[Avodah] rational?

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 10:54:31AM -0700, saul newman wrote:
: There is a lot of confusion about the term "rationalism." What is a 
: rationalist? The differences between rationalists and non-rationalists
: fall into three categories:

: A) Denial of Pnimius HaTorah

The most fundamental question:
Denial in its reality, or denial that it has relevence, or denial that
its relevence is necessary to know in order to get on with life?



As I already noted, the concept of "penimius haTorah" is fuzzy, and I
showed how to of mesorah's greatest rationalists also held of much that
we call penimius hatorah.

I would instead speak of mystics vs rationalists, maximalists vs
minimalists.

A mystic is someone who gets his religious energy from being in touch
with the great mysteries. He is therefore willing and ready to accept
every maamar chazal at face value because the more amazing it is, the
more it feeds his religiosity.

The rationalist, OTOH, likes his world to make sense. He wants things
to connect back to first principles.

Both sides believe there is only a single truth. So then what do you do
when reason and mesorah contradict?

A mystic would be thrilled with seeing how G-d is so far beyond his
comprehension, *appeal to authority* and dismiss his incomprehension as
part of the mystery. If mesorah and reason contradict, the problem must
be in my philosophy/science/logic. He therefore tends toward a maximalist
approach. (Even on non-metaphysical questions, such as belief that Rivka
gave Eliezer and his camels water when only 3 yrs old.)

The rationalist would choose an *appeal to reason*, and therefore would
presume that any misunderstanding can't be in the structure he built
from first principles, and it must be the mesorah which he misunderstood.

These two *tendencies* (not absolutes!) are what I see as dividing the
two camps.

M went a little too far to most people's likings with the rational
approach. Too many maamarei chazal were recast in light of what Aristo
made look self-evident. And so, there was a tendency toward maximalism,
which meant having an authority on metaphysics to appeal to. Thus the
Maimonidian Controversy led to a vacuum which motivated publishing
the Zohar.

Until this point in the history of Qabbalah, I would argue that there
was no real dichotomy of camps. As per my comments about how close the
Rambam gets to discussing atzilus and how the earliest rishon to discuss
sephiros was Rav Saadia. On the other side of the alleged divide, the
mequbal knew he was speaking the same language of form and matter, and
forms being shadows of higher forms as Plato did, and in fact he even
knew why -- Plato got it from us. They weren't anti-philosophy.

The maximalist unsurprisingly drew from Plato, who had more givens
explaining more of the gap between man and heaven. Which in turn meant
that less were second- and third-order implications of basic truths,
complications that would be hard to explain.

Then the version of metaphysics we today call Qabbalah gets identified
with Sod to the extent that the Rambam's claim that his philosophy is the
Sod of Pardeis reads very alien to us. And yet he has the same notions
of levels of mal'akhim that the qabbalah

But the Zohar too, while giving the maximalist more incontravertible
claims to work with, was heavily rationalist. Where the Ari stood,
whether his work was metaphoric for states of spiritual awareness /
revalation through history (Ramchal), discussing irreducible metaphysical
ontologies (Leshem), hainu hakh (R' Chaim Volozhiner and baal haTanya)
is an unresolved question. Without which, we really can't tell if his
intent was rationalist or to provide mystical ecstacy.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The purely righteous do not complain about evil,
micha at aishdas.org        but add justice, don't complain about heresy,
http://www.aishdas.org   but add faith, don't complain about ignorance,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      but add wisdom.     - R AY Kook, Arpilei Tohar