The first blessing before the Shema in the morning in the sidur of the geonim

Blessings are a subject that is not well known. Many people think that the order of blessings established by the Kneset Hagedola [Men of the Great Assembly] means the actual language of the blessings. But the Gemara in Brachot makes it clear that that is not the case. What they established was whether whether you have a structure where there is a "Blessed art thou " in the beginning and end or only in the beginning. So for example the blessing after a meal of bread. What was established was that the first blessing starts with "Blessed are Thou" and ends after a middle area with another "Blessed art thou." 

This is obvious in many places in Brachot and Tosphot. But one example I thought to bring to show this point is in one of the earliest sidurim of the time of the Geonim where the first blessing before the Shema in the morning is the first short sentence. Then another short statement. And then the final, "Blessed art Thou who makes the lights".

So while it is true that this blessing and many others were expanded, still the actual obligation is very short and simple. [The knowledge of what is obligatory and what is optional would make the morning prayer shorter.] 

Words are radically subjective

 Words are radically subjective. There is not the slightest objective connection between the word "dog" and an actual dog. So when English American Philosophy took its linguistic turn it became completely irrelevant   meaningless and just shows the amazing stupidity that really smart people can get into.

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 z44  D Majormidi  z44 nwc   r77 mp3   r77 midi  r77 nwc

The flat tire of philosophy

It seemed to me when I was in high school that philosophy in fact had fallen  after being preoccupied with words. I felt that if philosophy is worth anything it must be about "the big picture". So what is "Being" itself as Heidegger pointed out is a part of that question. But also the simple person (the Dasein) also seemed important. Where do we fit into Being?

Philosophy seemed to get no where near answering or even asking any of these questions. Physics is certainly asking about the very nature of reality, but to go into that seemed to me at the time to be too hard. [I was not familiar with the idea of Rav Nahman that just by saying the words of what you are learning the learning gets absorbed subconsciously. If I had known that, I probably would have gone into Physics or the Aerospace industry like my dad.]

So today I would like to say that the Kant Friesian School as developed by Kelley Ross  answers a lot of the issues I had back then. You do not want a philosophy that ignores the Inner World [who we are as people with love and imagination.] You also do not want a philosophy that gets the outer world wrong like the existentialists and post modernism. 

To me it seems the the Kant Fries School is the best. But it took time to develop the approach. I was not all with Kant of Fries or Nelson. Rather it took time to get to a place where you have a a coherent approach that also takes an eagle eye of reality.

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Heidegger certainly has a point that philosophy has been down hill since the Pre-Soctratics. That is it has become all about man and not about Being.

Heidegger certainly has a point that philosophy has been down hill since the Pre-Soctratics.  That is it has become all about man and not about Being. And he proposes to understand Being (Sein) by means of man (Dasein.) But he felt that this later part of his project was not possible so he never wrote the second part of Being and Time.. [Which was all about Dasein].

Why do I mention this? because I feel that the Kant-Fries School [and see https://www.friesian.com/undecd-1.htm] does have a lot to say about Being itself, and succeeds where Heidegger knew he had failed. 

Or maybe it is not that he failed, but did not see how to bring the project to fruition. 

Heidegger is a very Kantian sort of project. Instead of our accepting the dinge an sich things in themselves into computer chips, with Heidegger we impose our form of Being onto things in themselves.  But this is just as unsatisfactory as Kant himself. Imposing our forms onto things tells us nothing at all about anything except our delusions. [And in fact, I gave up after getting about half way through it. It did not seem to me that he succeeded in his original point, and about half way through Being and Time it seemed to go downhill.]

It is Fries who discovered this sort of knowledge that is not by reason nor by the sense that it is possible to understand the dinge an sich.

I was at the beach the whole day so I have nothing here to add about Gemara Rashi and Tosphot. And I am nor really able to concentrate on my learning as I should, so instead I elect to share my thoughts why I think the Kant-Fries School is important [in spite of my feeling that the serious disagreement with Hegel is unfounded.] At any rate, I discovered great ideas in Gemara really only because of my learning with David Bronson in Uman. It is really not all that innate to me. Inherently I am more interested in philosophy.

I might add here that there is a an idea in Heidegger of forsaking beings and follow Being. To seek authenticity. This strikes me as very close to Rav Nahman of Uman in his idea of Hitbodadut.. Go to a place where no one else is and talk with God. For when one is surrounded by people all the time it is very easy for one to lose entirely who one really is.

[The problem with Heidegger is that there is a sort of self worship there. All there is is to be who you are. No obligations to anyone else as Dr Michael Sugrue points out.] 

 For the type of dynamics you have with Lagrange [or the Hamiltonian] you find things tend to their place of minimal energy [or maximal sometimes like in optics], Causality is not at all the determining thing. 

This is something I have already mentioned this in terms of the Kant Friesian School. Where causality is not a part of things in themselves.

I might add to this that time also is secondary as we see in Quantum Mechanics. [As Lemaitre wrote almost a hundred years ago in his papers showing the Big Bang and that time only  began after there were a few quanta around to make time to be able to exist.] 

And this also goes with the Kant Fries approach where time itself is not a part of things in themselves.,