[Avodah] RYBS TEEM Musings

[Micha Berger]

On Sat, Jan 13, 2007 at 11:58:44PM -0500, Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer quoted
[R?] Daniel Rhynhold:
:> The basic point in Part 1 is that' man may be the most developed form 
:> of life on the continuum of plant-animal-man, but the ontic essence 
:> remains identical' (47). Indeed, in his account of the famous biblical 
:> idea that man is made in the image of God (tzelem elohim) he 
:> explicitly rejects what he takes to be the metaphysical and 
:> transcendental Christian reading of the term tzelem. Instead, in a 
:> description that surpasses even the strongly scientific elucidation of 
:> the term in 1965's The Lonely Man of Faith, Soloveitchik insists that 
:> tzelem 'signifies man's awareness of himself as a biological being and 
:> the state of being informed of his natural drives' (75-76).

: Fascinating take on "Tzelem Elokim." One wonders what the zayde (in this 
: case, R' Chaim *Volozhiner* would have had to say about this. Is there 
: any precedent in earlier Jewish sources for this definition?

I understand TLMF as saying that tzelem E-lokim is self awareness. And of
what is one self aware? What exists at a plane "below" that awareness? His
biology and its drives.

Self awareness is the flipside of bechirah. One can only consciously
choose if one is conscious of the process of choosing. And so, RYBS's
position as I understood it isn't that far from the Meshekh Chokhmah
(although not the same), who identifies tzelem E-lokim with bechirah.

:> With the naturalistic context in place, Part 2 turns to the emergence 
:> of ethical man. Firstly, in order to experience the ethical norm, 
:> external divine intervention is necessary. Only through the divine 
:> command can man transcend his natural biological self and experience 
:> the ethical....
:> thinking, God is naturally the source of value. Yet Soloveitchik 
:> insists on retaining his naturalism at the human level, concluding 
:> Part 2 by saying that 'the ethical personality is not transcendent. It 
:> only reconsiders its own status in a normative light, conceiving the 
:> natural law as identical with the moral law' (144). So man remains a 
:> biological rather than metaphysical being, but man's unique ethical 
:> perspective emerges through his encounter with the divine imperative.

: "Natural law" sounds to me like Rousseau. Is RYBS suggesting that  human 
: beings are "naturally" ethical?

I believe so... That HQBH created us with a yeitzer hatov.

:                                 It seems that he is saying more than 
: that: That to be ethical is also not connected to being transcendent - 
: viz., a person who attempts to transcend this world is a priori 
: "unethical."

However, I think this is a misunderstanding born of the reviewer's
confusion of RYBS's defining the spiritual as being beyond the natural
qualitatively with understanding him as saying the difference is more
quantitative.

:              Is this Ba'al Mussar's (!!!) deriding Chassidim/Mekubalim?

Well, it would be any of the Litvisher schools that put qabbalah aside
for a rationalist here-and-now focus in Yahdus.

:> What is most important about this divine imperative is its role as a 
:> condition of the freedom necessary for the emergence of the ethical 
:> personality....

Freedom comes from having the choice between moral and physical drives.
Again, this feeds my understanding that this is a YhT vs YhR discussion.

:> Soloveitchik goes on in Part 2 to give an account of 'the Fall' and 
:> consistent with the naturalism of Part I, 'Man's sin consisted in 
:> betraying nature.... Naturalness is moral, unnaturalness is sin' ...

: Olam hafuch ra'isi. Shouldn't that be: "Morality is natural, sin is 
: unnatural?" What is the different connotation of RYBS's formulation?

No, I think that misses RYBS's point about the eitz hada's. Adam qodem
hacheit was moral. Thus, morality is natural; or was.

:>        A close reading of the Genesis text yields for Soloveitchik the 
:> idea that sin arose as a result of the seduction of humanity by 
:> pleasure, causing a split in a once harmonious personality.

Now, human nature has that unnatural split. So that our normal state
is the unnatural one.

:> It is in Part 3 of the book, probably its most original section for 
:> those familiar with Soloveitchik's writings, that we find him return 
:> to a more typological approach in his account of the rehabilitation of 
:> the ethical personality through 'charismatic man'. The 'charismatic 
:> personality' achieves the restoration of the human personality to its 
:> original unity through realizing the covenant with God in history.
...

: Charisma: *cha·ris·ma*   (k?-ri(z'm?) n.   /pl./ *cha·ris·ma·ta* (-m?-t?)
...
: How does this definition fit with RYBS's usage? Surely he means 
: something else by "charisma." But what?

I think he was trying to derfine chein, not chareisma.

:> As a number of writers have noted, this 'this-worldly' emphasis in 
:> Soloveitchik's work meant that he did not pay much attention to 
:> eschatological questions....

: Is man's drive to immortality then primarily the drive to enter history? 
: This might actually link up RYBS with Dr. Isaac Breuer - no coincedence, 
: considering the common influences on their thought.

"I do not want to acheive immortality through my work,
I want to acheive immortality through not dying."
                         - Woody Allen

RYBS has a "this worldly" focus. IOW, he doesn't see life as being
about olam haba, but about olam hazeh. From his existential perspective,
this makes sense. Ontologically, olam haba is the banquet and this is
just the entryway. But if we adopt that view pragmatically, our shemiras
hamitzvos comes about reward.

Thus, one can't assume that his silence about immortality in the
eschatological sense means anything. That's just not an area of Torah
central to what he taught.



On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 03:52:13PM -0500, dfinch847 at aol.com wrote:
:> 'Natural law' [as the book review ascribes to Berger's description of 
:> RYBS's thinking] sounds to me like Rousseau. Is RYBS suggesting that  
:> human beings are "naturally" ethical? It seems that he is saying more 
:> than that: That to be ethical is also not connected to being 
:> transcendent - 'unethical.' Is this Ba'al Mussar's (!!!) deriding 
:> Chassidim/Mekubalim?"

: RYBS's thoughts reflect more of the Hegel and Kierkegaard than they do 
: of Rousseau. RYBS mirrors Rambam in believing that G-d's creations, 
: including man, are inherently moral, although man can descend from 
: morality into sin through the exercise of action through free will. 

As implied by my answer to RYBS, above, I'm not as sure that RYBS is
saying that man is naturally good. Rather, that man has a natural drive
to be good; but this is not his only drive. And, due to his eating of
the eitz hada'as, man is no longer in the state where all the drives
are harmonious. Now there is a split between the moral drives and the
physical ones.

: Much of Chassidus is devoted to stripping away the temporality of 
: action and rationalism in order to connect transcendentally with this 
: original morality. RYBS rejected this approach, believing that man can 
: approach original morality *only* through the discipline of halachic 
: action and thought. Rousseau and Chassidus are romantic: You are what 
: you feel, and refined feeling brings you closer to your natural state 
: (or to G-d). RYBS was existentialist: You are what you do, and by 
: perfecting your action and thought, you will approach (and begin 
: spirtually to comprehend) natural morality. For RYBS, this natural 
: morality was a state of enlightenment more powerful than mere devekus.

Thank you for this.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             A life of reaction is a life of slavery,
micha at aishdas.org        intellectually and spiritually. One must
http://www.aishdas.org   fight for a life of action, not reaction.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            -Rita Mae Brown