But now that I come to objective morality, I have a hierarchy of values. Natural Law takes precedence. That is the Torah is beyond natural law, however it does not override it. It is based on coming to it.

 I learn Torah to come to understand objective morality. And I think many other do so also. But that does not mean I give  a blank approval of the religious world. The best is of course the Litvaks that go by the Gra and Sefardim that keep the Torah plainly and simply. But no one group is ever OK all and in itself. Especially  we know from Rav Nahman that many  religious leaders are demons, and I have experienced much of this.  That probably means I guess that their human souls have been exchanged for demonic souls. But who knows? Maybe Rav Nahman meant it literally?

[It seems that at least one major [problem in the religious world is that they can not feel good about themselves except by pitting down others. No from any accomplishment. They are not astronauts, even though they try to convince fry yidden [secular Jews] that they are.

So what is objective morality? I would have to go with the intuitionists as far as that goes that reason recognizes objective morality [Prichard, G.E. Moore, Huemer.] But the idea that reason recognizes objective morality goes back to Fichte and Hegel. That is not all that far from Kelley Ross and Leonard Nelson except that these being faithful Kantians, hold that while morality is objective, not structures in the mind, but they can only be known by immediate non intuitive knowledge and that seems a bit too much for me to swallow. I see no reason that implanted knowledge ought to be knowledge at all.

But now that I come to objective morality, I have a hierarchy of values. Natural Law takes precedence. That is the Torah is beyond natural law, however it does not override it. It is based on coming to it.

 In order to learn Torah, what I think is the best idea is to concentrate on the basic achronim [authorities after the middle ages] that show how to get into the depths of Torah, i.e. R. Haim of Brisk and those from that school up until Rav Shach.

The reason is that maybe in first generations it was clear to them, but nowadays it is hard to get into the depths of Torah without those that showed the way. 

Now if one is in a Litvak yeshiva like Brisk or Ponovitch, one could simply learn the Gemara with Tosphot and the rishonim, and then go to the class of the rosh yeshiva. But if you are like me in so far that Ponovitch and the other great Litvak yeshivas are not within walking distance, then the best idea is to have your own copy of the Hidushei Rav Chaim and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.

[In my own time at the Mir in NY I learned a lot of the early achronim R Akiva Eiger, the Pnei Yehoshua etc, They were more understandable to me  I was not really ready for the depths of Rav Shach.] 

I have had a great deal of trouble trying to figure out the argument between Hegel and Jacob Fries. One one hand I can see valid points in each. If the whole issue is immediate knowledge,-- well that question seems to have been taken care of by Michael Huemer when he writes about reason having direct awareness of things. It might need to understand what is a line in the first place, but after that it can see immediately that two lines can not make  a closed figure but three lines can.   

I think that the major problem is when philosophy slides into politics.  So I can see that a visceral reaction against totalitarian regimes  would give people a pause about Hegel's concept of the State. [Maybe more than a pause.]]

[And the odd thing is that nothing of the Constitution of the USA had anything to do with  almost any philosophy at all. Even though Thomas Jefferson was a great admirer of John Locke, but he had little of nothing to do with the Constitution which was more of less the product of James Madison.]

My basic impression is that the train of thought of Fries , Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross [called the Kant Fries school] is about the best thing. Still I can see a lot of valid points in Hegel. So the extent of the disagreement seems to be over done. 

 The Gemara in Bava Batra page 106 brings this idea that brothers that inherited property, since if they cast lots, then the lot determines who receives what. It is hard to know what kind of "kinyan" [method of acquiring] a "goral" [drawing lots is].

In fact, the Tur brings [from his father the Rosh] openly [Hoshen Mishpat 177] that drawing lots in fact causes not acquisition to occur. It only verifies which part of a property goes to whom.

Yet at the same time he also bring down that Gemara from Bava Batra.

Rav Shach explains  that there is a debate here between the Rosh and the Rambam. With the Rambam there is a difference between a courtyard that is 4*8 amot [yards] where there is a law that either of two partners can force the other to divide; and one that is smaller in which case the goral [lot. i.e. dividing by lots] does not cause a acquisition. In the large courtyard since it is large and one can force the other to divide, then it is as if he already owns his part and the goral can verify which part.

To the Rosh there is a difference between inheritance where the inheritors never made a partnership in the first place, and in that case the goral can verify what part goes to whom, and in a sense causes the acquisition. [That is the acquisition is already there, but the goral verifies to whom is what.] 

But, in the case of partners, since they made an act of joining together and a goral can not cause a acquisition, there it only verifies.

 x56 G Major

x55 F Major

The Litvak yeshiva. If one would want to improve the situation, I would recommend that the Litvak yeshivas should go with the Gra totally since, after all, it is that path of the Gra that endows them with the spirit of Torah in the first place.

There was I have to say, an amazing spirit of Torah in Shar Yashuv and in the Mir. But it is pretty much in almost any Litvak yeshiva I have walked into. It is almost as if there is a kind of Divine presence in a place where people learn Torah for its own sake.

[My basic story was my first year in Shar Yashuv was fraught with difficulty. But the second years I started getting more into the learning. That is pretty much when I was what you might call addicted to Torah. I had to get my "Torah high". If that sounds like a drug addict, well maybe it was. After all Aristotle said that "virtue is habit."

 That is, you have to choose as to what kind of habits you want to get yourself accustomed to. I made a choice to get into the Torah addiction instead of other kinds of things which I might have chosen.

Later on, the Mir in NY was my second destination. And then Israel. The second I got off the plane in Israel, that  "spirit Torah" came  in a more intense way.

Nowadays, I would say that the Litvak yeshivas [that go by the Gra and Rav Shach] are the citadels of Torah, though I myself am far off from them. Probably the best is Ponovitch. Also the yeshivas based on the Gra (founded by the father of Rav Eliyahu Silverman) in Jerusalem are great.

[But as I have said before, nowadays I would go with the idea of many Rishonim that learning Physics and Metaphysics ought to be supplementary to the  basic structure of learning Torah.] 

If one would want to improve the situation, I would recommend that the Litvak yeshivas should go with the Gra totally since after all, it is that path of the Gra that endows them with the spirit of Torah in the first place.

when one starts out in the service of God, it is the general rule that he is pushed away.

 I did have a lot in mind when I first went to Shar Yashuv and later to the Mir. [I had a great desire to learn Torah, and was not thinking about parnasa/making a living or getting married.] But the Mir in NY is a Musar yeshiva, and so I started getting the idea of what it is all about. That is: trust in God. So I more or less gained this mind set that all I need to do is to learn Torah and trust in God and then not worry about anything else. God will take care of things if you trust in Him.

You might see this in books of Musar like the Chovot Levavot, but I mainly got this idea from the later Musar book of Navardok.  

So you can ask what do you do when things are falling apart? Well, one can fall from trust in God or trust more in God. I elected the idea that I needed to trust more.

But I admit that is not simple to do. Still I can see in the Torah there is this idea of "tests". Abraham was tested 10 times. So you can extrapolate from this that you or me might have other kinds of tests. And what we do in time of trial makes all the the difference of how things go later after that.

[You can see this in the events surrounding the kings of Israel. The major theme is always this: When king so and so trusted in God, things went well for him. When he turned to other gods, things stopped going well for him. That in a nut shell is the entire major theme of the entire Old Testament. So you can see the importance of trusting in God alone and not in your own ideas and efforts.]

[I ought to add here that my idea of learning Torah has expanded to include Physics and Metaphysics as the Rambam says openly in the Guide and in Mishna Torah and this is hinted at in the Chovot Levavot. I might have thought in this more expanded way just from theory itself and seeing the rishonim that hold this way. But experience brought home the idea to me. That is when my world was shaken up I had to rethink my basic principles. Few people rethink things when everything is going well. And that includes me. Only when I had to, that is when I stated to rethink things.]

[I might add here the LeM of Rav Nahman vol II. # 48 where he brings this idea that  when one starts out in the service of God, it is the general rule that he is pushed away.  Heaven is making obstacles. However this does not happen unless one is really intending to serve God. So if you see that you are having enormous obstacles in trying to learn Torah and serve God sincerely, that simply shows that you are doing it for the sake of God and that is good.]