I have recently become interested in Musar and the seemingly extravagant claims made for it by Israel Salanter. I am thinking that perhaps the Musar movement was right and that there is something about that basic set of books [the six classical ones I mean] which instills good character traits in people. While I am not totally convinced,  I am still tending in this direction. In fact, I brought this up with one fellow I know and his thought that it sounds good and further that someone should put the basic Musar cannon into dots. What this would mean would be someone should get together the basic Musar books of the disciples of Israel Salanter and make a set out of them and put dots into them.
That would be the books of Reb Israel Salanter, "HaTvuna," "Or Israel" of Isaac Blasser, The second recent volume of the writings of Isaac Blasser that came out recently in Israel, The "Madgragat HaAdam," "Chachma and Musar" from Simcha Zizel. 


This maybe is not on the deep philosophical level of Kant or Plato but these are still very good books and perhaps in fact do instill something precious into people.

I agree learning is not everything.  I have long held that something like the Boy Scouts of America is very important for children  and this instills values into people that no books could ever do.

The problem is that it seems to me that this is not very workable in Brooklyn.  At any rate is it my suggestion to start the Orthodox Jewish Boy Scouts of America  that meet every week and would learn out door skills and survival skills and what things like “team work” and “loyalty” and “human decency” mean in real life.

 Also I must mention later books of Musar after the direct disciples of Israel Salanter are not very good. They became "frum" [in the non complementary connotation of that word].  In my recommendation of Musar i meant specifically the books of the first generation disciples

The interesting subject for today is what is called Musar. This has relevance for Jews and gentiles alike.
It is a subject that is built from certain foundations and then reaches its peak in the person of Israel Salanter.
The essence of Musar is the  idea that everyone should learn one of five basic books of Morality written during the Middle ages on the subject of ethics. To this is added the idea of the subconscious that Israel Salanter borrowed from Schopenhauer. The idea is this:by daily review of these books something of their ideas on ethics gets into the subconscious.

But there are a few unstated insights about this idea that are not stated explicitly. One is a very well known Jewish idea but sadly enough Christians seem to be completely unaware of it.It is the idea that during the Middle Ages people were very careful in what they wrote about philosophy and theological subjects. It is what is called in the Jewish world "Rishonim." It means not that people that wrote then were somehow divinely inspired.It does not mean that. It means that they were extremely careful not to write things that would be logical fallacies. This care and caution was shot to smithereens after the time of Hume who in spite of his great and original thought wrote in basic logically fallacies--so much so that it leaves me wondering if he did so on purpose. since then philosophy is dominated by circular reasoning including Hegel who assumes what he wants to prove. [As Habermas noted that in the phenomenology Hegel tries to prove the identity of Subject and Object--but in fact he assumes it right from the start.] You never see this in writing from Jewish Christian or Muslim philosophers from the Middle Ages.

Christians probably have some equivalent of Jewish Musar from the middle ages but i am not sure of what it could be. They should probably make and effort to dig it up. What I means is Musar may be based on philosophical thought but these are books that are specifically about morality, not philosophy.

This means that learning Aquinas would not be in this category of Musar.

At any rate back to the Jewish subject of Musar

This subject was highly misunderstood after Israel Salanter. The reason was that the divide between reform Jews and orthodox Jews had grown to such a degree that the emphasis of people like Maimonides on science and philosophy was ignored. So Musar was taken to be a radical anti science anti philosophy doctrine and any books from the actual Musar books that said differently were explained away.


Something is curious about Musar in terms of the treatment of the soul. This subject is too big for this blog right now. But just briefly let me mention that the Jewish treatment of the soul was influenced by the brethren of purity. In fact the whole move away from Neo Platonic thought in Ibn Ezra [who accepts the Neo Platonic scheme point black] and Saadia Geon to Aristotelian thought in Maimonides seems to have been influenced by the Muslim philosophers of those times.  But as we reach the Musar Movement of Israel Salanter it seems the idea of the soul have changed to the general Christian concept  of an ethereal essence.
 I really have no time to go into this right now but it would make a great term paper.

Reb Israel did borrow the idea of the self from Hobbes and the subconsciousness from Schopenhauer and other ideas developed by Enlightenment philosophers. Later on the Musar movement made a move to deny this debt. The prime directive in the Jewish Orthodox would today is never acknowledge a debt to a Christin or Muslim thinker.



 The Rambam (Maimonides) and Saadia Geon always acknowledged from where they borrowed their ideas. That is what makes them interesting and it helps to see what they are adding or improving on.

I have a love hate relationship with the Musar movement of Israel Salanter.

It is hard to disagree with the basic three core themes. (1) Fear of God is the most important thing in the world. (2) Good Character traits are a basic component of Fear of God (3) The way to get to Fer of God and good character traits is by learning the traditional books called Musar-- books of ethics written by medial Jewish authorities like Maimonides.
He borrowed from  Schopenhauer the idea of the subconscious 


[Schopenhauer was the most widely discussed philosopher in the German-speaking world in the time of R.Israel Salanter.]

And the system of R. Salanter was based on the concept of the subconscious--i.e. to read Musar in such a way that it will penetrate into the subconscious. [See letter 6 in Or Israel. he calls the subconscious there by its German name. It is not possible to imagine he did not know about this from the Gemran speaking world he was in at the time in Konigsberg.the city of Kant]
This is all good.

Where Musar went wrong is a whole different subject in itself.
Perhaps someone could devote a academic study on this subject?

Musar became "Frumkeit."
Reform Jews to them are the arch enemy, "the prime enemy" (Glavni Protivnick) as the Russians used to say about the USA.
Somehow Musar the idea that we the frum orthodox are all righteous and holy and everyone else is criminally insane.
To me this seems to indicate a slight disconnection with reality.

"Traditionally, Natural Law jurisprudence tends to come from Aristotelians, or at least Thomists. From that, we might suppose that Aristotle could have a natural law theory. But the Thomists don't think of ethics in empirical terms, as did Aristotle."

Here is my question about the Rambam in an expanded version and the answer of Dr Kelly Ross to my short version of the question.




Jean Paul Sartre, famously asserted that, "Without God, all is permitted." This was supposed to be a quote from Dostoyevsky (1821-1881). This is a misquote. [The actual statements is without hell, all is permitted.] Besides that it is not true. The manifest ignorance and absurdity of Sartre's pronouncement is evident when we reflect that he ignores one of the oldest and best known theories in Western philosophy: Plato's Theory of Forms. For Plato, meaning, value, and morality exist independently of any god or Deity, and this is quite characteristic of Greek philosophy in general.
And the general approach of all Jewish thinkers from Saadia Geon and the Duties of the Heart until the Rambam was firmly on the side of Plato.
With the Rambam things get confusing. He wants to retain Natural law which comes from Saadia Geon and is pretty much stated openly in the Talmud. But he wants to move towards Aristotle away from Plato's form of the Good. I still do not know if anyone has addressed this serious issue in the Rambam.

Dear Dr Ross. Could Aristotle have natural law theory? You write he hold from heteronomous authority. But does that have to be so?




Dr Ross: "Traditionally, Natural Law jurisprudence tends to come from Aristotelians, or at least Thomists. From that, we might suppose that Aristotle could have a natural law theory. But the Thomists don't think of ethics in empirical terms, as did Aristotle. Instead, natural law comes from the Mind of God in what is overall a theistic system. But Aristotle's God doesn't worry about human phronesis (prudence), and his conception of even human "wisdom" (sophia) precludes practical issues or applications. As Aristotle says, ethics is not for the young, because they literally have not learned enough from experience. Yet the old themselves are liable to notice that the young are often the most passionate about justice. And if this passion is often expressed in foolish, destructive, or vicious ways, where is the fault? The old are just as likely to become cynical as wise, or pessimistic rather than dedicated. Aristotle certainly had no political ideals to promote; and he may not have appreciated himself how the institution of "mixed" forms of government he described, as praised by Polybius or James Madison, represented in ideal in its own right, as an accommodation with the ignorance or self-interest of human nature. Even now, a substantial body of political opinion is impatient with checks and balances and divided authority.

Best wishes,
Kelley Ross

Concerning Conversion to Judaism

The first thing to notice in the Rambam/Maimonides is that there are two operative levels of Gerut/conversion. The first is simply to become Jewish. For this one needs a lower level of conditions [an easier set of conditions].  The next and highest level is to be acceptable for marriage in the Jewish world.

Now the main and simple condition for the first level is something so simple it is amazing that few have ever noticed it. This simple condition is not on their radar because they do not agree that it is something that even exists. This condition is "ratzon" (desire) to be Jewish. The Rambam says:  The Torah was given to the Jewish people and to anyone who wants to accept it"

To give you an example of how simple this is take the case of a slave that a Jew buys from a gentile. The Halacha is that as they are getting ready to put him in the mikvah for the sake of being a Jewish slave, he jumps into the mikvah on his own in front of the people standing around and says he is going into the mikvah for the sake of being Jewish. He becomes automatically Jewish and he is obligated in all the mitzvot and he can no longer be owned as a slave. (That is the buyer loses his money because he can no longer own the labor of the fellow). We see here that the desire of the Beit din is not necessary to make someone Jewish. He becomes Jewish even against their desire. It depends only on his own desire.

However when we look into the Rambam about laws of marriage we find a whole more stringent set of conditions. There he needs  (accepting the mitzvot) in front of three judges.



On a side issue in terms of Conversion of Women. The Tosphot in Yevamot does allow the a case in which the woman goes to the mikvah on her own and the acceptance of the Mitzvot alone is in front of three judges. The Rambam however requires that the Mikvah also be in front of three judges. The way to do this is to get a lot of Styrofoam slices and put them over the mikvah, then the woman gets into the mikvah that is covered in Styrofoam and then the three judges come into the room. Then she dips herself totally under the water in front of them and they see the acceptable dipping but nothing else.

A further point here is that become Jewish is not dependent of the will of the judges or anyone at all except the actually person involved. Judges can’t make someone Jewish and they can’t unmake some from being Jewish.


One last point. There was an old tradition to accept converts and not make things hard for them as is customary today. I agree with this approach for several reasons. One is that it is the Halacha. The other is that apparently some people are afraid the convert is not "all that well put together." But so what? People  anyway have no problem throwing anyone they don't like out of their communities the instant that the person rubs them the wrong way.--Jew or Gentile. It is just that when it is a Jew that rubs them the wrong way they find lots of clever ways of disavowing that person's Jewishness. A good example is Sephardic communities. To Sephardim all Ashkenazim are not Jewish;--- period. They just go along with the act as long as it benefits them but when it comes to a crunch and the poor ashkenazic Jew is down and out on his luck the Sefardi simply says to himself, "Well, he is not really Jewish anyway, so why bother to help him?" [And for Sephardim, American Ashkenazim are in the general category of Amalek. 


]

The Musar movement

I am looking a bit at Israel Salanter and Isaac Blazer. The Musar movement seems to have an idea of heteronomous authority. But that shouldn't be a surprise to me. This I think was the tendency of Torah thought for a long time, and I think that it was solidified by the Rambam who was going with Aristotle.
Once anyone is going with Aristotle they will have to end up with authority coming from outside of ones self. There is no absolute Form of the Good in Aristotle, so where else would authority comes from but divine command?

On the other hand, Divine command Theory has something going for it. The "self" itself is to Kant one example of a thing in itself, and we know that Schopenhauer considers the Will the be the absolute Ding an Sich. 



The Musar Movement. It looks to me they had some amazing insights.--especially about what they call negiot- rationalizations and excuses. This is a important insight. This is where the evil inclination is not buried like the Id. It is known and a person is doing what he knows to be wrong but he excuses it with negiot.  and rationalizations.

Is there a mitzvah to learn Torah to get a salary?

Is there a mitzvah to learn Torah to get a salary?

How would you go about thinking about this question logically?

At first sight it seems like the same question as "Is there a mitzvah to put on tefilin purely for the sake of money?" This seems simple. You simply divide the action from the intension. The intension is bad. You are not supposed to use the Holy Torah for money. But the action looks good.

But as we think deeper into this we can see that learning Torah is different. It is like the types of work on Sabbath that the intension is linked to the act. For example once who erases not in order to write has not done any work at all. It is not even a work done for a different intension. It simply is not work.

For it to be work it has to have the "on condition to write."

Same with Torah Learning. The Rambam says one who learns on condition to receive money has no mitzvah and loses his portion in the next world. That means the act itself has lost the category of a mitzvah and entered into the category of a sin of the most grievous type possible.

To see the opinion of Maimonides on this subject look into Pirkei Avot Chapter 4 Mishna 5 and in the laws of Talmud Torah. He could not have been clearer.

This helps us to understand the difference between people in authentic Lithuanian yeshivas that learn Torah for its own sake  as opposed to people that see in Torah an easy way to make money and scam people.