The magnum opus of Rav Nahman from Breslov [Collections of Rav Nahman, the LeM] has a great deal of great ideas

The magnum opus of Rav Nahman from Breslov [Collections of Rav Nahman, the LeM] has a great deal of great ideas but does not seem to have a systematic world view except "be frum."
It is not like Hegel, Spinoza, or Leibniz [or the Nefesh HaHaim by Rav Haim from Voloshin]]

When you find a particular Torah lesson that deals with your particular issue, you learn it forty days in a row and that helps to solve the problem.

His idea of avoiding philosophy on one hand makes a lot of sense. Like Descartes said . that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be imagined, which has not been defended by a philosopher.


However the blanket attack on the Guide for the Perplexed of Maimonides and all medieval Jewish thinkers seems a bit over the top. Plus the attack on scientists also seems kind of overboard. [Okay then stop using your I phones and Jet airplanes to get to Uman.]


My view is more along the lines of Rav Israel Salanter while at the same time accepting the important ideas from other places.

faith with reason

In the Middle Ages there was an approach that combined faith with reason.
In Ibn Pakuda חובות הלבבות Obligations of the Heart you see this right on the first page of the introduction in terms of the important of what Muslims called "theology"["Wisdom of God" literally] . So he is not referring juts to Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus but also to how Muslim scholars developed those ideas. [I imagine he must have been thinking about Al  Farabi and Al Kindi.]

Later in Obligations of the Heart in chapter 3 of Shar NaBehina you see the emphasis on Physics [not just the spiritual aspects of Creation like angels.]

This seems to go with the general nature of the approach of Saadia Gaon and later the Rambam.

With the Rambam, the subject becomes a little more clear when he says specifically Physics and Metaphysics as they were understood by the ancient Greeks. [So he is not talking about mysticism.]

Even though learning Torah mainly refers to the Gemara with the Rishonim [Tosphot, Ritva, Rashba, Tosphot HaRosh.] still you see in the medieval sages [mainly from Spain] that also included Physics and Metaphysics in the category of the mitzvah itself.

Physics I think is clear if you look at the subject matter  extends to modern Physics. But what about metaphysics?
I think that after the Middle Ages some important advances have been made. On one hand you have Berkeley and general critiques of Aristotle. But what do you do with that? Thomas Reid [the philosopher of common sense] pointed out how absurd Berkley's idealism is and yet admitted that his arguments are close to irrefutable. To deal with this it seems to me it is unavoidable to have to learn Kant and Hegel.

faith in the wise. You need some kind of common sense to tell when it is best to listen to the experts and when to develop your own approach.

Rav Nahman makes a good point about אמונת חכמים--faith in the wise. But I think one needs to develop a certain kind of common sense to know in what exact points the sage was correct and to be able to filter out the areas where he might have been wrong.

In universities it is common to give advice to students to think for themselves. Read the material and come to their own conclusions. However how would this work if you are in a hospital? What would be the best approach? Listen to the doctor? Or think for yourself and come to your own conclusions?

Sometimes however even experts can be wrong.
You need some kind of common sense to tell when it is best to listen to the experts and when to develop your own approach.

the main benefit of Musar is the formation of ones consciousness plus world view issues.

To merit to fear of God and to good character traits was a major point of Rav Israel Salanter. [I mean that was the major point of the Musar Movement.]

I think the main benefit of Musar is the formation of ones consciousness plus world view issues.
That is to say that without Musar it is easy to adopt false sets of values all the while thinking sanctimonious thought about how one is keeping Torah.

Musar has the advantage of having its background world view being Platonic as outlined by Ibn Pakuda in the beginning of his Obligations of the Heart. [And that world view permeates most of Musar of the Middle Ages.]

Evolution

Evolution seems to be indicated in the Talmud in Bava Kama and in the Jerusalem Talmud in Shabat chapter 1 the third mishna [page 8].

The rate of change of species there is indicated to be every seven years. [The bava kama Gemara I did not see recently but the Yerushalmi goes through a whole list of examples of species that change into other species.]

Recently my learning partner brought my attention to a discussion of the mathematical improbability of evolution. However my feeling about this is that let us say you take a pencil and you hit a point on a line. Now you can prove that you never could have hit that point since the probability of hitting that point is 1/infinity. [Since there are an infinite number of points on a line.]

[From another point of view I ought to mention the Or HaHayim of the Tiferet Israel on the Mishna that brings that there were different periods before this period of time.] [That essay of the Tiferet Israel is fairly well known. It was mentioned to me several times when I was in the Mir Yeshiva and I think it was also brought up when I was in Shar Yashuv in Far Rockaway.] [I might add Rav Isaac of Aco who is the source of that opinion.]

In the story of Rav Nahman about the wise son and the simple one there is a warning about being smart.

In the story of Rav Nahman about the wise son and the simple one there is a warning about being smart. However you also see him in the L''eM vol I bring that acquired intellect is a determining factor for one's portion in the next world. [Sekel hanikne. It is Socrates who brings the connection between virtue and wisdom. Also Aristotle brings the idea in his Metaphysics.]

[Napoleon]

 Love is the obsession of the idle, a distraction for the warrior, a stumbling block for kings. [Napoleon]