The book of Spinoza, the Ethics, was a companion of mine for all my years in high school. But eventually I started seeing some problems in his logic. There are good reasons I switched to Leibniz and Kant.
But as Jewish books go as far as ethics is concerned, the Ethics of Spinoza is powerful. 

The Ethics ("Musar") books of the Middle Ages e.g., The Duties of the Heart, are better than the Ethics. They avoid some of the problems you find in Spinoza. They are a little more modest about what we can know.




I forgot it, but I did have some way of defending Spinoza. I think it was something like this: What is an accident? Some characteristic of a substance. The difference between them is the substance is permanent and the accident can go away. A leaf can be green in spring and red in fall. But substances also change. In fact there is little that is permanent. What is it that these substances are accidents of?
It is this permanent substance that survives  all changes that Spinoza calls substance.
 This argument is what I used to try to defend Spinoza. Not that I am particularly happy with them but that at least we can understand what Spinoza was trying to get at.

Now if you want to give a critique on Spinoza, it would go like this. Even with this justification, that is still not a axiom. Typically an axiom in Geometry or Physics starts  with something self evident and almost trivial. For example if a=b, then b=a. You don't start with something highly counter intuitive and then try to make it into an axiom like "Nothing can affect a substance." [Even though philosophers do this all the time since Hume, it still just talking cleverly and making something dumb sound smart. ] For reasons like this. and several others(that Leibniz pointed out) I decided that Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, and Kant were closer to the truth.

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Spinoza puts a condition of substance which almost forces his conclusion of Pantheism. 

 People claim for the Rambam the title of the greatest Jewish philosopher. Maybe he was, but the Guide for the Perplexed is the most perplexing book I have ever read.
They used to print it with the commentary of Joseph Albo. If you can get through it congratulations! I found it frustrating. And the medieval alchemy really bothered me.
But if you want to get to what Maimonides was saying without having to go through hell and back to find out, then the best book I ever saw is David Hartman's. And the Rav Kook Institute also had a very good edition of the Guide with a short but very good commentary.  Also Rav Kapach from Yemen had an edition based on the original manuscripts of the Guide with his own very deep commentary. If you have time I would recommend learning these and also Plato and Aristotle in order to have an idea of the issues that the Rambam was addressing in the Guide.

I have been challenged to write an essay about moral objectivity.. I have not read the essay on the Standford or Internet encyclopedia of philosophy.. [Whatever is there I am sure I could never write anything better than that.] But in the meantime, I just want to organize a few thoughts about this subject.
  First, Professor Michael Humemer does not use the idea of the fallacy of subjectivity in his essay because he knows that an outside statement about morality can be coherent as long as the statement itself is left outside the set of all moral facts.[As Moshe Israel Rosten noticed] 
  To defend Moral Objectivity I could in theory use  Professor John Searle's argument. [ Here is the web adress: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/] But his argument works really only against the idea that all knowledge is subjective. But some people don't say that. They say just moral facts are subjective. This is harder to defeat. (Moshe Israel Rosten pointed this out to me. This is because the moral relativist might accept there is objective truth but just not in the area of morality. For that you need the essay of Michael Huemer in Colorado http://www.owl232.net/objectiv.htm)

But I should mention that my interest in objective morality actually goes deeper than a challenge on the Internet. When I was learning Torah I certainly thought I had found one self consistent objective logical and reasonable system of morality and a unified coherent world view. That illusion has been smashed. In its place I have a philosophical system based on Kant and Plato that the Torah can be justified with.  But what I presently believe in does not really come anywhere near the grandeur of Torah and Talmud. So what I try to do is to fit the Torah into my present world view. But the whole process is like  the practice medicine used to be about a hundred years ago. It is a hodge podge of different things that seem to work with no unifying principle
At any rate Michael Huemer does a neat thing. It claims that also the claim of all moral values are subjective is alos incoherent in this way:


Since rational judgment presupposes some ground apart from the judgment on which for it to be based, the denial of objectivity implies the intrinsic impossibility of rational moral judgment, since said denial means that moral values cannot have any independent existence apart from the mind

"There is a systematic plan to establish an Islamist beach head in the United States with the eventual goal of watching the United States crumble from within and establishing Islamic rule in this country,"

Steve Emerson's 70-minute film, Jihad in America: The Grand Deception, was released on DVD last October. Emerson, who directs The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), says the documentary traces the roots of Islamism inside the United States and reveals the chilling reality about the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood.

"Our job is to change the Constitution of America," Sayyid Syeed, national director of the Office for Interfaith & Community Alliances for the Islamic Society of North America, says in the film. "There is a systematic plan to establish an Islamist beach head in the United States with the eventual goal of watching the United States crumble from within and establishing Islamic rule in this country," Doug Farah, a national security consultant and analyst, adds.
http://www.onenewsnow.com/media/2013/01/10/jihad-in-america-the-chilling-reality

My own comment on this is that America will not be able to fight an enemy as long as it does not acknowledge the fact that it is an enemy. America and the whole western world and Russia also ought to learn the difference between a friend and an enemy before it is too late. Even Russia needs to learn this.
This is not the same type of conflict as the cold war. That was a conflict between two powers each trying to prove to the other that they could make a decent and just society. This is not what Muslims are trying to do. They are trying by the power of money and oil to infiltrate and destroy Russia and the USA.
It does not help to go back in history to find people like Ibn Rushd, or al Farabi. The question is what is Islam today. The greatest threat to the survival of the human race in two million years. and a threat to the very existence of Planet Earth.
Muslims armed with atom bombs are just as much a threat to us all as Muslims armed with a 747 jet airliner. Even more so.

Kabalah? Is it for you?

I would like to defend the theses that it is better to leave the Zohar alone. But I would like to also say this with the understanding that often there are very good insights into the Torah which you can find in the Zohar and the Ari (Isaac Luria האריז''ל).
To I make my these clearer I want to say that what gentiles consider Kabbalah and what the Zohar and the Arizal [Isaac Luria] are about are two very different things. The Zohar is not about magic. It is a neo platonic explanation of the Old Testament.

And it is an explanation that is necessary  for many reasons. One is that the alternative--Maimonides [the Rambam] with his reasons for the mitzvot  based on Aristotle are not very convincing. Clearly some type of Neo -Platonic approach is necessary. [See other medieval kabbalists especially Avraham Abulafia and the Ramban (Nachmanides).] (I mean the Rambam might be right but in any case he is hard to accept and grasp.)

Yet I still have to say that my general impression of people that learn Zohar is that they start thinking they are the Messiah, and get other delusions rather quickly.

That is just one criticism of it. I have another one also. It is this. That the aspect of Torah which is Numinous and holy is not touched by the Zohar or the Ari. This is an inner holiness of Torah which has nothing to do with the things talked about in the Zohar at all.

I should say that I spent time learning Kabbalah, and I am familiar with many of the so called "kabalists" in Israel, so I am not completely ignorant about this subject. I learned the Eitz Chaim of  the Ari [Isaac Luria] several  times, and went through the other writings of the Ari at length. I read several works of the Remak (Moshe Cordovero) including the Pardes and the Reshash and prayed with the Sidur HaReshash for many years. I went through  several authors of Medieval kabbalah like Avraham Abulafia and others. A lot of this was very inspiring for me.  But still it has the tendency is to instill delusions into people.
I know the fraudulent kabbalist of the Kotel.  And I knew others that had actual insights. One fellow had virtual film going through his head showing him the life of people that came to him. [He was put into Cherem (excommunication) by Rav Ovadia Yosef]  I was close with many of the disciples and descendants of Bava Sali.

Also one odd thing was that people that learned Kabbalah also thought they knew how to learn Gemara (The Babylonian Talmud), even though they could never tell you a simple explanation in any Gemara  They seemed to believe their expertise in Kabbalah gave them expertise in everything.

So though Kabalah is a legitimate sub-section of Torah learning, still there is the problem of cults.
And the Sitra Achra that got mixed up with it also.

The main principle in terms of Kabalah is this: Sephardim are OK, Ashkenazim are not.
The Ramchal also is fine [as far as I can tell], even though Rav Hutner (Rosh Yeshiva of Chaim Berlin) is reported to have said that some aspects of his teachings come from the Shatz.] 

  So I say in general simply to learn in a kosher Lithuanian type of yeshiva.
And avoid kabbalists. [But it is still OK to go to descendants of Bava Sali for blessings and advice-not because of Kabbalah, but rather from the standpoint of being descendants of a tzadik which gives  certain kind of merit.]

I think it is common practice for nations to try to limit the ability of their enemies to launch attacks from nearby bases. From what I understand this was part the reason the the USSR absorbed different territories after WWII and the reason they demanded that American remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey and the reason that Israel took the Golan Heights.

In spite of my ignorance about American history I recently read a very nice book on the subject and it was amazing in given the basic overview with detail but not too much. From what I can tell it was not just the British but also France was taking American boats and men. The thing which triggered the war was that after both England and France had signed agreements to discontinue this practice, they kept on doing it.

Besides that England was not fighting Napoleon at the time. They were involved with an economic war with France. And this was part of the reason they impounded American boats they could trade freely with France and England. This bothered both England and France.
In the attack on Canada, America was intending to limit the ability of England to launch naval attacks against America.
I think this is common practice for nations to try to limit the ability of their enemies to launch attacks from nearby bases. From what I understand this was part the reason the the USSR absorbed different territories after WWII and the reason they demanded that American remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey and the reason that Israel took the Golan Heights.I think this was also the reason that America attacked Florida when it was owed by Spain and why it took possession of Alabama --i.e with intent to stop the attack the creek Indians.I will not even go into the reason for taking Texas.

Most people that lived in the USSR that I have encountered always have something nice to say about it. [I have been hanging around one of the former republics of the Soviet Union so when I say this it means that  everyone misses the USSR.] And they always start with: "It was not so bad." And they always include the word "stability." If you compare the USSR with what came before it and what came after it, it is hard to miss their point. Instead of free market capitalism as you used to have in the U.S.A. you have strong man tactics, or bully capitalism. [The same thing that Marx criticized in the first place]
And before the USSR there were massive pogroms in almost every Russian and Ukraine city. And Russia was fighting a completely ridiculous pointless war in the West and chaos reigned. And people concentrate on what was wrong with the USSR, but forget that the alternative was  already much worse and corrupt. and this fact continues until this very day Jan 2 2013.
I will not even get into the good aspects of Soviet Science and the massive efforts to make housing and transportation and medical care available for everyone at almost zero cost. Sure it would be better if a country had a free market system in which everyone had strong  Biblical values so that there would be an inherent sense of right and wrong. But lacking that, there is no question that the USSR was an improvement on what came before it and what came after it.

And sadly America itself is rapidly coming to the place where people are lacking all basic Biblical values and in fact need something like a strong centralized federal government to keep them even barely decent.in other words I would like Jews to be good Jews and Christians to be good Christians. But lacking that, I think you need something like a strong centralized government to keep people from hurting each other. And in America Christan are no longer good Christians and Jews either ignore the Torah and Talmud or go off into strange nightmarish Chasidic cults.
And the way the USSR dealt with Muslims is great lesson for us all. When some  Soviet citizens were taken prisoner, they send in Unit Alpha of the KGB. They caught one terrorist and sent his body parts to the other  terrorists. . Nor did they have some smart Beverly Hills lawyers arguing about Muslim Human and Civil Rights.

basic crisis of the Enlightenment.

Max Weber was the first person to see the basic crisis of the Enlightenment. [Rousseau and Jonathan Swift were the first to attack the Enlightenment but Weber saw that the whole project itself had entered a phases of crisis] (For bit of background information: The Enlightenment was political project or conspiracy to take power from princes kings and priests and give it to the intellectuals and scientists. It succeed like no movement had ever succeeded before. It said to the kings and queens: "Either you will listen to our ideas about justice and freedom or we will make you listen."]

This was a reaction against reason and a search more natural wholeness. The attack against the enlightenment had been started by Rousseau but the first one to see the actual dissatisfaction with reason and the ultra rational world of European Civilization before WWI was Weber.

This is clearly the reason for the radical movements of the twentieth century. The baal teshuva that feels the emptiness of secular America, the Communists and the Nazis-just some people went to religion to fill the emptiness and others went to secular religions like Nazism or Environmentalism or Radical Feminism.

All the above was stated clearly by Weber and later by Allen Bloom




I would like to defend the idea that problem with the Enlightenment goes back to Renaissance Italy from where the whole movement began with the Humanists and can even be traced back to Antiquity. The thing that makes me say this is the fact that even Renaissance Italy with all its glory fell into nothingness after 1500. From there it migrated to Northern Europe and eventually to the USA. But the seeds of its destruction are still there. It can't exist for any extended period without the Bible--without holiness, without a connection with numinous reality.

But this Bible [or Old Testament approach] can't work either without ancient Rome and Athens. Freedom and equality are in no way Biblical values. It's the unique combination of Athens, Rome, and the Torah that created Western Civilization.--and is needed for its continuance.
 
However there is a  problem with how many people approach the Bible. They look at it as if it is porous. They feel they can put in any interpretation that suits their fancy. For this reason for Jewish people the books of Musar [books of ethics from Jewish thinkers in the Middle Ages] are  essential. It is not that these books are so insightful into human nature  or into the Divine Realms [like Isaac Luria]. It is rather that they excel in the one thing the Middle Ages excelled in: logical rigorous thought. There is almost no way to get a self consistent logical approach to the Torah without basing yourself on some Medieval thinker. The reason is that that is what they were good at in those days. It is the same reason why no modern commentary on the Talmud comes anywhere  in lights years of one word of a Tosphot on the Talmud.

For Christian people this all would imply the need for them to learn the books of Aquinas, and Anselm and Abelard.

The modern Jewish synthesis of the medieval books of Musar are contained in the writings of the giants of the Musar movement of  Israel Salanter.
[But sadly that movement fell into the trap of frumkeit and' or the  pseudo  science of psychology.]

But the original Musar movement was definitely on the right track.

For a good example of what is wrong with that movement today a glance at the garbage written in Michtav Meeliyuah of the books of Avigdor Miller will suffice.

In conclusion: You need a balance between  Athens and the Torah. and neither one alone suffices. This was clearly the opinion of Maimonides and of Aquinas. And I would not even have to mention if if not for the problem that today the divorce between Torah and Plato and Aristotle has been completed  to the detriment of both. and this divorce was definitely against the world view of the Rambam, and the Baali Musar from the geonic school like the Chovot Levavaot. [Though I admit that this modern religious fanatic approach was in fact quite in accord with the Rashba, and others of the anti Rambam school. I can not answer this objection except to say that I think the fanatic religious approach is not for everyone. But it might very well be for some people. there was even for me a period in my life that i could not dream of tearing myself;f away from the holy words of the Torah and Talmud for even a minute.--except during the time between morning seder and afternoon seder which was the time periods that i got married in.]