the reasons for the signature on the letter of excommunication(herem): Monotheism and not to do idolatry,

The major theme of  Old Testament is Monotheism and not to do idolatry, You can see this especially in the chapters f Deuteronomy from about chapters 4  to 10 and in the events surrounding the kings of Judah and Israel.  I was reminded of this today listening to the events surrounding  the anointing of Yehu. [He was anointed king in order to wipe out the house of Ahab --because they did idolatry, Not because of Jewish identity. For King Ahab was as Jewish as can be. But in the eyes of God, Jewish identity makes not the slightest bit of difference. What matters to God is only one question: did Ahab serve idols or not,   Of course in those days this was an easier question to answer. Nowadays they dress idols in Jewish garments and that is supposed to make it ok. 

For anything besides God can be an object of idolatry, It does not have to be a statue. It can be a person even true tzadikim. All the more so fake tzadikim. This is in fact one of the reasons for the signature on the letter of excommunication(herem). That is  the reasons of idolatry.

Spiritual vision

  Spiritual vision is not unknown. If it was totally illegitimate then the Gra would have said so. And Rav Yaakov Abuchazteira used to call the Ari [Isaac Luria] ''our teacher''. But there is something parasitic about mysticism that seduces people away from straight faith and reason. [Sri Aurobindo refers to the danger of mysticism as the "Intermediate Zone"] 

Aurobindo asserted that spiritual aspirants may pass through an intermediate zone where experiences of force, inspiration, illumination, light, joy, expansion, power, and freedom from normal limits are possible. These can become associated with personal aspirations, ambitions, notions of spiritual fulfilment, and even be falsely interpreted as full spiritual realization....  Those who go astray in it may end in a spiritual disaster, or may remain stuck there and adopt some half-truth as the whole truth, or become an instrument of lesser powers of these transitional planes. According to Aurobindo, this happens to many sadhaks and yogis

Humans are stupid, and the stupidest think they know how best to run everyone’s lives in minute detail and are bound and determined to force the rest of us to go along with their stupidity.

real authentic Oral Law

 In the Rishonim [mediaeval authorities] there is an emphasis on Reason and Faith. But they do not mean  faith in anything  nor any reasonable sounding doctrines. As the Rambam puts it: "Just like one can not add nor subtract from the written Law so one can not add nor subtract from the Oral Law." So he means to eliminate pseudo Torah and books that pretend to be Torah. To him there is a cut-off point when the Oral Law was redacted.  That means the Two Talmuds, and the Midrashim are the only real authentic Oral Law and everything else which claims to be Torah is Torah from the Dark Side. [Midrash means two things Midrash Agada and Midrash Halacha]. [Zohar does not count as midrash because of the phrase עם כל ד "although". That way of saying although was an invention of the Ibn Tibon family during the Middle Ages. In the time of the Mishna this was said as "אף על פי" or "אף על גב"

 something is odd about mysticism. But I would rather not dismiss it in toto. 

     

When the Rambam refers to Reason he also makes it clear he is referring to Aristotle [and to a lesser degree Plotinus] 

How the Gemara approaches this issue of learning in depth. There is brought the event of the teacher that used to review 400 times the lesson with his student and there is also the suggestion of 40 time review,  Four times review is mentioned in the Gemara also in terms of how much the Children of Israel reviewed each lesson from Moshe Rabbainu [Moses] in the Sinai desert.

I would like to suggest John Locke's Two Treaties as a better idea of government.

 In some great Jewish Philosophers you find the importance of learning Philosophy and Physics . But in those days not much had gone beyond Plato and Aristotle. And the ideas of Plato as regards government I think require a bit of modification. I would like to suggest John Locke's Two Treaties as a better idea of government. Government is an area which is not gone into in the Gemara and in Plato there is a sort of spartan government. I think John Locke provides a better model of government which protects individual liberties.

Other kinds of government do not respect the values of Torah. For example, socialist  government does not respect private property. But religious leaders do not either as they tend to be demons as Rav Nahman [in the LeM I:112 and I:28] pointed out about Torah scholars that are demons Part of the reason for that is they want power and money and use Torah to get them. But Torah is transcendental. It has nothing to  do with social structures. Torah does not give any significance to group dynamics or forms of government. It i personal between a man and God  

My favorite theme about John Locke is that people need to be aware of the development of his ideas in the Magna Carta and the Provisions of Oxford. 

new Friesian school

The Abhandlungen [published journal] of the new Friesian school was quite critical of the Special Theory of Relativity. However it was pointed out by Kelley Ross that that rejection of Relativity did not flow or come automatically from Friesian principle as you can see in  Dr. Ross's web site.

[The reason of Dr. Ross is that non intuitive immediate knowledge is not infallible. Rather that it can be modified because of empirical findings. And that synthetic a priori knowledge has to flow from starting axioms  and not be self contradictory.

[I can see why the Friesians were alarmed by Relativity because to Kant all reason has to start  with space and time--the categories.]

This is close to Michael Huemer's idea that what is known by reason is not necessarily infallible, but can and must be modified by new information. [This is his approach by means of probability (of Bayes)]. And it is not too far from Hegel either in which the door to the real reality can be opened by means of the dialectical approach of Socrates. But that dialectic in Socrates was not meant to be the only way in,  [though it is possible that for Hegel, only the dialectical method is an open the door to real reality, but I am not sure . Concrete abstract synthesis might be almost by definition contain an element of empirical ''concrete''evidence. ]   

 in high school most people thought I was a philosopher.  Even people who were much smarter than me thought I had a certain insight in that direction. And yet I never went into philosophy in college because I could already tell that 20th century philosophy was on its way toward a train wreck, But even so I consider the subject to be important. Of course Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Kant are important but I would like to suggest Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross at his web site to be the best [i think the approach of Nelson is great, but had a serious flaw in the categories of space and time that only Kelley Ross was able to correct.]

My reasoning is that the British American "Analytic Philosophy" is a train wreck and so well pointed out in  books by Robert Hanna. The other 20th century ones are beyond contempt since they are incoherent. Heidegger just substituted Being in place of God and being authentic to oneself instead of moral obligations  to others. Freud I have always thought was a fraud since I could not stand his steam engine model of the human mind. Marx was wrong since the Labor theory of value is false--things have value outside of what amount of work went into making them--for example: AIR.