I was looking at the history of Communism and it seems to me that in spite of it being really ridiculous, still I think it comes from an awareness of abuse on the part of princes and priests.

I was looking at the history of Communism and it seems to me that in spite of it being really ridiculous, still I think it comes from an awareness of abuse on the part of princes and priests.
That is:  it is  a reaction.
John Searle pointed out that not just moral relativism but the larger relativism itself is incoherent. It depends on reality itself being relative. Thus not just the truth of "It is raining here and now" as a statement, but the very fact of the rain in itself. ["There is no intermediate position of truth relativism or semantic relativism between absolutism and ontological relativism, the view that everything that exists only exists relative to my feelings and attitudes."]

The further most obvious problem with Communism is the question: "Who hires the worker?" The obvious answer is the boss. No one is born with the label "worker" printed on their forehead. They only become a worker because the boss hires him. If you kill all the bosses, then there are no workers.



So what kinds of abuse caused people to fall for incoherent doctrines? You have to say there was a lot. Not just that, but Communism itself seems to have been a necessary antidote against the types of criminal populations that were under the rule of the USSR.

So the clear and true points of critique against socialism are seeing just one side of the picture.
I have mentioned before that the Ran (Rav Nahman) from Breslov made a note of the terrible and horrific abuses that were done in the name of the holy Torah. He considers many of the great and well known religious authorities to be demons. תלמידי חכמים שדיים יהודאיים

So what you end up with is: there really is no big answer for the human dilemma. We all ought to simply keep and learn Torah and Musar as best we can.

That was in any case the answer my learning partner David Bronson suggested. I had mentioned some of the problems with abuse in the religious world and he agreed but then suggested that since that is the case we ought to simply learn Gemara and try to be decent people ourselves instead of looking at what is wrong with others, or trying to correct the world.

[You would be right if you think that that is not the most satisfying answer. If you would in fact like to do something in the right direction, I would think that the basic Musar Movement of Reb Israel Salanter makes the most sense.--that is learning Ethics and books of Morality from the Middle Ages before these issues got to be muddy.]

In the Litvak yeshiva world there is a general goal of learning Torah. This not for the sake of making money.

In the Litvak yeshiva world there is a general goal of learning Torah. This not for the sake of making money. In fact, it is considered close to sinful to make money by means of learning Torah.
So then what do people think about when they think about "Parnasa"--making a living?
It is known that there is an argument between the trust of the Obligations of the Heart and Navardok.
However it was pointed out by Rav Joseph Horviz of Navardok that the Obligations of the Heart also recognizes the idea of trusting in God without doing any effort.
What I noticed today is that in the very end of שער הביטחון the obligations of the heart brings this idea of trust in God with no effort as a higher level than trust with effort.

It used to be understood that learning Torah is  a kind of attachment with God. However Saint Simon began the approach in Europe that working is a higher goal-in fact the highest goal. This got to be embedded deeply into people. But from a Torah point of view, learning Torah is higher- but not as work.

[Saint Simon and Hegel were not responsible for the chaos that engulfed Europe after the French Revolution. But their systems were used to justify the various revolutions that plunged Europe into darkness. Marx used both.]

[Marx  used the labor theory of value and the principles of Saint Simon and a modified form of Hegel to weave together his approach. In high school I was barely aware of the thinking behind Marx though I read his Manifesto. Mainly I have to say I just as very unimpressed with most 1800's thinking. None of the revolutions promising Utopia seemed to make sense to me.]

On the other hand I understand very well the reasons that Europe went in for all those crazy theories. They were tired of abuses by priests and kings. It is in fact a point of interest that none of these revolutions made  a dent on the USA, England or Switzerland the three countries with a strong Protestant force.

mysticism

My impression is that mixing up mysticism with Musar was not a good idea. [That is almost all post Zohar Musar].
But I do not mean this in the sense of critique on the Ari'zal. Rather the tendency is to get off track.

And after all, there is a very different sense of what Muar means when it comes from the rational schools of thought of Saadia Gaon and the Rambam -as opposed to the mystic schools of thought of the Ramban/ Nahmanides and almost all subsequent Musar.

To me it seems I myself got off track. And that would not have happened if the straight Litvak yeshiva I was in had been straightforward about saying that the Mystics just got too much stuff wrong. Not that they got everything wrong, but enough to make it no worthwhile.

There were great tzadikim like Rav Yaakov Abukazeira who came to great "maddragot" [levels] but that was not from learning mysticism but from simple service towards God.

[I do not want to turn this into a critique on great tzadikim, but rather to emphasize that no one became a tzadik through learning mysticism. They became tzadikim because they served God simply.Straight Torah. No frills.

[Even books that are thought to be relatively free of mysticism like the Mesilat Yesharim open the door to the mystic stuff. It is hard to know what to make out of this.I certainly do not what to be critical of the Ramhal but in point of fact, the mystic stuff sends people on tangents--often not very good ones.

Dr Edward Feser suggested that Aristotle's approach [and Aquinas] solves the Mind body problem.

Some people like Dr Edward Feser have suggested that Aristotle's approach [and Aquinas] solves the Mind body problem. Then I saw on his site a link to here http://faculty.fordham.edu/jaworski/

But based on what I saw in Thomas Reid and Dr Michael Huemer I do not know how this can help.

Here is the link to the book:Hylomorphism-Mind-Body

The reason that I think this can not work is that people are made of atoms. Atoms do not have mental states.

Normally I have a lot of confidence in Medieval thinking. But in this case I am wondering because I am thinking they might be ignoring the point made by Berkeley.

חובות הלבבות שער היחוד פרק ו

In Obligations of the Heart, [1:6] Rav Bahayee Ibn Pakuda says if something has a beginning it must have an end because if something has no beginning it can not have an end.

Here in this diagram I have tried to work this out.

E=End; B=Beginning; NB=No Beginning; NE=No End.

Idealism

F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) (one of the key figures in Idealism) after WWI, repudiated the whole thing.  Brand Blanchard more or less still defended it.



But what people did to try to replace Hegel with something better seems to have been a flop,



Post Modernism, Existentialism linguistic philosophy analytic philosophy. All sand traps.--as noted by recent more sane people like Kelley Ross.

My suggestion is to take a new look at Leonard Nelson and the Kant-Friesian School of thought.

[In fact the whole academic world in the US seems to have become a lot more sane after the vacuous stupid philosophers of the twentieth century.]

One of the greatest mathematicians in history, Gauss, thought of Hegel negatively. But Ernst Kummer had a specifically Hegelian view point from what one can tell from his speeches.
And there is another connection with the world of math in Felix Klein who married Ann Hegel the daughter of Karl Hegel the son of Hegel.

Obligations of the Heart [Hovot Levavot]

I noticed that some things in the Obligations of the Heart [Hovot Levavot] need more study.

In the first section Gate of Unity, chapter 5 he says there is a general form that is the sub-layer of accidental forms and forms that are part of the essence. [The last would be like wetness is an essential form for water] That is a new concept I have never heard of.

There also seems to be problems. If some thing has no beginning it can have no end he says as an axiom. But then he derives if it has no end then it had no beginning. That is a kind of logic used by Rava in the Gemara but then the Gemara itself asks on Rava. I brought this up with David Bronson once and he showed me that Gemara. [If it is raining it is wet outside. But if it is wet outside that does not mean it is raining. Someone might have turned on their sprinklers.]

I also noticed the Obligations of the Heart also mentions Creation Ex Nihilo right there is chapter 5.

[That is an essential aspect of Torah. This is contrary to the religious who try to change the approach of Torah without telling people that that is what they are doing. They claim "Everything is God." That is not Torah-besides being false.

Also it is hard to understand why the Obligations of the Heart would in chapter 4 say Aristotle was wrong about the fifth element and then in chapter 5 claim there is the Iyuli?

I assume there is some background he is building on of Post Aristotelian philosophers.