault on our moral base and on the concept of morality itself. 

Relativism was the moral philosophy du jour. Consciousness was being expanded and "raised" by the use of hallucinogenic drugs and forays into the Occult and Eastern Mysticism. This attitude of experimentation was transferred into the yeshivas as many of the young  came from the counterculture and brought with them many of the drug and Eastern mystic-induced "revelations" with them. 

This was a time when all institutions and their foundational truths were challenged and if possible changed. The yeshiva leadership was profoundly influenced by the incursion of psychology and the occult with their  claim to superior knowledge, while the groups from primarily the occult embraced and mentored these young radicals. The religious teachers found in the new infusion of radical, social, political and spiritual concepts of these young people a fertile field in which to plow their aberrant occult, and to produce a harvest of very strange fruit - fruit that was not Torah in its origin or in its outcome. They eventually came to fill the leading post in synagogues of many of the mainstream groups. 

As our society had become more permissive and tolerant, so were these attitudes introduced into the yeshivot. Many in the  movements had already experienced this permissiveness and tolerance of a "low-view" of Torah and tradition and had the obvious signs of heresy and lack of sound Torah teaching. The other more traditional denominations maintained a veneer of Torah. However, the inoculation against the truth had come in through the "Trojan Horse" of psychology, permitting every deviancy the counterculture had, challenging  Torah and orthopraxy. 

They did this in the name of science and with the blessing of virtually every yeshiva leader in America. The seeds of the lie were planted deep within the soil of the yeshivas, the satanic seed of deception, being watered and cared for by the very ones that were looked to as the leaders of God's flock. The false shepherds of the flock of God tended the garden of הסטרא אחרא the Dark Side in the full view of the people  and were never challenged. As God has said in the נביאים ,Woe unto those shepherds... ".

With this change of paradigm from a Torah based understanding of man and his condition to a pseudo-scientific understanding (really nothing more than a rationalization which is all that psychology is), came the acceptance of every type of experience into the yeshivas. Because all sources of "truth" were being taught as equal, why not accept those that could only be found in the Occult and Eastern Mysticism as being as valid as any other source of truth?