Athens and Jerusalem

Athens and Jerusalem -faith and reason. in the middle ages that meant Plato and neo-platonic thought as we see in Duties of the Hearts. But at some point the emphasis got put on Aristotle. But I believe that the problems presented by the Mind- Body problem cannot be ignored, and thus you need some sort of answer. In my opinion, that is best found in Kant and the modified Kantian approach of Leonard Nelson. [And politics is downstream from philosophy, so this Kantian approach is really a much bigger deal than it seems to be on the surface. More over, this approach in itself needs clarification  for it starts with Beneke and Jacob Fries, but this was a sort of neo Kant approach that no one took seriously until nelson.  ]        

 The Obligations of the Hearts [Chovot Levavot] and all Rishonim take the view of faith with reason. in modern language that translates into the approach of a denial of absolute religious fundamentalisms and a denial of radical secularism. That means that  fundamentalism of Torah is in itself  a path of balance. You can see this in every chapter of the Chovot Levavot where for every good character trait he brings proof from the written Torah, the oral Torah and from reason [which to him means Aristotle, Plato, or Plotinus]

The marriage strike. MGTOW. Men going their own way.

 I think it is time to change secular laws about men. There is no reason why a wife can pick up a phone and send her husband to jail and prison, take away his children and money and reputation.  You can understand the MGTOW movement--men going their own way and refusing to get married or anything that can be considered marriage by the state. For once the state is involved, it is there forever.  

However, I can still see getting married as long as the wife learns the laws about lashon hara [slander] every day. [These laws are in the book Gates of.Repentance ] For people with values and that admit when they are wrong or have done wrong are still people that one can have a forever relationship with.

It is hard to know the laws of lashon hara without Gates of Repentance although they are in the gemara [Talmud]. Still to know them from the Talmud is hard, because they are spread out all over the place.  

[The main place in the Torah where the actual law  of lashon hara is stated is in Leviticus לא תלך רכיל בעמיך "Do not go as a tale bearer among your people." ] 

The best way to deal with a situation in which a wife is making her powerplay is to have values that you will not break under any circumstances.  Show her the door. 

Some of the basic problems with false allegations are the lashon hara problem;-- that is saying even what is true in order to cause damage.  There are, of course, many prohibitions that are involved in false allegations, but the lashon hara one is the most severe.

The general rules are that you need several conditions in order to say anything negative about someone: truth, rebuke, first hand evidence, not hearsay, intent to benefit someone, not cause harm that would not come according to din law of the Torah, not exaggerate. With issues between man and God the conditions seem to be less strict in that they do not seem to require all these conditions and there is some doubt about which ones apply--and it looks that a simple fact about someone' reputation is enough. that is that if it is common knowledge. 

Rav Ovadia Yoseph held along the lines of Reb Moshe and Reb Aaron concerning the State of Israel.

I believe that the people of Israel ought to return to Israel mainly because of the opinion of the Ramban [Nachmanidess] who holds it is a positive command. But also i think one ought to support the State of Israel because it was made in order to facilitate the possibility of fulfilling this command. I was not always aware of the importance of the State of Israel until I noticed the opinion of both Reb Moshe Feinstein and Reb Aaron Kotler that דינא דמלכותא דינא the law of the state is the law [Bava Batra 35].That statement of the Talmud is well known but Reb Moshe and Reb Aaron both said that that applies also to the State of Israel. What makes this especially relevant nowadays is that girls in the USA tend to be JAP's [Jewish American Princess's] and thus not marriageable material. They have an attitude problem.   And even if they did not, the laws are made in such  way to put a loaded gun into the hands of any wife. She can, with one phone call, put a man into prison, take away his children and money and reputation any time she feels like it. What kind of trusting relationship can anyone have with a partner that has a loaded gun pointed at their head?

The Ramban you can find in his commentary on Sefer Hamitzvot of the Rambam. Reb Aaron's approach I found in a book of musar that he wrote. Reb Moshe --I forget where I found his opinion, but I think it is well known in the circles that knew Reb Moshe. But those were not my circles. I was at the Mir in N.Y. and really had no idea of the opinion of these two great sages. I had heard of the Rav of Satmer, Reb Yoel who disagreed, but that just makes the issue an argument among the authorities. And even though I really am no where near the greatness of these sages, still I think the law is like Reb Moshe, and besides that, you see that Rav Ovadia Yoseph held along the lines of Reb Moshe and Reb Aaron.     

Sharira Gaon on Rava and R. Yose [Bava Batra 22] [The statement of Sharira Gaon is brought in the Itur]

 The nice thing I thought about  Sharira Gaon is that to him Rava and R. Yose [Bava Batra 22] come out parallel. Even though to the Rishonim, there are ways of explaining things, still  the approach of Rav Sharira Gaon makes a great deal of sense, For to Rava one can not dig a hole right next to the border of his neighbor. And to Sharira Gaon R Yose agrees with the sages that it is incumbent one one who might cause damage to move away some distance between himself and his neighbor. Otherwise it is hard to understand how R. Yose who holds it is upon the one that might be damaged to distance himself and Rava could agree.   [Sharira Gaon says R. Yose agrees with the decision of the sages, but not their reasoning- but also that the law is like Rava only in the case of a pit where just by digging he causes the ground on the other side of the border to be weakened. Thus to Rav Sharira Gaon, the the law is to bring close to the border anything besides a pit is ok-- as long as there is nothing there at the time that can be damaged. 

The Rishonim explain this differently (1) Rava is saying his law only in the case of a pit [hole in the ground because that is directly damaging the field of his neighbor; i.e. "his arrows". (2) The Rif and Tosphot say who comes first to the border can stay, and the neighbor who wants to put something on his side of the border can do so if he does not mind. But the first one can stay. (3) Rambam says the first neighbor can put  something there, but then if the neighbor puts something that can be damaged next to the border, then the first one then has to move away.]  (4) Some say the only permission is if the neighbor is new and bought that property after there is already something at the border that can damage. 

The Reasoning of Sharira Gaon is that one statement of the Gemara is that R. Yose is saying his law in answer to the sages in one case but really he disagrees with them in all cases. The another statement  is that he agrees with them. So Sharira is deciding with the later statement.

I can imagine that Harvard takes smart people from the pool of applicants, but from the long gone years of some good teachers, it seems to be in rapid decline. The physics that has come out of Harvard has been the result of no name people. [The greats are at Cal Tech, Stanford and Princeton. No where near Harvard.]The philosophy that came from there has been sloppy .

The Transcendental Deduction of Kant never really worked.

  Mainly, I believe that the Leonard Nelson approach makes the most sense because the transcendental deduction of Kant never really worked to be able to combine reason and perception. As Kelley Ross put it,-- both must  have a deeper source.  That is non-intuitive immediate knowledge. But as Michael Huemer pointed out, that there is no reason to believe implanted knowledge has any relation to reality.  Therefore, immediate non-intuitive knowledge (-the axioms by which knowledge starts) must be open to correction. It is not infallible. And if one asks-- that empirical facts ought not to be able to correct a priori knowledge, -that is where Hegel comes in handy. [Hegel would not have wanted empirical facts to correct an a priori, but even so even in Hegel, logic and reason flow through everything. Every fact is partly a priori.] There is a point where knowledge itself gets to a plateau, and gets above it by contrasting two points where separate series of reasoning led to and end up in a contradiction by which one starts the whole process again. Something like Electromagnetism and Newton that contradicted until you got Special Relativity,-- and Relativity and Quantum Mechanics contradicted until you got Quantum Field Theory; and to sew up gravity, you get String Theory. [In STRING THEORY, I think there is a way forward with Hashimoto Flow in differential geometry, i.e. to see how the closed strings develop in time.]

The issue here are the two points of Jacob Fries: empirical facts can not tell us anything about  how to make logical deductions. And logical deductions can't tell us if there is a continent between Europe and Asia.  

[There is no problem here from General Relativity because to Kant, space is a formal intuition.--Not a priori.]

There is another problem in Kant's transcendental deduction. That deduction says that the knowledge of transcendental subject depends on the knowledge of the transcendental object;-  and knowledge of the transcendental object depends on knowledge of the unity of the transcendental subject. The circularity here does not bother me, even though it probably should. What bothers me is that how can knowledge of object A be dependent on knowledge of object B? Or more precisely: Why is it that Kant says I can not know that I exist unless I know that something else exists?  I assume people in Europe knew that Europe existed before they knew that America existed. Therefore I think that Fries and Leonard Nelson were right that there has to be a deeper source of knowledge: immediate non intuitive knowledge.

I realize that there is a certain amount of stretching things to combine Fries and Hegel in the way that I am doing it here. But what I am doing here I think is somewhat like Plotinus when he combined Plato and Aristotle.] 

I might mention here that I have thought a lot about the Fries-Leonard Nelson approach for years and how it compares with the Hegel- McTaggart approach. [Though there are other approaches to Kant and Hegel but these seem the best of both. But in the long run I think I have to go with the Leonard Nelson non intuitive immediate knowledge idea.] 

the age of prophecy is over.

In Zachariah 13 verse 3 it says that if one will prophesize his parents will tell him''you deserve to die because  you have spoken falsely in the name of the Lord' and then will stab him to death. Then a bit later    Zachariah continues that people  will ask one, ''Are you a prophet?" He will say, "I am just a working guy." And they will ask, "Then what then are those bruises on your hands?" And he will say, "I was at my girl friend's house, and they beat me up." So the idea is that the age of prophecy is over. That is after all the context of those verses--that God will get rid of the spirit of evil from the land.