The fragmented soul.

 The fragmented soul. In this generation the mind has been torn apart. According to Freud we are a Easter basket that contains  different eggs, the id and ego  and the super ego. What makes these things one thing? Nothing. Just they are all in one basket. With Kant things are not so much different with many different functions of the mind and in particular the categories. What makes them one?

It is as if there is no soul. But in fact the religious are not so much better. The  trait of the religious is the desire for your money in order to finance their fanatic life style which in terms of having a sex life is very successful. The religious have lots of children. And they get to fry secular Jews to pay for it.

The proper approach I think is balance. ["Balance" is not a word that my parents would have used but it describes to a large degree their approach of a middle point between faith and reason. It sees there is a limitation to faith --where faith can believe in too many false things which lead it to tremendous evils. But Reason also can be a obstacle to truth since it does not know its limits. So one needs a balance. To get to the place of balance, one needs a certain kind of common sense. 

I have to say that Philosophy is looking good. For some reason there seems to be a new generation of university professors that have become aware of the bankrupt twentieth century philosophy. Or take the few morsels here and there. This gives me great reason for optimism. The best of the moderns Kelley Ross [based on Kant, Fries, and Nelson], Michael Huemer [Foundationalists].Robert Hanna [straight back to Kant with no detours.] And more. At a lot of the insane noise of 20th century philosophy post modernism existentialism etc. they have all seen through the spider webs of verbiage. They are no longer impressed with Freud's steam engine model of the mind. [It seemed original at the time, but it was all taken literally from how a steam engine works. --like sublimation of heat energy to mechanical energy. Steam pressure etc.] Nowadays he would have decided that the computer is the latest thing and aid the mind is a computer. ut in the same way that is pseudo science. There is no relation between a computer and the mind since the computer has no mind at all.

 z44 E Minor

On one hand Rav Israel Salanter was right in emphasizing the actual sitting down and learning the basic books of Musar, I would suggest that Physics also adds to this. This certainly was the path of my parents of balance. Torah with the way of the Earth.תורה עם דרך ארץ

 In the book Or Israel [Light of Israel אור ישראל]  by Isaac Blazer he brings the idea that just knowing the essentials of Musar is not enough. One should spend much time and effort to come to fear of God. While this is certainly true, I think the religious that emphasize rituals think that they have fear of God.  I think the emphasis on rituals is what replaces authentic fear of God. 

So what can lead to Fear Of God? On one hand Rav Israel Salanter was right in emphasizing the actual sitting down and learning the basic books of Musar, I would suggest that Physics also adds to this. You do not see this in the Mishna Torah of the Rambam openly, but in the Guide you see that when he emphasizes learning Physics and Metaphysics he associated Physics with Fear of God, and Metaphysics with Love of God. {In one place only.}

At any rate, I have two points to make here. One is that fear of God and good character which are the goals of Musar are in fact very important. On the other hand the religious world is the exact opposite of fear of God. The emphasis on rituals  and the worship of dead people has nothing to do with authentic fear of God.

But I must make distinction. There are great Litvak yeshivot which learn Torah for its own sake. This is praiseworthy. There are also dens of thieves that the Gra signed his name against- since he saw their root and essence. 

The Obligations of the Hearts [Chovot Levavot] in the first part is Neo Platonic [[which is  a synthesis of Plato and Aristotle]. And you can see that the Ari also is Neo Platonic. But I can not see how   a neo Platonic system is possible to hold with except by Kant or Hegel. The reason is the straight Neo Platonism does have to face a series of challenges.

 For example the challenge of Berkley where he shows that there is something incongruous about the Aristotle idea of knowledge. For Aristotle we know the fire is hot because the form of the fire comes into the head. Berkley shows that there is nothing of the hotness of the fire that comes into the head to make me understand that fire is hot. (See Thomas Reid) There are also problems with combining any sort of Platonic system with Monotheism. [i.e, in Torah you must preserve Divine Simplicity. God is not a composite.. 

And I do not think these issues can be ignored. So you have to deal with these issues somehow or other.  

Kant and  Hegel are I think the only two still standing after 200 years of Philosophy. I mean to say like Robert Hanna "forward to Kant". --that almost everything that came after these two had some good points here and there, but that is like looking for  needles in a haystack. E.g. Wittgenstein had a great point to show how Husserl was wasting his time. But not much in any other way. That seems to be the main thing about everyone after Kant of Hegel-- they get one  point very well and everything else wrong. [However I think the Kant Friesian School does make progress.]

Western doctors find things that are not wrong and give medicines that are not needed , and have no idea of what to do when there is actually a problem.

I think that even a slight raising of temperature of the oceans seems to cause a great increase in the number of parasites in the waters. For some reason I seem to be the only person that notices this. Other people spend all time surfing and swimming. But I have not heard of anyone's complaint . Still to me it seems the waters are much more filled with little worms the get under one's skin and build nests there. This we already know happens to Salmon fish. But it seems to me that this phenomenon is increasing to include humans. I myself have gotten a few and I have found squishing them and applying some kinds of hard things helps. [for example I put on toothpaste mixed with bicarbonate. This seems to help.] 

But I am not going to Western doctors who find things that are not wrong and give medicines that are not needed , and have no idea of what to do when there is actually a problem. I would have a lot more confidence in Russian or Ukrainian doctors that seem to have a rule "do no harm". That is they do not try new supposedly effective methods which are really just the new toys.

I had a intense love of Torah and hoped to spend my life learning Torah. But I can see that  there is such a thing as השגחה פרטית (Divine Providence) that sometimes can create a situation where what might be right, but that there is some deep reason why things have to work out in a different way. So while surely learning Torah is the greatest of all mitzvot as it states clearly in the Mishna in Peah (and made even more clear by the Yerushalmi that every word of Torah is worth more than all the other miztvot,) still there is plenty I needed to learn by being flung out. One invaluable lesson I learned was that the Litvak yeshivot, have no idea of why the Gra is important. They walk in that path (to some degree), but really have no concept of "Why?" I learned that the herem (excommunication) that the Gra signed is much more significant and relevant than anyone today can even begin to imagine.

["Herem" as understood as excommunication is not an exact translation. It means not to have anything to do with one under the herem at all. Not even to sit within four yards of that person. Much less to learn Torah from them.]

But by being in my personal exile, I learned at lot more. But not everything is applicable to everyone in the same way as that first lesson. For example, I learned the importance of the opinion of Ibn Pakuda [of the Obligations of the Hearts] and the Rambam about the importance of learning Physics and Metaphysics. But I realize that the Ramban [Nahmanides] must have disagreed with this at least in terms of the Metaphysics part.] 

Though not at all talented in Mathematics and Physics, I did gain some understanding by means of the idea of the Musar book אורחות צדיקים [Ways of the Just] where in the part about learning Torah, he goes into the idea of "Girsa" saying the words and going on. I used that idea of just saying the words and going on for Mathematics and Physics. That does not make me smarter, but it does help me understand a lot more than if I would say, "I am not genius, so why should I try?"