The Kant direction has tons of interpretations, but the best to my mind is the Kant-Fries school [see Kelley Ross.

 Kant is really a different sort of approach than Hegel. Hegel does deal a lot with Kant, but does not actually refute him in any points at all. So my thinking about philosophy is that it branches out into three separate directions. These might be reconciled in some way, but it is not that they are all the same. 

The Kant direction has tons of interpretations, but the best to my mind is the Kant-Fries school [see Kelley Ross.] The main point is the immediate non intuitive knowledge [faith] about the things in themselves. [Or the thing in itself in Schopenhauer's modification of Kant.] [You would need this immediate non intuitive knowledge to get to the dinge an sich, since neither reason alone or sense perception alone can do so.]

The Hegel aspect also has this sort of approach that we can know the dinge an sich things in themselves, but not some other faculty besides reason, but by reason itself. [He is not all that different from G.E. Moore in that respect.] Reason gets there because of a give and take process he calls the dialectic. That is in fact the way science progresses.[Reason and sense perception work together. See Huemer ]

Then there is the intuitionists-- G.E. Moore, Prichard, Huemer. I am not sure where to place them. That is in some way the analytic school, but somewhat different.

Gemara Shabat pg 63.One should learn even if he forgets and even though he does not know wat he is saying.לעלם ליגרס אינש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר

In Shar Yashuv [of Rav Friefeld] there was a tremendous emphasis on review and in depth learning. This was in some sense at the Mir also except at the Mir there was the afternoon sessions which was devoted to fast learning. I should admit however that at both places I was out of my depth. The only way I can explain the way they were learning would be if you would learn the Chidushei HaRambam of Rav Chaim of Brisk or the Avi Ezri.

But I felt the need to learn fast--to cover ground. So I developed this sort of style that every paragraph in the Gemara I would learn twice with Rashi and the Maharsha [plus what ever rishonim or achronim that were available.] That way I could satisfy myself that I was doing some review-- but not lingering overly long. [That was the way I went through a lot of the large tractates.]

[Some time after that I was in Uman and David Bronson came there, and we started learning. In his sort of learning I saw the same kind of depth I had seen in Shar Yashuv and the Mir. But after that I left Uman.] 

[Since This balanced approach between in depth learning and fast learning of the Mir seems best to me. I later applied this balanced approach to Physics and it seems to work for me.

[Later,  I began to learn even without understanding based on the Gemara Shabat pg 63.One should learn even if he forgets and even though he does not know wat he is saying.לעלם ליגרס אינש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר The learning gets absorbed into ones subconscious even though he thinks he did not understand. The subconscious processes the raw data as he sleeps at night. The saying of the words is not for understanding but rather for the uptake of the data.

Kant changed from the transcendental deduction in the Critique A to a more inclusive sort in B.

 Kant changed from the transcendental deduction in the Critique A to a more inclusive sort in B. [in order to answer the critique of Schultz]. However, even the second version  suffers from the mind-body problem. The body receives the signals, and then the categories [of Aristotle, how, where, why, when, how much, etc.] unify the information. But what information? There still is no way we know that can combine the signals with the mind. Computer chips in a bathtub are not a computer. And even when you put them together who is the user? So you need immediate non intuitive knowledge to unify the sense perception with the mind. 

That is not new. That is the basic idea of the Kant/Fries/Nelson approach. However I would like to ask if this is so different from Hegel? Hegel wants to collapse the mind body problem all into the mind--the absolute Idea [what you might know more familiarly as the Logos].  But Hegel's concept of reason and the mind is not at all like Kant. [That is the source of the famous critique on his Smaller and Greater Logic.]

His logic does not suffer from the Humean, "Reason can only tell us something is wrong if it is self contradictory," [an unproven postulate, and one that seems wrong on the face of it as G.E. Moore and Prichard and Huemer noticed.]

Hegel's Reason and Fries's are the same thing. Some source of knowledge that is beyond reason and beyond sensory perception.

[I owe Kelley Ross gratitude for explaining the idea of non intuitive immediate knowledge in a way that I began to understand that it means some deeper source of knowledge that branches out into empirical or a priori knowledge or both together.] [The G.E. Moore approach and Huemer is that reason simply recognizes universals. It is not going into the particulars of how. And the how is the question of Kant. How do we know synthetic a priori (universals)?]  So Kelley Ross noted that Huemer could have benefited from the Friesian/Leonard Nelson approach.]

the signature of the Gra

The letter of excommunication  [cherem] that has the signature of the Gra is ignored. I am not sure why no one pays any heed to it. One of the reasons I think it was signed was because of the problem of worshipping dead people which the Gra thought does not represent Torah very well. [That is an understatement. It is plain idolatry and not Torah in the slightest sense. ] Another issue is the "everything is God" which is not what the Torah says or holds. The Torah is monotheism. That is God created the world; he is not the world.   

[I do not think that Rav Nahman came under the herem after I read the actual language and whom it was meant to include. However there is a odd tendency that when people get involved in Rav Nahman (which in itself is a great thing) that they go off into directions that are not good and highly destructive. It seems to open the door to leave the straight path of Torah.]  

 Moral philosophers in the West  hold that adult children have no more moral obligation to support their elderly parents than does any other person in the society, no matter how much sacrifice their parents made for them or what misery their parents are presently suffering. This is because children do not ask to be brought into the world or to be adopted. 

This is similar to  a case I am walking by a lake and there is a child drowning in the lake. So obviously I jump in and save her. Does she owe me any any obligation or gratitude? Why should she? After all she did not ask to be rescued.  It is  the exact same logic as the case of a child towards his or her parents. 

[That is not to say that there are no great philosophers today. On the top of my list is Kelley Ross of the Kant Fries School. A bit lower are Huemer, and Robert Hanna. Though perhaps a bit off the subject but related to the political aspect of philosophy I think the two greatest masterpieces of the 20th century were the Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom and The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom.] 

z6 music file

 z6 B minor

I would like to mention that Rav Israel Salanter's idea of learning Musar [Ethics] seems to me to be very important. His point was that a lot of the essentials of Torah are forgotten  because of over much religiosity or sometimes the opposite. While we know from Musar that the essential aspect of Torah is to have good character traits, this point is often ignored or forgotten. And what is good character is well defined in the basic set of Musar from the Middle Ages אורחות צדיקים, חובות הלבבות, שערי תשובה, מעלות המידות, ספר היראה המיוחס לרבינו תם. [ Ways of the Righteous, Obligations of the Hearts, Gates of Repentance, Greatness of Good Character.]  

[The books of the disciples of Rav Israel Salanter were for me very helpful in getting the idea since the books of the Middle Ages although great can be hard to get the idea.--since after all they are mediaeval.]  

[I might mention that I was aware of the basic idea of the Torah that the essential thing is "to be a mensch" (a decent human being). From my home and also before I got to the Mir in NY. Still one has to have musar to be able to define what good character is.]