[Avodah] Can you build a community around Halakhic Man?

[David Riceman]

Micha Berger wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 01:49:03PM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
> : 1. I think you denigrate "the masses".  Looking up a halacha in Shemirat 
> : Shabbat K'Hilchatah is indeed paskening, and consulting an English 
> : translation to clarify what Rashi means is indeed hiddush...
>
> I disagree. I am not so much denigrating the masses as disagreeing with
> your definition of pesaq and chiddush. In particular, that they serve
> in the roles RYBS describes. (In general as well, but that's
> irrelevent.)
>   
psak: "Halakhic man, well furnished with rules, judgments, and 
fundamental principles, draws near the world with an a priori 
relationship. (p. 19)" See the entire paragraph.  Someone seeing a 
physical action, and cognizing its relationship with the a priori world 
of halacha by looking up an appropriate precedent in SSK, is doing 
precisely this.

hiddush: "Each and every sentence in the writings of R. Haim constitutes 
a flowing spring of creative insight and cognition. (p. 87)"  Yet R. 
Haim's hiddushim purport to be, not innovative creations, but 
reconstructions of the thoughts of the Rambam and his opponents.  
Despite R. Weinberg's comments (in p. 33 of the Hebrew section of 
Professor Shapiro's book "Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters"), 
I think the main definition of creation in HM has to be understood as 
reconstruction, since (as far as I can tell from a cursory rereading) 
every example of hiddush in HM is a reconstruction of a previously 
existing position.
> RYBS is relying on the individual's tension between cognitive man and
> homo religiousis to fuel creativity. This creativity finds its expression
> in halakhic man.
WADR to Socrates in the Republic, archetypes do not derive from each 
other through dialectic.  HM is a description of an archetype, and HR 
and CM are cited, not as sources, but as contrasts, to help the reader 
recognize the unusual nature of his personality.

> <snip> Conflict requires choice, bechirah motivates
> creativity.
>
> It's how man deals with his own encounters; not reading how others
> resolved theirs. SSK's words aren't /his/ choices. He can choose whether
> or not to follow them, but that's one side of the dialectic, the
> submission of homo religious, not its resolution.
>   
I don't see a large emphasis on choice in HM; it is you, not the author, 
who links creativity and free will.
> : 2.  I don't think the author of Halachic man thought of himself as a 
> : halachic man.  "Halacha has a fixed a priori relationship to the whole 
> : of reality"(Kaplan's translation p.23)  Yet halacha has no concept 
> : corresponding to the Kantian "a priori".  That Rabbi Soloveitchik had to 
> : use a concept external to halacha to delineate it is adequate evidence, 
> : not only that he did not construe himself as a halachic man, but also 
> : that halachic man is not interested in a Torah UMadda type of 
> : synthesis.  He just doesn't care about Madda, since its categories are 
> : not those of halacha.
>
> Halakhic Man is an archetype. There is no person who fully embodies the
> type. That's not the point. I'm sure RYBS felt he had some Halakhic Man
> about himself; probably felt "not enough".
>   
I was careful to refer to "the author of Halachic man" rather than to 
RYBS.  The book is not a book which cognizes real events through a 
priori halachic categories.  It seems paradoxical to suggest that it be 
taken as the central work of a community which does that.  Isn't the 
choice of this rather than a halachic work a hint that there is 
something lacking in HM's repertoire (I refer to the archetype, not the 
book).
> If my kids were capable of becoming halachic men and women, both in
> ability and in inclination, I would encourage it. But I am currently
> of the opinion that doing so to a group of hundreds or thousands will
> lead more people to compromising their observance and values than
> to sanctity. That the gap between MO's theory and practice is more
> fundamental than simply the limitations of real human beings. It's that
> people below a certain point of personal development are actually worse
> off trying to live by RYBS's words.
>   
Here I think is where push comes to shove.  You are identifying MO with 
HM (the book), and I think that is incorrect.  I agree with you that it 
would be hard to create a community of followers of HM, but that's 
because I buy the mussar critique of the ideal of HM (as I suspect you 
do).  HM rejects that critique (pp. 74-76).  If you accept the premises 
of the book, I think you need to accept that it can be actualized by 
anyone.  "Morasha Kehillas Ya'akov ksiv".  "Moshe, n'div lev ..."

David Riceman