skirmish lines between Kant and Hegel

 I feel that the skirmish lines between Kant and Hegel  are like the battles lines between the trenches between the Germans and the French and English troops of WWI. They just seem unmovable after years of battle. And so philosophy got tired of that battle, and just went on to other things. Not that the issues were ever resolved.

But some of the issues seem important. One is the unfortunate rise of scientism;--in that some that think only what science can measure and define can be real. But faith issues also seem to have come up. People think that faith in stuff makes it so. That seems just as unfortunate as the first flaw of scientism.

What seems important about Kant is the definition of the limits of reason, [the very name of his book indicates this.] But also it is important to keep in mind the Middle Ages and the synthesis of faith and reason. Thus reason can inform us in what we ought to believe.

There is a sort of intellect that seeks to find the good in everything and only when that is impossible reject.

 There is a sort of intellect that seeks to find the good in everything and only when that is impossible reject. This is something I more or less picked up from the sages and later after learning the approach of Rav Nahman this was emphasized even more so.

The exact statement of the sages I forgot but it goes more or less along the lines that a wise person seeks to settle the words of the wise.  With Rav Nahman you see this emphasized even more so. Someone aksed him  for a "segula" [a sort of supernatural way] of getting help to merit to be "Masmid" in Torah [i.e. to learn Torah all the time.] Rav Nahman replied that is by no speaking lashon hara about anyone. [Of course besides that Torah lesson 282 is famous about judging every person on the scales of merit.]

But it was pointed out by David Bronson that the way an engineer thinks is to find fault. What can possibly go wrong with this design he asks himself or herself all the time.

To me it see that you need both and that this kind of duality is reflected in almost every part of reality. The electron shows properties of a particle and a wave. 

[The ancient Greeks noticed this in Heraclitus about opposites.]

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unveiling of Being

There was can be a period the unveiling of Being that can be sabotaged. This is something you see in a Midrash about King David who said רומה על שמים השם May  God be lifted above Heaven. The sages said that King David saw that the Divine Presence was coming down on Earth but that people would not ready for that brilliant Light and so David asked God to take it above the first firmament, and then above the second, and then the third, and then finally above all the different firmaments-- so that the actions of people would not harm the Divine presence.  You can definitely have periods of some kind of Divine revelations or awakening coming into the world that can come to fulfillment, or it can be jinxed and replaced by the presence of the Sitra Achra. --the Dark Side. I mean to say that in the case of King David, if he had not asked that the Divine Presence should be removed, then the damage would have been such that the destruction would have reached even into the higher worlds, and the Dark Side would have been given power on Earth.

You might see certain periods of unveiling that are successful, and other times when the Dark Side rules the world-- like nowadays.

"He whom the gods want to destroy, they first make insane."

 "He whom the gods want to destroy, they first make insane." [That is from the Ancient Greeks.] If people believe is no that there is no difference between men and women, there is nothing else more plain and obvious to appeal to.

So the USA has gone insane. Thus China is going to be the major superpower soon.

How did they get this way? By a kind dual axis of the individual and the general society.

That is to say: that the Communist Party of China started out totally society based--I mean Marxism. [That is the world is oppressed and oppressors and the solution to to take out the oppressors, (as in "eliminate"). That would result in Utopia.] Then that resulted in disaster, so in 1978 the switch happened to private property and technology and economies as opposed to politics. The slogan was "to seek truth from facts." Not to seek facts from ideology as in the USA. But the Communist Party would still be  in charge. So China found some balance between the individual and society.

There is a sort of insanity which can be hard to distinguish between it and holiness .

There is a sort of insanity which can be hard to distinguish between it and holiness . The difference is that every area of value has an opposite area of value. So holiness which is all essence and no form [God the Creator], can easily decay into an opposite area of value. That is the Dark side.  So to come to holiness is rather a process that is not well defined. One one hand, you might say that keeping Torah plain and simple ought to prevent one from falling into the Dark Side  [Sitra Achra]. But in everyday life, that is clearly not what happens. People that get involved in the Torah often end up as great disappointments. They are hurt and destroyed by those they trusted, and in turn destroy the life of others. Religious devotion most often causes a great deterioration in simple human decency. 

[I think is better to have balance between faith and reason according to the basic approach of the Middle Ages. But what is reason nowadays? In the Middle Ages that was at first Plato., Plotinus and later Aristotle. But that approach is a bit different after Kant.] 

filial piety is not just an obligation, but the prime obligation.

"Honor your father and mother" is a dead letter in the religious world, and in the West in general. The general attitude in the religious world  and the West is that parents at best are no more than friends and most of the time much less.  Even major philosophers say openly that since one never asked to be brought into this world , therefore one owes no debt of gratitude towards one's parents. However you can ask on this. What is you are walking by a river and a little girl is drowning in the river and you just walk by and you say, "She never asked me to save her." Well you would say that is wrong. And what if you did save her? Does that means you never did her a favor because she did not ask for it?

This is in stark contrast to China and Confucius where filial piety is not just an obligation, but the prime obligation. No wonder China is on the rise, and the West is sinking.