Renaissance and the Enlightenment

I like the Renaissance a lot and Kant was pro Enlightenment to some degree. I mean though in fact he was pro Enlightenment, still in his system you find an area in which Reason has trouble penetrating. And that seems to leave room for faith. That is at least how Kant and Dr Kelley Ross look at it.

But with Hegel you really do not need the area of the dinge an sich/things in themselves to be immune from Reason, but rather a realm that some kind of awareness does exist.


I have never been able to blame the problems of the modern world on the Renaissance nor on the Enlightenment. Rather my own tendency has been to see Rousseau as the actual source of the problems. Later I saw in fact a few problems in Locke and Hume that I think may also contribute to the problems. But I still would not blame the Enlightenment itself.


[Dr Ross I would surely disagree with me about Hegel, but at this point I think that it is true that Hegel holds from an area of faith/knowledge that is not based on reason , nor understanding, nor empirical evidence. At least that is what I saw one time in reading Hegel. But Hegel would call it spirit--as different from Absolute Spirit.]

And furthermore I think it is necessary to agree with me. How can one think that all areas of spirit are open to knowledge by means of Reason or dialectics in Hegel's system?

Of course Hegel is open to abuse as the Marxists have found out. But I still can not see him to blame for that when openly the Marxists reject most of his system. but use some concepts they found useful.


There are plenty of problematic issues nowadays, but I would not blame the Renaissance nor the Enlightenment for them.

The problem that I see is the Satan that goes around with his agents. The way to get out of the problem with the Dark Side is not at all clear. The thing is there are different areas of value, and the main job of every person is to penetrate to the good core and avoid the kelipa [evil] in each area.

U-22 G Major   [U-22 in midi]

When the Rambam discusses Physics and Metaphysics

When the Rambam includes Physics and Metaphysics in the category of the Oral Law it seems  to include chemistry. That is he says is he referring to these subjects as understood by the ancient Greeks and whether in Mishne Torah or in Aristotle we can see Chemistry being included.
Even though the actual Physics of Aristotle does not seem valid anymore, still the subject matter that the Rambam was referring to is clear.
On the other hand when the Rambam refers to Metaphysics, I think it is clear he means specifically the book Metaphysics of Aristotle. But then going by subject matter I think then one would have to include Kant and Hegel.

Hezekiah (king of Judah) had been giving money [tribute]  to Assyria. Then at one point he stopped. Then the king of Assyria sent an army against the cities of Judah. So Hezekiah said to him "I am sorry. How much  would it take to make peace between us?" Assyria gave some staggering amount and Hezekiah sent it to him. Then the king of Assyria sent an army to conquer Jerusalem.

The lesson seems to be: Do not compromise with the Dark Side. They get a taste of victory and then they just want more.

fake-plastic-rice-being-made-in-Vietnam, it gets mixed with real rice and can kill if eaten steadily.

http://talknetwork.com/2016-11-30-fake-plastic-rice-being-made-in-vietnam-factory-video.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz7ru9P-U7M

Basic principles.

[] Talking with God in one's mother tongue. [As we see King David was doing. We also see the Rambam mention that this was the actual way people prayed before the prayers became solidified and set.
[] No Lashon Hara [speaking bad]. That is no talking bad about other unless you fulfill the seven conditions  the Chafetz Chaim brings for saying lashon hara for sins between man and his fellow man. For sin between man and God these seven conditions do not exist but there are a few other conditions as the Chafetz Chaim goes into in chapter 4.
[] Truth. Speak the truth at all cost.
[] Try review the Oral and Written Law. That is every day one full chapter of the Old Testament at the dinner table with the whole family. That is to get through the entire Tenach from cover to cover.
Also the Two Talmuds. [With the all the basic commentaries if possible].
[] Same with Physics and Math [as Maimonides (the Rambam) mentions in Mishne Torah and also the Guide.].= to get through the basic subjects. I know of no particular text, but at least to get through the basic subjects.
[]The way to do this learning is to say the words and to go on. That is called "Girsa".
[] learning survival skills.
[] If in Israel, it is important to serve in the IDF and otherwise support the peace of the state. [There were plenty of Jews that tried to stop the second return to Israel n the days of Ezra and Nechemia and their names are recorded for a in the book of Nechemia for their eternal shame. Thus the religious world that today also tries to undermine the State of Israel will also been remembered as cursed for all future generations.


I  got to thinking about this after breaking my foot and leg in three places. I was not able to walk for two months so I had lots of time to think about teshuva (repentance). That is I hope to not let this crisis go to waste but rather to strive to understand in what ways do I need to improve myself.

religious teachers are actually demons

Reb Nachman of Breslov has a good point that most religious teachers are actually  demons. That is to say they do not have human souls--though they might have had human souls once. [He calls them "Torah scholars that are demons" and he brings this idea from the Zohar.]
This theory has one thing going for it- it accounts for the damage they cause.
On the other hand if you go with the idea that everyone has an evil inclination, then it is hard to see from where their uniformly evil advice comes from.

The fact is that Jeremiah and all true tzadikim throughout the ages have had to deal with the problem of false teachers.

The obvious question is how to tell who is from legitimate and who is not. From my experience there is nothing in the religious world that is legit except for the rare exception of the great Litvak yeshivas in NY and Ponovitch in Israel.

I bring this up because there is  a great deal that one can learn from the Oral and Written Law [Torah] but the first step is to avoid the teachers from the Dark Side.

[ These demonic Torah scholars use Torah and prayer to relieve people of their money. For them Torah is a way to get ahead in life.]


I might mention that the problem of telling the difference between good and evil I am beginning to see is world wide problem. To me it looks that the Dark Side is very active is getting evil to seem like good. The best solution to this problem I take as being this: Reason perceives universals. That is to say: reason might not tell us much, but it remains the only possible way to tell the difference between good and the Devil's plots..

To put this differently I go with Maimonides that there is a reason for the commandments of the Torah and that is to bring to natural law--that is moral law that is objective. Also this goes along with Hegel that reason can penetrate into the dinge an sich by means of a dialectical process.
But I do not mean that Torah is only consequential morality, rather i think it is like what Kelley Ross of the Kant Fries school calls "Ontological undecidability." That is that commandments of the Torah are to bring to some goal and also have an inherent holiness .