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

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 07:41:07AM -0500, Ira Tick wrote:
: I'm beginning to see what you mean in your understanding of holiness
: and religious commitment, especially since I see that you seem to
: understand my questions and the dichotomy I made between metaphysics
: and psychology, between objective and subjective definitions of
: religious truths....

:                                                  ... I have trouble
: believing that by your definition of religious truth and commitment, a
: more abstract or absolutely simple definition of G-d's unity is
: necessary.  It's only necessary that G-d be personal, indivisible, and
: individual, like a human being, only with a very different
: relationship to the world than human beings.

The fact that you're interested in one topic doesn't mean the other
doesn't exist, and isn't Torah. The question of G-d's unity is about the
other, scholastic-ontological, domain of hashkafah. It's real, and if
you want to discuss RSG, that's the domain you're discussing.

If it's not the plane on which you develop your own motivation and avodas
Hashem, so be it. You're in good company. See the introduction to the
Chovos haLvavos's Shaar haYichud by the Leiv Tov (R' Pinchas Yehudah
Lieberman). RPYL explains why he doesn't cover Sha'ar haYichud in the
LT by listing many acharonim who recommend not studying [ontological]
philosophy.

(RDE, you asked about sources where R' Nachman's shows an antipathy
for studying philosophy; RPYL lists some.)

: I still agree with my frustration with the medieval philosophers for
: their ontological, rather than moral or religious, discussions and
: depictions of G-d....

Again, you're frustrated because you're annoyed with an apple for not
being an orange. It's like being frustracted with the Qitzur for not
giving a phenomonological explanation of reality. It's just that the
topic is more similar to an existential description when looking at
Emunos veDei'os vs the KSA, and therefore your expectations of the topic
were misplaced.

: Regarding RSG, I think that your reference fits well with what I said
: about the difficulty in understanding the unity of the soul and how
: the Unity of G-d can be defined similarly to the unity of the soul --
: i.e. that qualities of "Life," "Ability," and "Knowledge" are all
: really one existence in the individual person, despite our inability
: to describe or depict this...

I disagree. I think that in a person, there is a single process in which
chaim, yekholes and chokhmah interact to produce intentional activity.
WRT HQBH, they are all one thing; not different parts necessary for a
single whole.

: ideas crept into their thinking and colored the way they approached
: religious and philosophical questions...
:                                     But you are correct that many of
: their concerns were in refuting challenges to Torah presented by Greek
: thinkers.

Not what I meant.

They had all these questions not addressed by chazal because they
lived among the Moslems in an era when the Qalam et al held sway,
and Aristotle's perspective on the universe shaped how people looked
at everything.

They then found answers to those questions as implied by what was stated
in mesorah.

: As far as Christian nations and Kabbalah, one must keep in mind that
: Kabbalah as we know it today began in the Arab countries as a backlash
: against philosophy after the Expulsion from Spain and only later
: migrated from Israel and Italy into Eastern Europe (I guess the
: Maharal would be a strong exception to this)....

Qabbalah as we know it is like lomdus as we know it, by which I mean
(for ease of parable, despite my own proclivities). We could say it
was invented by R' Chaim Brisker. But lomdus seeks answers to new
kinds of questions from already existing shitos. Did the Rambam mean
what R' Chaim said? Quite possibily not. But is the pattern that R'
Chaim describes real, and thus his theory sounds -- almost always yes
(a few curiosities caused by shibush grisaos aside).

In that sense, it's no different than RSG's or the Rambam's philosophy.
Just answering different kinds of new questions.

For that matter, so are Chassidus, Mussar, and today's post-Kantian
existential phenomenological descriptions of reality. (Sorry for dumping
all those polysyllabic words in one sentence, but I couldn't think of
good synonyms that didn't loose part of what I was trying to say.)

REED speaks of Qabbalah's olamos in terms of the Alter of Kelm's maxim
about how the tailor sees a crowd as a see of suits, and a shoemaker, by
their shoes. He speaks of a phenomology; the world as it appears to us.
Is that likely to be how the Zohar or the Ari meant the concept? No. But
it "works" in the sense of using their idea to explain the questions
a 20th cent Jew would be bothered with. Standing upon the shoulders of
giants, REED looks in a new direction.

Without knowing what the ontologists say, there is little one can do
with the new existential questions.

: kabbalah shares elements with the Greek philosophic tradition (think
: Neo-platonism, Pantheism, etc) and at the same time Oriental
: mysticism.  It is true, of course, that Ashkenazim were exposed to
: European pagan mythology and Christian mythology--demons, devils,
: ghosts, etc--in a way that the Sephardi philosophers often balked at.

Qabbalah is not pentheistic, the Chassidic version is panentheistic
[the universe is of G-d, but He is more than the universe]. In that
sentence is a language quibble (panentheism, rather than pantheism,
is the word for what I think you mean) and a real correction. The Gra's
version of qabbalah is not panentheistic. This is a major point of the
difference -- arguably the point from which everything else derives --
between the Chassidim and the Misnagdim.

: (BTW, we know that much of the discussion of mysticism in the Talmud
: comes from Persian and Zoroastrian mythology; Lilith for example, who
: has a large role in Kabbalah, comes from ancient Persian demonology).

Or the Persians got it from us. Remember that after churban bayis
rishon, they imported our nevi'im to become their court sages. Despite
the prejudices of current academic circles (their need to "debunk" the
"Judeo-Xian tradition"), it is more likely ideas flowed from us to them
than the other way around.

: I must also point out that in your translation of RSS, he mentions
: that "His Holiness is greater than ours," seemingly in an objective,
: qualitative fashion that does not easily conform to the explanation of
: holiness as commitment...

: I don't even want to get into the problems with the postulate that G-d
: must be benevolent because "nothing can be added or subtracted from
: Him."  But for starters:  Certainly, G-d's knowledge and desire could
: be for malevolence, G-d forbid, or for any random goal imaginable,
: without having to change with human action...

RSS wasn't trying for a polemic. Hashem's being good is a given, the
question RSS was asking is for whom or Whom was He being good. Given the
assumptions of Judaism, it's clear G-d made us for our good, not His own,
since He has no need to be addresssed by making us.

(However, the real question is defining benevolence. If providing us with
existence is benevolent, and everything He does is One, then every facet
of that existence must also be part of that benevolence. An Evil Deity
could not be Absolute Unity, because creation would be at least partially
good. The whole thing is sketchy, as I said, without defining good. But
that's the general direction I would argue in, if we were to go there.)



I blogged quite a bit on the relationship
between emunah and philosophy. E.g.
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2004/11/emunah-peshutah-vs-machashavah.shtml>.
There are different ways of dealing with the problem that the more we
analyze the concept of G-d, the further we have pushed Him from us.
In that blog post I describe my own approach:
> When thinking about this further I realized that I assumed a different
> stance when writing AishDas’s charter. I think it warrants mention
> because I believe it’s the position of the Mussar Movement. It
> reflects the approach I see utilized by Rav Dessler in Michtav
> MeiEliyahu.

> R' Lopian defines mussar as dealing with the space of an amah --
> getting ideas from the mind to the heart. We often think things that
> don't reflect how we feel and many of the forces that influence our
> decision-making. Akin to RYBS's dialectic, we embrace different ideas
> and motives in different modes of our consciousness.

> As for our contradiction, the question is one of finding unity between
> mind and its ability to understand and explain, to philosophize about
> G-d and His governance of the universe, and the heart and how we feel
> and react toward Him.

> Emunah, bitachon, ahavas Hashem, yir'as Hashem, etc... are middos. They
> are not acquired directly through study, but through the tools of tiqun
> hamidos. (With the observation that constant return to a subject operates
> on both levels.) There is a reason why the kiruv movement is built on
> the experience of a Shabbos, and not some ultimate proof of G-d. (Aish
> haTorah's "Discovery" program, the only counter-example that came to
> mind, is intended to be a hook, to pique people's interest to get them
> to that Shabbos, not kiruv itself.)

> Rather than seeing this as a dilemma, I saw it as a need. We can embrace
> both because each involves a very different component of self. And since
> avodah must be bekhol nafshekha, we actually MUST study both machshavah
> and mussar. Meaningful avodas Hashem must require involvement of both
> mind and heart.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "As long as the candle is still burning,
micha at aishdas.org        it is still possible to accomplish and to
http://www.aishdas.org   mend."
Fax: (270) 514-1507          - Unknown shoemaker to R' Yisrael Salanter