the Mir in NY some books of Ethics

I learned in the Mir in NY some books of Ethics. That is besides the regular two Gemara sessions which went from 1000 AM until 200 PM and then from 4 PM until  8 PM. Then an evening session for students who were not married went from about 830 until 1100 or 12 AM for the students who were "masmidim" [diligent.]

So the Musar part was almost negligible. [ 35 minutes per day]. Yet, still I was affected deeply by the Musar part of the yeshiva. In particular the Gates of Repentance of Rabbainu Yona.

And in that book I recall was brought a statement of the sages that, "There are no problems without sin."אין יסורים בלי עוון

Thus, the best way to get out of his problems is not to sin. Easier said than done. Thus the disciple of Rav Israel Salanter [Isaac Blazer] brings the idea of encouraging others to learn Musar [mediaeval books of Ethics] as a cure for sin which in its turn is a cure for ones problems.

[How to define "sin" is a hard issue. There always seems to be areas of doubt as to what is the right course of action. Torah gives gernral guide lines but even with that there is always doubt. So to encourage the learning of Musar.]

music file G major

G major Allegro Winds and French Horn  w18  [w18 in midi format]

path of balance

I see the paths of great people often seems to go in opposite directions from each other.
[Rav Nahman refers to this as the argument between tzadikim.]
From what I recall this is one of the questions raised by Socrates. What is virtue "arete" , i.e. human excellence. He meant to ask this: that even though human excellence seems to vary according to the person, still is there some basic essence of "arete" [in ancient Greek] that all these great people share?
Something in common between the Gra,-- (Eliyahu of Vilna), Rav Israel Salanter, Rav Shach, Einstein, Mozart?

In Musar you find two areas of value,- moral virtue, and intellectual virtue. [Kelley Ross postulates a whole spectrum of value, -along a half circle.]

What my parents recommended was a path of balance. That is since there is a whole spectrum of virtues that are all important but each person seems to be able to excel only in one or two areas so the best idea is balance. That way you hold on to all the areas of value to some degree but you find the areas that are specific to your soul.

There is an opposite area of negative value for every area of positive value. [This is like Rav Nahman said about truth. He said there is only one truth but lots of lies. For example, if you have blue paint and someone asks what color is the paint there is only one right answer. Blue. But there are an infinite number of lies one can say. E.g. one could say it is red or green or any of the continuous wave lengths on the color spectrum. So even though in every area of value there is one true path, there are many ways of getting it wrong.

[This gives a good reason why the Gra would sign the letter of excommunication--to give warning to people like me that would not know how to avoid the dark side.]

So when it comes to Torah I would like to suggest for myself and others to be careful you go to an authentic Litvak yeshiva where you can get the real thing. [But I should add that even in the straightest of Litvak yeshivas one needs to avoid fanaticism. And also concentrate on the classes of the roshei yeshiva in order to get to a point where you "know how to learn".]

Rav Israel Salanter

Rav Israel Salanter brings the idea of bringing merit to many as being a way to bring merit to oneself in his "Letter of Musar". ["One who brings a merit to many, no sin comes to him."]

His idea of how to do this was to make a kind of library of Musar [Books on Ethics]. The difference between a regular library and this library of Musar would be that learning Musar of any Torah requires one to say the words. So it would be more like a regular place of learning Torah except that it would be devoted to Musar (books of Ethics).

The thing is this idea never took off at all. Musar was totally absorbed into the Litvak Yeshiva [Lithuanian type of Yeshiva]. And to me this seems right. Musar can get people off track unless connected with the straight Litvak yeshiva approach.

[The reason however it seems that Rav Israel Salanter wanted to keep things seperate was that the Litvak yeshiva approach can also get one off track. ]

G Minor Allegro Violin, French horn, Winds, Timpani. edited version

w17 edited version  w17 in midi format

Communism was founded on reason, and yet had become a totalitarian regime.

It was thought to be a truism a few years ago in the USA that Communism was founded on reason, and yet had become a totalitarian regime. Thus Reason is not always [or maybe very rarely] a good guide towards morality.

Whether you can find flaws in the system is not so much my point. Rather, that communism was based on the best the intellectual world had to offer, and yet was clearly causing mass murder and poverty wherever it was implemented.

So even though I did study leftist thinkers and philosophers, I was always aware that even pure Reason has limits.` And even if Reason recognizes moral principles, it does not know them automatically. You might take many examples violent tribes that still exist as mentioned in the book by Howard Bloom [The Lucifer Principle], though there are many more examples than the ones he picks.


This suspicion about the limits of human reason can give you an idea why I appreciate Dr Kelley Ross's web site about the Kant Friesian school based on Leonard Nelson. He seems to have an amazing defense of faith, i.e. immediate non-intuitive knowledge.


So on one hand, I can see the point of Dr. Michael Huemer that reason recognizes moral principles. But on the other hand, I also see that for Reason to be awoken, it need Divine revelation as the Rambam wrote in the Guide about Abraham the patriarch. Or you could go about the issue of faith with the idea of a dialectical process. A slow progress towards truth.

In the Guide of the Perplexed of Maimonides you have a allegory which makes the point that Physics and Metaphysics are above learning what we would call "learning Torah" i.e. Gemara.
It is the allegory of the king in his country. And you have there people outside the country, inside, near the palace and inside the palace. And right there the Rambam says people outside the palace are the "Talmudim" those that learn and keep the Oral and Written Law and learn Gemara all day. Inside the palace of the King in the outer sections  are the Physicists. In the inner section you have the prophets and philosophers.

So it does seem that the Rambam is making a value judgment about what is better to be spending your time at. Given a choice he seems to be saying one ought to learn Physics and Metaphysics rather than be sitting a learning Gemara.

However he certainly is not disparaging the importance of Gemara. Rather the idea is one ought to have  certain amount of time in Gemara and allot another larger section of his time to Physics.

And we know what the Rambam means because he defines his terms in the beginning of the Guide. Physics and Metaphysics he says mean the subjects so described by the ancient Greeks.

Philosophy today however I would have to say is probably better to avoid. It is known that Rav Nahman thought ill of philosophers and from what I can see today he had a point. So kind of by default I have gone more into Physics. [But in philosophy, I like Kelley Ross of the Kant Fries school, Michael Huemer, and Ed Feser.]

[Hegel to me seems important also although there is some friction between him and the Kant Fries school. See McTagart who answers some of the problems that Dr Kelley Ross raises. See Walter Kaufman on Hegel