I do not have an essay about this in mind. But just for my own sake I wanted to jot down some quicke ideas about how Reb Israel Salanter and the Musar Movement [{Learning the Ethics of the Medieval Sages}, ]come to answer a problem that most people have not heard of but still is very much a part of the modern world. Enlightenment versus Counter Enlightenment.
If I would have energy to expand on this I would try to show briefly the two streams of enlightenment thought. It all started with Hobbes, but Enlightenment thought branched out into John Locke versus Rousseau. [And Kant and Hegel tried to bridge the gap between Enlightenment and Counter Enlightenment.] But Counter Enlightenment also branched out into two streams, the secular counter enlightenment (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, pagan) and religious counter enlightenment Meistre, Hamann. Pentecostal.
My basic approach is to say that the Musar (Litvak) yeshiva movement which more or less was based on the Rambam and Saadia Gaon's approaches combine the best of both approaches.[To synthesize Reason and Faith.]
It would be hard to go into this in detail, but the basic idea is that in learning Musar one internalizes the ethics of the Law of Moses, that is the Oral and Written Law.
If I would have energy to expand on this I would try to show briefly the two streams of enlightenment thought. It all started with Hobbes, but Enlightenment thought branched out into John Locke versus Rousseau. [And Kant and Hegel tried to bridge the gap between Enlightenment and Counter Enlightenment.] But Counter Enlightenment also branched out into two streams, the secular counter enlightenment (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, pagan) and religious counter enlightenment Meistre, Hamann. Pentecostal.
My basic approach is to say that the Musar (Litvak) yeshiva movement which more or less was based on the Rambam and Saadia Gaon's approaches combine the best of both approaches.[To synthesize Reason and Faith.]
It would be hard to go into this in detail, but the basic idea is that in learning Musar one internalizes the ethics of the Law of Moses, that is the Oral and Written Law.
