[Avodah] Fwd: Re: Truth and the Rambam

[David Riceman]

RMB:

<<There is a philosophical problem called akrasia, why people make bad

choices. Rather than invoking middos or taavos, according to Aristo,
the ultimate source is bad opinions.>>

You've confused Aristotle with Socrates.  See Guthrie, A History of 
Greek Philosophy, vol. 6, pp. 338-339, and the sources he cites.

<<The Rambam agrees, although he is more

specific in what kind of knowledge, and he uses that idiom as well.>>

The whole thrust of H. Deos and the 8 Perakim is against this opinion.

<<Aristo also has no room in his logic for fuzziness. Something is either
blue or it isn't.>>

Aristotle distinguished between theoretical and practical knowledge.  See Guthrie, cited above.  He leaves room for fuzziness in practical knowledge, and ethics is a branch of practical knowledge.

<<The Rambam's problem with machloqes and with the notion that two valid
interpretations of an existing din could exist I think stem from Aristo's
Logic.>>

But where does the Rambam say that he has a problem at all?

<<And his problems with interpretation, with pesaq that is non-legislative,
shows up in the Rambam's preference for his own understanding of the
mishnah rather than the gemara's (and he'll push the gemara into fitting)
and his own understanding of the gemara over that of the geonim.>>

What problems with interpretation? Are you introducing a new idea here? If he interprets the mishna according to his understanding of the gemara's understanding of the mishna, how is that a repudiation of the gemara's understanding? Why shouldn't he reject the geonom if he holds that no post-Talmudic interpretations are binding? Why are these two phenomena in the same paragraph?

<<I thought you were arguing that the Rambam was attempting to start a
new school!>>

He was, but he failed.  If you study his tshuvos you'll see that he learned and paskened like a student of the Rif; but he wanted his students to start with MT, which would have meant a new methodology.

<<But a bigger
problem is that you lack the flow of the pesaq through time until the
Yad, you usually lack any indication of sevara, etc... Guessing at davar
mitokh davar just from final conclusions is way too error prone.>>

But according to the Rambam "Guessing at davar mitokh davar just from final conclusions" is the art of talmud, and according to the BhT "error prone" is hard to define. So from whose perspective is this paragraph written?

RMB:
: Notice how Hil' Mamrim never mentions the word "pesaq" or some other
>>: language that would speak to the interpretation of law.
Me:

> >  H. Talmud Torah 3:3.
RMB:
I think this is a typo. Pereq 3 is about the importance of talmud Torah. 
I see "lo yafsiq" as in don't stop learning in order to do a mitzvah 
someone else could, but nothing about pesaq.

You're right.  I meant 5:3: "haya beino uvein rabo 12 mil mutar 
l'hashiv.  ul'hafrish min haissur afilu befnei rabbo mutar l'horos."

<<That's a topic we discussed before, "shenayim she'amru ta'am echad".
That's judgment in dinei nefashos, not pesaq.>>

I think this distinction is immaterial.

David Riceman