I had come to appreciate the Guide. When I returned to Israel the second time I ended up in an shul in Ramot 3 [a suburb of Jerusalem]. There I opened up the Guide and saw one short chapter that had this remarkable sentence in it לא הצם והמתפלל הוא הנרצה, אלא היודעו. ["Not he who fasts and prays is desirable, rather he that knows Him."]
The Rambam sees Faith and Reason as interacting. That is each informs the other. Reason guides Faith and visa-versa. Each is lacking without the other.
This is a key insight. In the original צמצום contraction of the Ari we find the Infinite Light was contracted. We find this contraction was in each of the מידות (ten sepherot).
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This is the idea of Kant that not just human reason, but pure reason is limited.
(I am here depending on the intuitions of Isaac Luria. And I believe there are sufficient reasons for doing so. What makes him important is his own intuitions of the higher worlds, not the Zohar that he was using to express his ideas. As we know from Kant every representation is given half by the subject and half by the object. So his ideas were half of how he saw things and half of objective reality.]
[The Reshash רב שלום שרבי Shalom Sharabi gives a good account of this in the Nahar Shalom.
At any rate, we see the importance of balance in life. This is because one can go over the boundary of wisdom and thus lose faith. And when that happens then wisdom itself becomes stupid because it has faith included in it. Similarly faith we it goes beyond the boundary of wisdom stops being faith of side of holiness but becomes faith of the Dark Side.
This idea of the Rambam is expressed throughout the Guide. But it shows up especially in the parable about the King and his country. There are people outside the country and people inside. There are people closer to the capital city and people inside. There are people close to the palace and people inside. There are people close to the king's chambers in the palace and people that are in the ouster chambers. The people outside the country are the barbarians. The people inside keep Torah. The people close to the palace know and keep the Talmud perfectly. The people inside the palace are the מדעים [Physicists in the language of the Rambam]. The inner chambers are where the prophets and philosophers are. The Rambam starts that chapter saying he is not saying anything different there than what he already explained. In this parable we see the idea of a balanced life where people learn the Oral and Written Law and Physics and Metaphysics together.
The Rambam sees Faith and Reason as interacting. That is each informs the other. Reason guides Faith and visa-versa. Each is lacking without the other.
This is a key insight. In the original צמצום contraction of the Ari we find the Infinite Light was contracted. We find this contraction was in each of the מידות (ten sepherot).
.
This is the idea of Kant that not just human reason, but pure reason is limited.
(I am here depending on the intuitions of Isaac Luria. And I believe there are sufficient reasons for doing so. What makes him important is his own intuitions of the higher worlds, not the Zohar that he was using to express his ideas. As we know from Kant every representation is given half by the subject and half by the object. So his ideas were half of how he saw things and half of objective reality.]
[The Reshash רב שלום שרבי Shalom Sharabi gives a good account of this in the Nahar Shalom.
At any rate, we see the importance of balance in life. This is because one can go over the boundary of wisdom and thus lose faith. And when that happens then wisdom itself becomes stupid because it has faith included in it. Similarly faith we it goes beyond the boundary of wisdom stops being faith of side of holiness but becomes faith of the Dark Side.
This idea of the Rambam is expressed throughout the Guide. But it shows up especially in the parable about the King and his country. There are people outside the country and people inside. There are people closer to the capital city and people inside. There are people close to the palace and people inside. There are people close to the king's chambers in the palace and people that are in the ouster chambers. The people outside the country are the barbarians. The people inside keep Torah. The people close to the palace know and keep the Talmud perfectly. The people inside the palace are the מדעים [Physicists in the language of the Rambam]. The inner chambers are where the prophets and philosophers are. The Rambam starts that chapter saying he is not saying anything different there than what he already explained. In this parable we see the idea of a balanced life where people learn the Oral and Written Law and Physics and Metaphysics together.
