mystic writings from the Middle Ages

Most mystic writings from the Middle Ages [and Musar also] depend a lot on Aristotle's four elements, his division between substance and form, and the 10 spheres of Ptolemy.  The unstated problem with this is that a great deal of Aristotle' Physics and Ptolemy's spheres do not seem accurate.

So what people do is try to preserve the insights while ignoring the basic world view upon which they depend. In any case,  this makes writings from the Middle Ages problematic in that one is trying to gain the accurate insights, while at the same time ignoring the world view.

Sometimes from the idea that these medieval writers could not have been wrong, one tries to find hints of modern physics in them.

What adds to the difficulty in all this is no one knows the actual Aristotelian system upon which all medieval writings are based. Or even acknowledges the fact. And thus the terms are constantly used in inaccurate ways.

For what happened in history is Descartes came along and the force of his clarity was so great, confidence in Aristotle sank. So we do not think in terms of שכל בכוח  potential intellect as being imprinted by active צורות forms. After Descartes we do not think everything has to have substance and form. For example -the mind.
The problem is all the greater because Post-Descartes thought has not led to anything that could conceivably replace Aristotle in terms of  most of the issues that are raised in these medieval books.

[Litvak Yeshivas as a rule do not think about theology at all. The only time the problem comes up is in Musar seder. Some books of Musar depend  a lot on the mystic writings of the Middle Ages and that seems to invalidate them.]

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What was done during the Middle Ages was to create a synthesis of Aristotle with Torah. Maimonides was leaning in the direction of Aristotle. Others like Rav Saadia Gaon were leaning towards Plotinus. Today after Descartes, Kant and Leonard Nelson a similar kind of effort is needed.

It is not that the efforts of the Rambam were wasted. Even the Kant-Friesian School is very close to the Neo-Platonic approach of the Rambam. But still the Rambam tends to be kind of mediaeval. Some new effort is needed.

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Towards the end you see see that I borrowed an idea of Mozart which is this: When you have a song in 6/8 time in triplets [3 eights one after the other] sometimes it makes sense to delete the first note. This you can see in Mozart's piano violin sonatas. [Or at least that is where I noticed this idea, though I am pretty sure that Mozart used this idea in many other pieces.]

honor one's parents

To honor one's parents I think involves two things obeying and walking in their ways.
To obey nowadays does not sound so good but it is in accord with nature. When we are born we understand soon to obey our parents and their sense of reason because we understand that they know better than us before our own sense of reason is full.
But to walk in the ways of one's parents is  made hard by the fact that many parents are jerks.

How would I even begin to imagine how to walk in my parent's ways? Volunteer for the U.S. Air Force? Go to the California Institute of Technology {Cal Tech}?  Hard to conceive of that now. It is more so complicated by the need to learn Gemara which I could only have done in N.Y. Litvak Yeshivas like the Mir or Shar Yashuv.
[Not to mention that to marry a nice Jewish girl was among their priorities, and it is hard to figure out how that might have happened in any kind of context outside of the Mir. I mean, I knew Paula [Hebrew name Lea] in California in high school, but for her to make up her mind to come after me was obviously dependent on the fact that I was in an authentic Litvak yeshiva. That is clearly what sparked her interest in me in the first place.


I assume these and similar kinds of questions attend on anyone who seriously contemplates the question how to go about כיבוד אב ואם honor of one's father and mother?

The simplest thing is when what one's parents say corresponds to objective morality and objective truth which certainly was the case for me.

One of the really surprising things I noticed in the former USSR is that people were no where near as happy to see it gone that I had thought they would be. Almost anyone I ask says "Things were better then." I think a lot has to do with DNA and also with faith.
The USA system is based very much on England; and the Constitution works well with a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) population. WASP means both faith and DNA. But areas were the USSR was in control are not WASP.  Nowadays, for anyone to guard their property in former republics of the USSR, they need to have 24 hour-a-day guards. [And every home must have a guard dog] There is simply a large percent of criminal DNA.
So as a practical measure, every business, every place where there is anything of value, people need to hire 24 hour a day guards. I never saw anything like it in the USA or Israel.

In a deeper sense, the Ari [Isaac Luria] does mention that some people are simply evil. That is,-- they may have in the outer portions of their soul external good, but deep in their core is non- eradicable evil. That is 99% of them is good, but the inner core of evil is not visible and is in actual control.
During the USSR people were afraid of the State. Now they are afraid of everyone.


Another point about Anglo Saxon areas. People write about natural traits in a totally different way than in other countries. Thomas Reid writes to the effect that even children have a natural tendency to speak the truth. He obviously never spent any time in a  Muslim country.

Q theory of everything.

[First night of the Omer]
It is not good to have a theory of everything. If one does it takes away his credibility even in things that one would assume he has some expertise in. Maybe even unjustly. Still the very claim in itself goes to show lack of judgment.

If Isaac Newton had claimed to have a a theory of everything, he would have accomplished nothing. It is rather by the fact that he limited himself to gravity, that he made one of the most significant contributions to human understanding in all history.
My theory of everything is to dismiss without merit all theories of everything

If the ideas seem right, but the logical result seem atrocious then one might reconsider the original idea.

Dr Huemer has an idea about logic that if the premises seems right but the conclusion seems absurd, one might take a second look at the premise. Danny Frederick expanded this to include systems. If the ideas seem right, but the logical result seem atrocious then one might reconsider the original idea.
[Danny Frederick and Dr Huemer were thinking of communism.]
Sherlock Holmes mentioned something like this also in explaining his way of reasoning.
That is he said his was reasoning backwards.

In any case I mentioned this once to my learning partner once as a critique on any system that leads to results that do not seem good.

This is the opposite of all philosophy which tries to start with a something that vaguely seems OK at first glace, an odd   premise, and reach absurd conclusions.  But they figure they have won the argument because you grudgingly conceded the first premise.


The fact is some philosophy does make sense. Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Maimonides Plotinus, Aquinas, Anselm, and a modern philosopher Kelley Ross all see very far..
Where things seem to go wrong is when people take them too far or follow them in wrong ways.
One of the wrong ways of going about philosophy was pointed out by Leibniz about the followers of Descartes. They were followers in the sense of following his system, but not continuing his kind of reasoning. Another problem was pointed out by Thomas Reid of taking the logic too far as happened with Aristotle in thinking in analogies,  or with people taking Descartes idea of the Mind as the beginning.
You might based on that simply dismiss Hume and Locke, but Reid notices important ideas they had.
You really can not go back to straight Neo Plato though that looks pretty great as you can see in Maimonides, Saadia Gaon, and Aquinas. Things have made some progress since Kant with Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross.

Thomas Reid  to me looks very much like the Kant Fries school except for the fact that his epistemology is not clear as Dr Kelley Ross wrote to me. Sometimes Reid seems to be like Hegel that even sense perception. is thought. Other times he says it is immediate.

Passover versus leavened bread.

A pot or pan that has not been used for leaven for the last 24 hours is נותן טעם לפגם  and"gives a  damaged taste." From the Torah one can use it. (But דרבנן it needs boiling).


The top of a stove needs nothing because every time you use it, makes it OK. [Not to mention the inside of an oven which needs nothing at all in the first place.]

The best way to make unleavened bread is to buy flour and water and mix it and fry it like a pancake. The major thing to be careful about is to do it immediately. Once water and flour have come into contact with each other you have 18 minutes left to cook or fry it. However, the mix must be thick to be thought of as bread; and  to use only a little oil on the bottom of the pan. Otherwise it is cake.
[Another reason not to use oil is a molecule of oil is hard to break down. It can cause over strain on the intestines.]



15 days from the new moon turns out to be Friday night.[The calendar people use was invented by Meton in Athens, and is not from Sinai. And it is usually off by a day or two.]

Night starts 72 minutes after sunset [to the vast majority of Rishonim] The beginning of twilight is 58.5. [You might be strict to stop work after 45 minutes because in Israel it looked to me that that was about when middle stars became visible. However in the Rocky Mountains and in the mountains around Southern California  it looked to me that stars kept coming out even much later--until the middle of the night the sky seemed to be much more filled with stars than around 90 minutes. So you might rely on doing work until 58.5 minutes.]

For wine the best idea is to buy grapes and get one of the small crushers that are used for garlic. But this takes a good long time to get up the volume. One cup is the size of 1.5 eggs.;which means one needs the volume of 6 eggs. [If one does not have enough grapes for that he can do מזיגה --put in water.] [The amount of water you can put in and still have the blessing be Pri Hagefen is astounding; one part wine, 6 parts water.]


It is best to do everything yourself and to buy nothing but grapes, flour, and horseradish, nuts and raisins.