The major advantage of the Litvak Yeshiva approach

The major advantage of the Litvak Yeshiva approach as exemplified by Rav Shach is that people do not have automatic access to moral knowledge.

This is how the Rambam understands the laws of the Greeks, natural law. He says unless it is revealed people would not know it.

So you might guess that people could guess at morality through their inherent reason, but that does not seem to be the case. Even natural law needs to be revealed.

That is what the Rambam says in regard to Abraham the patriarch--that he knew natural law but only because God revealed it to him.

But the interesting thing about the Litvak yeshiva approach is they did not accept the Musar idea in its entirety. 20 minutes before mincha and 15 minutes before the evening prayer is no where near the hours of Musar learning that Rav Israel Salanter was advocating. Probably the reason was that it can and does distract from Gemara. It shifts the center of gravity. But that would not be a problem if not for the fact that it shifts it in a way that is usually not really accurate in terms of Torah. So to learn some was looked on as a good compromise.

[It is possible that I was sidetracked by Musar, but I am not sure. In any case I did learn some of the books of the Ari [Isaac Luria] and Sar Shalom Sharabi which are commentaries on the Ari. But of all the books of mystics I found Rav Avraham Abulafia of the Middle Ages to be the most interesting.

Another important advantage is that the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication is paid attension to at least a little bit. That tends to save one from the Sitra Achra if one pays attension to it.

F Major Violin, French Horn, Winds

w16 F major Rondo [w16 in midi format] [w16 in nwc format]

Rav Shick [known in Yavneal as one of the great Breslov sages of the last generation] brought an idea of שיעורין כסדרן learning sessions in order. He attached this to the "seder halimud" of Rav Nahman of just saying the words as fast as possible and going on. [No repeats until one has finished the book].
[Rav Nahman of Breslov would not be in the excommunication of the Gra as you can see by the actual language of that letter. So I feel free to quote from him.]

The idea was to take e.g. a Gemara and just go through a lot of pages in one sitting. And then put in a place marker, and take a mishna and do the same. Go through a few chapters. Same with Rav Isaac Luria's Eitz Haim and his Eight Gates.[And the next day to start where you left off. This way you finish a lot and in the end you understand a lot more than if you had stopped on every little problem.]

This method I have used also for a wide array of subjects like math and I have found that combining these two ideas has been very helpful.

I also tried doing this with Rav Haim of Brisk's Hidushei HaRambam and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri. However in those last two books I found doing review after going through one section was more satisfying since in one reading alone I would generally not understand anything but then in the next reading it would all become clear.. So I would do review and then go on. In that way I guess I was combining the idea of Iyun [in depth] and Bekiut [fast learning] togther.

[Both idea have previous sources. The saying the words and going on is from the Gemara Shabat page 63 I think. The sessions in order is from Rav Isaac Luria.

I did this also with Hegel in his Greater Logic from his Encyclopedia.

So in short what I am recommending is (1) saying the words and going on (2) sessions in order.
This learning I would say to in such a way that you get through the two talmuds with Tosphot, and the Pnei Moshe and Karban Eda on the Yerushalmi. Also the main texts of math and Physics.
Also if I could I would try to do this with Avraham Abulafia's books [from the Middle Ages]

There are moral propositions. From Michael Huemer

ETHICS IS A PRIORI

That knowledge of moral principles is also a priori follows from the following two theses:

(1) Moral principles are not observations. The content of every observation is descriptive.

That is, you do not literally see, touch, hear, etc. moral value.

(2) Moral principles can not be inferred from descriptive premises. This principle is just an instance of the general fact that you cannot derive a conclusion within one subject matter from premises in a different subject matter. Just as you cannot expect to derive a geometrical conclusion from premises in economics, or derive a conclusion about birds from premises that don't say anything about birds, you should not expect to derive a conclusion about morality from non-moral premises.

(3) Therefore, moral knowledge requires an a priori basis.

(1) There are moral propositions.
(2) So they are each either true or false. (by law of excluded middle) (3) And it's not that they're all false. Surely it is true, rather than false, that Josef Stalin's activities were bad. (Although some communists would disagree, we needn't take their view seriously, and moreover, even they would admit some moral judgement, such as, "Stalin was good.")
(4) So some moral judgements correspond to reality. (from 2,3, and the correspondence theory of truth)
(5) So moral values are part of reality. (which is objectivism)

And we have some knowedge of moral propositions

As far as I can tell, this claim follows from the proposition that there is moral knowledge, just as some analogous, more general claim follows from the premise that there is any knowledge at all. For if we know some particular thing, then there are only three possibilities as regards its justification:

(a) it is infinitely regressive. That is, there is a reason for it, and a reason for the reason, and then a reason for that, and so on indefinitely.
(b) it is circular. That is, it is based on some chain of reasoning in which something ultimately is supposed to (directly or indirectly) justify itself.
(c) it is foundational. That is, the item of knowledge itself is, or is based upon, a fact that is known directly and without any argument or reason given.

We know moral principles not based on Empiricism. Empiricism--roughly, the idea that all 'informative' knowledge, or knowledge of the mind-independent, language-independent world, must derive from sense perception--has been fashionable for the last century, though less so, I think, in the past decade. I cannot do justice to this subject here; nevertheless, I will briefly report how things seem to me. First, it is so easy to enumerate what appear on their face to be counter-examples to the thesis of empiricism, and at the same time so difficult to find arguments for the thesis, that the underlying motivation for the doctrine can only be assumed to be a prejudice. Second, I think that in the last several years, if not earlier, the doctrine has been shown to be untenable.⁽²⁹⁾ Here, I will give two of the better-known counter-examples to empiricism.

First example: Nothing can be both entirely red and entirely green.⁽³⁰⁾ How do I know that? Note that the question is not how I came upon the concepts 'red' and 'green', nor how I came to understand this proposition. The question is why, having understood it, I am justified in affirming it, rather than denying it or withholding judgment. It seems to be justified intuitively, that is, simply because it seems obvious on reflection. How else might it be justified?

A naive empiricist might appeal to my experiences with colored objects: I have seen many colored objects, and none of them have ever been both red and green. One thing that makes this implausible as an explanation of how I know that nothing can be both red and green is the necessity of the judgment. Contrast the following two statements:

Nothing is both green and red.
Nothing is both green and a million miles long.

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The way I wrote about this before is this: There are universals. Morals are universals. Function of reason is to recognize universals. How do we know there are universals. Prime facie. E.g. There are trees.

I did not have a chance to look at the sugia [subject] in depth, but I did look briefly at Nedarim around pages 5-6 and saw that a neder can forbid speaking to someone. You see this towards the end of the sugia about Shmuel. He says if one says מודרני ממך אסור I am forbidden to you by a neder [vow] he is forbidden. The Gemara there concludes that he would be forbidden if Shmuel holds ידיים שאינן מוכיחות הווין ידיים. [An indication or hint of a neder/vow even if not perfectly clear is  still a neder/vow.] So we see if he would say openly, "I am forbidden to you to talk or do business or sit in your four yards," these all would be forbidden.

So since the laws of herem [excommunication] derive their power from laws of vows, we see that all these things can be forbidden by means of a herem.
So why is the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication ignored? Even to the degree that it is thought to be totally irrelevant.

[And you can see in laws of vows that it makes no difference why one person might say to another: "I am forbidden to you under a vow." Since the Gra was qualified to make a decree of excommunication then it is valid for whatever reason he saw to do so.
Furthermore, it seems unlikely to me that it was a mistake.

Musar refers to books on morality of the Middle Ages

Musar originally was not supposed to be part of the Yeshiva thing. [Musar is a movement begun by Rav Israel Salanter that holds that people ought to learn much Musar --hours in fact--every day. Musar refers to books on morality of the Middle Ages. There are about four canonical ones and after that about 30 in the penumbra.]

[The yeshiva as an independent institution was begun by a disciple of the Gra. [in the beginning of the 1800's]. [It is not known what the Gra's reaction to it was. There are different versions of the events.] Before that, there was no such thing. The local place where people prayed in the morning simply stayed open during the day and whoever wanted to learn did so. If it was more organized, then it was the rav who was hired by the home owners who was in charge.
Kollel as such was begun by Rav Israel Salanter much later around 1860.
But Musar was eventually absorbed into the Litvak Yeshiva.

I had a very good time in two excellent places--Shar Yashuv and the Mir. So the "Litvak yeshiva thing" I know can be an amazing experience and also a good way to gain objective morality.

Impeachment

Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind explains the situation well. He traces it back to a basic contradiction in the Enlightenment itself.

He sees the conflict left vs right as rooted in the Enlightenment coming into some kind of blocked alley.
The main theme in his book is that we find a way out of this dead end or else civilization is doomed.