Translate

Powered By Blogger

31.12.23

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]