Even though Dr Kelley Ross is very critical of Hegel, still in his comments he made a very important remark about what Hegel was trying to do--to finish what Socrates had started. [I only have a few minutes on this friend's computer so I can not expand but to me it seems crystal clear]. Dr Ross [the Kant Fries School] would not have put it in that way but I am sure that is what he meant.


Since i seem to have a few more minutes let me just add that Socrates was expert in finding the hidden contradictions in every single position offered by the people he was talking with. But not in a systematic way.  But he did have a system --or at least that is what we see in the dialogues of Plato. So Hegel was making Socrates into a system and also certainly held from the Neo Platonic View in which the Good emanates the Logos which emanates Nature.[It is the same system as the Arizal except the Ari goes into more details.

Another thing about Bava Kama. An ox [tam] gores another. Each are worth 200. Since it is the first time you the owner of the gored ox gets 100. If the ox does it again to another ox it the two owners get 50 and 50. If again then 50, 25 and 25. So my question is what happens then next time? I can not figure out what kind of progression the mishna is getting at.

L.T Hobhouse wrote a scaling critique on Hegel's idea of the State. But looking at what he wrote before World War I you can see he was leaning towards socialism. This seems to me to be the case with Bradly also--the most famous Hegel scholar before WWI. WWI changed his point of view drastically also to the degree that as far as I recall he ended his days denouncing Hegel and everything that he had written defending him.

[My own feeling about this is that I think Hegel was more of a philosopher than a political thinker. In terms of politics i think England got it right to a large degree in the 1700's and then the founding fathers of the USA made their improvements on that system.]

There is something odd that I can not figure out. If an animal devours some part of a persons's crops then in the Gemara in Bava Metzia it says you measure one part from 60. That is you do not measure just the amount of that one small area because that will be too expensive if someone would buy it alone. Nor do you measure by the whole field. Rather you go by 60 times that area and then take 1/60 of the crops value.

The question I gave came up a week or two ago when I was looking briefly at the Mishna in Bava Kama where it has the exact same case but it says you measure the amount of a field needed to plant two seahs.[Not like the Gemara in Bava Metzia.] I recall learning that part in Bava Metzia with David Brosnon and then for some reason I looked at the Aruch Hashulchan and saw how he explains Tosphot over there But I do not recall anyone mention the mishna in Bava Kama.

psychotherapy is ridiculous.

Implicit in the Oral and Written Law is a world view of what makes people tick. But to get a full picture it is best to learn Rav Nahman of Breslov who makes the assumptions explicit.

One important point is that mental illness comes from sexual sin. And that there is a correction for that. The Tikun Klali. [Ten psalms 16,32,41, 42, 59,77.90.105,137,150]
See this person write on the problems with the modern approaches
psychotherapy is ridiculous.

In Torah there is a fall of man and of  all creation. So it is not exactly that man is inherently evil but also not inherently good. What is possible to suggest is that there are new stages of consciousness that come into the world at certain periods-- but along with them come the forces of evil to stop the good.
At that makes sense if you see things like  Hegel that the In God there is the Idea [Logos] which is the source of Being. So that is where the center of gravity is--in Logos. The Divine Reason brought down in Plotinus. But with Hegel it is an ongoing process.

Rav Avraham Abulafia

With Rav Avraham Abulafia it is possible to understand some of the good and some of the evils of Christian history. That is if you take Jesus as being from Kindness which fell into Foundation in Emanation, חסד שנפל בכלי של יסוד then a lot becomes clear. At least to me anyway. But the fact that he was from the root of Joseph, at that time meant that that was only a preliminary phase.

In any case you need to look it up in Abulafia's books and also Profesor Moshe Idel to get the whole picture. 

In the Torah, things exist that are not God, but they depend on God for their existence

"אין עוד מלבדו" Or there are no gods besides God.
In the Torah, things exist that are not God, but they depend on God for their existence.