[Avodah] free will

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 01:19:17PM -0500, via Avodah wrote:
: I believe I can prove there is an unconscious although I can't prove  
: there's a "deep unconscious" that influences our conscious behavior...
: This is a common occurrence that all of us humans have experienced.   You 
: are talking to a friend and trying to remember the name of a book you once  
: read or the name of a certain person or a word that exactly describes what  
: you're trying to say, but even though it's "on the tip of your tongue" you 
: just  can't remember it.  You say to your friend, "Never mind, I just can't  
: remember it" and you go on talking about something else.  Suddenly, a  little 
: while later, the name you were trying to remember or the word you just  
: couldn't dredge up suddenly pops into your head right in the middle of a  
: sentence about something else entirely...

R Aryeh Kaplan discusses something similar in Jewish Meditation.

And REED says that bechirah chafshi is only involved in those decisions
where the conflicting desires are at a battle-front, the nequdas
habechirah. Which implies the existence of a preconscious or some other
non-conscious system doing most of the decision making. (Like when you go
to Target and "decide" not to shoplift that watch.)

But then RYS wrote about der dunkl, so we can assume REED would believe
in some such.

And RSWolbe
(original <http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=28406&pgnum=60>,
my translation <http://www.aishdas.org/asp/RWolbesWorld.pdf>):

    In the Mussar Movement, too, emotion occupies a central
    position. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter emphasized that a person could
    not reach sheleimus (wholeness) if he doesnt straighten out his
    subconscious forces. He calls these dark forces.6 (Rav Yitzchak
    Blazers Or Yisrael, ch. 6) His classical example:

        A man has a wild son whom he hates because of [the childs]
        belligerence, and an excellent and very beloved student. The son
        and the student live in the same room. A fire breaks out in the
        house and the father-teacher rushes to rescue the two youths. He
        runs to their room, and who does he save first? His son, even
        though he hates him. His love for [the son] was suppressed into
        the subconscious, but in the chaos of the danger it overcomes
        the love of the student that was in his conscious. (Even Yisrael,
        Jerusalem 1954, p. 62) (These things were written some 60 years
        before Freud!)

    Rav Yisrael Salanter further found that the subconscious forces are
    not influenced by intellectual persuasion alone, but specifically
    by hispaalus [working on oneself experientially and emotionally]
    (Or Yisrael, ch. 30).
...
    Subconscious and Super-Conscious

    There is one last question for us to discuss: Does the Torah
    recognize the [existence of a] subconscious? The answer is in
    the affirmative. In the Tanakh we find that Hashem [Tzevakos is
    a righteous judge] who examines the kidneys and heart (Yirmiyahu
    11:20). And the Talmud establishes, the kidneys advise, the heart
    understands (Berakhos 61a). The heart is the seat of the conscious,
    the kidneys an idiom for the subconscious.

    However, the subconscious known to Torah scholars is not that of
    Freud, which is created by the suppression of desires or unpleasant
    experiences. It is also not the unconscious of Jung, who believes in
    archetypes which reside in a collective unconscious. We must turn to
    the words of the Gra, the Vilna Gaon: All of a persons ways follow
    the original desire; the original desire as it initially arises is
    correct in his eyes. (Commentary on Mishlei 16:1-2) As if to say, the
    desire is formed in such depths that our conscious has no dominion
    over them. The I4 that is known to us is only a very small part of
    the essence of a person. Hidden desire directs our ways they are
    the advising kidneys in the idiom of Tanakh and our Sages, which we
    dont directly feel in our activities. For the sake of brevity, we
    will have to refrain here from bringing examples from the Torah about
    how this original desire acts. Suffice it here to say that the hidden
    desire has the ability to strive for things of the body or the spirit.

    From the Torahs perspective, we would have to speak of a subconscious
    and also of a super-conscious. There are lofty desires which originate
    in the godly soul within us. They push us to ethical elevation and
    closeness to God, and they bring us to more lofty emotions. This
    spiritual original desire is appropriately called super-conscious,
    and we must leave the term subconscious for original desires
    that draw one to satisfy physical indulgences. The desires of our
    super-conscious are certainly no less strong than the desires of the
    subconscious. This understanding of super and subconscious does not
    invalidate the mechanisms of repression. We already saw above that it
    was already known to Rabbi Yisrael Salanter 60 years before Freud. But
    the Torah understanding does contradict Freud in a sharp way in that
    he only finds the Libido in the subconscious, and in dreams which are
    the window into the subconscious, only sexual matters. (Cf. [Victor]
    Frankls writings, Das Menschenbild der Seelenheilkunde, Stuttgart
    1959, and Der Unbewusste Gott Psychotherapie und Religion.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Rescue me from the desire to win every
micha at aishdas.org        argument and to always be right.
http://www.aishdas.org              - Rav Nassan of Breslav
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