[Avodah] More Philosophy, If Anyone's Up to It

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 03:18:25AM -0500, Ira Tick wrote:
:              What I meant by unity of the soul was whether scientifically,
: so to speak, the speculative and investigative person would describe his
: immaterial self as "one" entity, despite the distinct dimensions of
: experience.

I think that one's immaterial self is a single process of interlocking
parts, none of which would be the same without their interaction to the
other parts.

The first chapter of the Vilna Gaon's Even Sheleimah has a title that
can be translated as "the whole purpose of the Torah is to shatter the
middos". Implied in this, and for that matter in RYSalanter's entire
project is the idea that soul and personality are identical.

:                                                         How about when we
: say that G-d is one?

Hashem, OTOH, is One is a way we can't really understand.

We try to approximate that by unifying all the facets of that process
to a single goal. Thereby acheiving sheleimus and temimus, and making
the tzelem E-lokim as close to the Original as we can.

:              It's hard to begin to ascribe transcendant qualities to the One
: True G-d if you don't know what it means that He is One.

Especially since one can't even speak of "qualities" belashon rabim if
one does accept that He is Absolute Unity.

: someone were to focus only on a subjective spiritual view of religion, then
: actual phenomenological or mathematical unity is irrelevant, which is how
: unity of the soul ties in to my original post of whether holiness is an
: objective mode of existence or merely an emotional state.

Who said there is a difference between "objective mode of existence"
and emotional state? If the mind is the soul, or at least something
the soul does, then those emotional states are at least part of that
objective mode.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
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