Laws of Slaves. Section 5. law 3 in the Rambam. Letting a slave go free in Rav Shach's Avi Ezri

The basic idea of letting a slave go free comes from a Gemara and is brought in Laws of Slaves. Section 5. law 3 in  the Rambam. Kinyan Sudar [handkerchief] does not work to the Rambam. but it does to the Raavad. [Normally letting a slave go free is by a document, or money, or injury. So what about exchange? or Handkerchief?  The handkerchief might work if it has a penny's worth.  This seems to be an argument between the Rambam and Raavad. But neither makes a distinction if the handkerchief is worth more than a penny!]
This comes directly from a Gemara where in fact someone tried to let his maid servant go by throwing a vessel at her. He threw it and said "by this you are let go". Rav Nahman [of the Gemara, not of Breslov] said that does not work. And the Gemara concludes the reason is because the vessel belonged to the owner.
So if it had belonged to the maid servant she would have been freed. So this looks like a straightforward proof to the Tosphot Ri''d that marrying by means of a handkerchief would work of the handkerchief is worth more than a pruta/penny.

What makes this hard to understand is that barter itself ("halifin") does seem to be in the category of money since it works only if each object is worth more than a penny. And that is not the same as with acquisition by handkerchief.

So could Lincoln legally free the slaves? It seems to me that it was not legal simply because the Constitution granted to Federal government only specific powers.  If he had powers granted by the Constitution that however would have been Okay. But it seems that that was not one of the powers granted to a president. As for the war itself, that I guess has been argued about but it also seems almost as clear as the first point--but not as clear. After all it seems not to be within the right of the Federal government to force the states to stay within the Union. It also seems like over stepping the bounds of the powers granted by the Constitution. 

I see that Robert Hanna brings down a whole long list of many people in philosophy departments that have noticed the bareness  and irrelevance of philosophy today. However I have to say that the first to bring this issue up was the Allan Bloom in the Closing of the American Mind.

I would like to suggest is that people in philosophy got too hung up on "making progress". What was wrong with learning philosophy as Socrates understood it--as effort to understand the world.

Not get academic "browny points".

 Rav Nahman [Breslov] said a correction for for sexual sin is to say the ten psalms 16, 32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150.
This was said mainly for the case of "nocturnal pollution" however it applies to all kind of sexual sin and in fact to all other types of sin also as you can see in the LeM of Rav Nahman vol I section 19.
[That is the reason for the name "Tikun Klali"--general correction].


Also especially nowadays when people have more free time I want to bring up the issue of private conversation with God that he suggested. [This was not meant in place of formal prayer, but this was something that he himself spent a lot of time doing.] He even said that one that really wishes to serve God ought to go out to some private place in the woods of wilderness and spend the whole day talking with God in one's own language.

In terms of learning he suggested saying the words and going on. This was not meant to replace learning in depth. But sometimes learning in depth is not possible until one gets the general idea in the first place. This he meant to be done for learning the two Talmuds and Midrashim and Rif, and Rosh and Tur. But I also think it applies to Physics and Mathematics as per the Rishonim that held these too are a part of the commandment to learn Torah.

You see in the Mir in NY and all Lithuanian yeshivas based on the Gra that the morning is spent on in depth learning and the afternoon on learning fast. I recall walking by the place where Rav Shmuel Berenbaum [One of the teachers at the Mir] was learning in the afternoon and saw that through the course of one afternoon, he would go through at least ten or more pages.
[That means according to the way of learning fast in the afternoon at the Mir. That was Gemara with Tosphot--but just fast. That was not same as the in depth learning in the morning. But the morning in depth really just meant preparing fir the class of one of the four teachers depending on whose class you were in.  And their classes were a mix of Rishonim and later authorities. That is why it is hard to explain. The best I can do to give you an idea of what that means is to learning Rav Haim of Brisk and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri. That will give you an idea of what the average class at teh Mir was like.

Rule of the stupid. When respect for reason falls, monsters are born (teachers and students of Psychology).

 The IQ of people in universities  is not the same among different departments. The highest IQ people are the  Physics students and teachers. The lowest are the teachers and students of Psychology. But the latter are the one that determine the curriculum of schools and even who is considered sane in the larger society. So what we have is the rule of the stupid.  That is that the most stupid are the one who control the direction of society.

When respect for reason falls, monsters are born.

Faith and Reason was  not exactly a new idea in the Middle Ages. To combine Torah with Plato was already around from Philo. But to get the way they fit together was a Middle Ages invention. It was not to interpret the Bible as an allegory.

But faith with reason underwent a change because of Descartes's Mind-Body problem. Where is mind and reason valid? What do they measure. To get to the original synthesis of the Middle ages of Revelation with Reason you need to understand to extent and validity of reason.

How far can you trust spiritual experiences to tell you accurate data? Maybe a lot? Maybe not where it disagrees with Reason? But then where is the realm of Reason? 

To my way of thinking Kant and Hegel are helpful to answer these questions. Yet Hegel has been significantly mangled up by people wishing to use his rich wealth of ideas for their political purposes. And Kant is not so much behind that in terms of  misuse.

My opinion is that both the school of thought of Leonard Nelson based on Fries and Kant is helpful along with Hegel. I do not see them as much in conflict as is  thought.

With Fries you have faith-i.e. immediate non intuitive knowledge. That is knowledge not based on reason or senses for areas outside of "conditions of experience." But with Hegel you find that reason can get through the veil of perception by means of dialectic. So while reason is to some degree  a negative force limiting what you can know, it also makes progress towards the Absolute Spirit.

https://www.infowars.com/watch-alex-jones-message-to-the-new-world-order/

They are saying that Dr Fauci has not seen a patient for 20 years. He is an academic in an ivory tower. He based his conclusions on models which were wildly wrong.  Now that actual data is in we can see the difference between what was predicted by models as opposed to actual facts.
However I think this is  a great opportunity to catch up on figuring out how to building star ships.

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