[Avodah] a priori ideas in the "mind" of God

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

[I also address Zev's question in this post. If yuou are only interested
in that, scrol down to the line of """"""...)

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 12:25:01PM -0400, David Riceman via Avodah wrote:
: The problem is this. RYBS postulates that our connection with God comes
: from cognizing ideas which God also cognizes...

From: http://www.aishdas.org/asp/akrasia , where I complained more of
the Rambam's placing knowledge as more central to human redemption than
ethic. I also noted indication that RYBS understood the Rambam differently.
I simply didn't understand how, given the citations I quoted.

   In "Text & Texture", the RCA blog, R' Alex Sztuden suggests
   <http://www.aishdas.org/asp/akrasia> answers from R' JB Soloveitchik's
   writings to questions given on R' Soloveitchik's 1936 final exam in
   Jewish Philosophy. (Thereby showing that these questions were ones R'
   Soloveitchik considered during much of his life.) The first question,
   which had two parts:

     I.a. What is the basic idea of the "Intellectualist Theory" of the
     religious act?

     In Halakhic Mind (41-43), the Rav distinguishes between 3 different
     views of emotional states (and by implication, of religious states):

     1. Emotions are non-cognitive. They do not express any facts or
     statements about the world. In a footnote, the Rav cites Hume
     as a typical example of this view: "Hume denied the intentional
     character of our emotional experiences: `A passion is an original
     existence...and contains not any representative quality which renders
     it a copy of any other existence or modification. When I am angry,
     I am actually possessed with the passion, and in that emotion have
     no more a reference to any other object, than when I am thirsty,
     or sick or five feet tall...'" (116, footnote 49).

     2. Emotions have a cognitive component. In fact, "every intentional
     act is implicitly a cognitive one...by way of simple illustration,
     the statement `I love my country' may be broken down into
     three components:
	 I. There exists a country - predication;
	 II.  This object is worthy of my love - valuation; [and]
	 III. I love my country - consummation of the act." (43).
     According to the Rav, I. ("There exists a country") is a statement
     of fact that is in effect contained by and in the emotion. Emotions
     are not irrational outpourings of the heart. They make claims about
     the world.

     3. Emotions are cognitive, but they are confused ideas. This is
     the Intellectualist Theory of Emotions (and religious states).
     "Of course, the intellectualistic school, regarding the emotional
     and volitional activities as modi cogitandi, had to admit some
     relationship between them and the objective sphere. Owing, however
     to the contempt that philosophers and psychologists had for the
     emotional act which they considered an idea confusa..."

     b. What are the conclusions? Criticism.

     The intellectualist theory correctly perceived that emotions were
     cognitive, but incorrectly assumed that they were inferior forms of
     cognition, confused ideas. For the Rav, all psychic states are
     intentional, and religious acts therefore contain a cognitive
     component, subject to elaboration, refinement and critique on its
     own terms.

In RYBS's understanding of the Rambam, the line I am making between
perfection of virtue and perfetion of knowledge simply isn't there, or is
at best blurry. Which is implied by the use of the word da'as in naming
"hilkhos dei'os".

And yet in my blog post, I have all that counterevidence. Like the
beginning of the Moreh, where he talks about the need for moral and
emotional perfection being a consequence of the eitz hada'as, inferior
to the prior bechitah based on emes alone, or his ranking of human
perfections at the close of the Moreh, his comparing Aristo to prophets,
etc...

In his interview with R/Dr Alan Brill, it appears that R/Dr Lawrence
Kaplan, who produced the book built from RYBS's notes on the Moreh,
doesn't see RYBS's take in the Rambam aither. From <http://j.mp/28TTLuc>
or
https://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/rav-soloveitchik-on-the-guide-of-the-perplexed-edited-by-lawrence-kaplan

   Hermann Cohen's modern reading of Maimonides as ethical and Platonic
   was instrumental in the 20th century return to Maimonides and
   especially Soloveitchik's understanding of Maimonides. This lectures in
   this volume show how Soloveitchik both used and differed with Cohen.
   ...
   Kaplan notes that Soloveitchik's readings of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus
   and Aquinas are "highly controversial" meaning that they are less
   confrontations with the texts of those thinkers and more the reception
   and rejection as found in early 20^th century thinkers. His German
   Professors considered idealism as superseding the classics and Russell
   considered science and positivism as superseding the ancient. For these
   works, Maimonides was relegated to the medieval bin. Soloveitchik was
   going to save the great eagle.
   ...
   For Soloveitchik concern for others and responsibility for fellows as
   hesed is the inclusion of the other in the cosmic vision. Just as God
   is inclusive of the world and knows the world because it is part of
   Him, the Talmud scholar knows about people through his universal
   understanding.

   Kaplan points out how this is completely the opposite of Jewish
   thinkers such as Levinas where you actually confront the other and
   through the face of a real other person gains moral obligation.  (I am
   certain that Soloveitchik pantheistic-Idealist view of ethics will
   elicit some comments. )
   ...

   2) Could you elaborate on the claim that Maimonides considers Halakhah
   as secondary to philosophy? How does R. Soloveitchik counter this
   approach?

   This is an old objection to Maimonides. The claim is that Maimonides
   follows Aristotle in maintaining that knowledge is superior to
   morality, both moral virtue and moral action, and, furthermore, in
   arguing that only intellectual knowledge possesses intrinsic value,
   while morality possesses only instrumental worth, serving only as a
   steppingstone to attaining intellectual perfection. From this it would
   follow that Halakhah, dealing with action, is of lesser worth than
   science, and that Talmud Torah, that is, the study of Halakhah, is
   inferior to the study of the sciences.  The Rav--inaccurately by the
   way--quotes Graetz as stating that Maimonides in the Guide "sneered at
   halakhic scholarship."

   The Rav counters this objection by claiming that Maimonides
   distinguishes between two stages of ethics: pre-theoretical ethics,
   ethical action that precedes knowledge of the universe and God, and
   post-theoretical ethics, ethical action that follows upon knowledge of
   the universe and God. Pre-theoretical ethics is indeed inferior to
   theory and purely instrumental; however, post-theoretical ethics is
   ethics as the imitation of God's divine attributes of action of Hesed
   (Loving Kindness), Mishpat, (Justice), and Tzedakah (Righteousness),
   the ethics referred to at the very end of the Guide, and this stage of
   ethics constitutes the individual's highest perfection.

   3) It sounds as if here Soloveitchik is just following Hermann Cohen.

   The Rav, as he himself admits, takes the basic distinction between
   pre-theoretical ethics and post- theoretical ethics from Hermann Cohen,
   but his understanding of the imitation of the divine attributes of
   action involved in post-theoretical ethics differs from Cohen.

   Cohen, following Kant's thought, distinguishes sharply between
   practical and theoretical reason, ethics and the natural order, "is"
   and "ought." For Cohen, God's attributes of action do not belong to the
   realm of causality, but to that of purpose; they are not grounded in
   nature, but simply serve as models for human action.

   What Cohen keeps apart, the Rav--and here he is, in my view and the
   view of others, for example, Avi Ravitzky and Dov Schwartz, more
   faithful to the historical Maimonides--brings together.  For the Rav,
   the main divine attribute of action is Hesed, God's abundant
   lovingkindness, His "practicing beneficence toward one who has no
   right" to such beneficence. The prime example of Hesed, for Maimonides,
   is the creation of the world.  This act of creation is both an ethical
   act, whereby God freely wills the world into existence, and an
   ontological act, an overflow of divine being, whereby God brings the
   world into being by thinking it.  However, the Rav goes beyond what
   Maimonides states explicitly by maintaining that the deepest meaning of
   God's Hesed is that he not only confers existence upon the world, but
   continuously sustains it by including the existence of reality as whole
   in His order of existence.

   4) Is this the basis of Soloveitchik's claim that Maimonides is a
   pantheist?

I think he means "panentheist". But here we drift from the topic, so I am
ending my too-length quote.



"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 10:24:31PM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
: Why?  What scientific discovery between then and now has discredited
: neoplatonism?   *Can* a school of philosophy be discredited?  Do they
: make testable claims that can be refuted?

The law of conservation of momentum.

Aristo's entire metaphysics is tied to his notion in physics that
objects move when they are given impetus, and continue moving until
the impetus runs out. Imetus is imparted by intellects.

Intellect is what brings something min hakoach el hapo'al.

Thus the Rambam's belief that the spheres -- the spinning transparent
shells of quintessence in which the heavenly objects are embedded --
were intellects. Because otherwise, they would have had to stop
spinning by now.

And his identification of mal'akhim with Aristotle's chain of
intellects, making them the metaphysical forces behind natural events
and the metaphysics by which Hashem's decisions reach the world.

But now we replaced the spheres with orbits, mathematical non-entities,
the product of momentum and the gravity of the bodied involved.

So yes, because Philosophy included Natural Philosophy, and mataphysics
wend hand-in-hand with Physics to create a single picture of how the
world works, Aristotilian neo-Platonism like the Rambam's philosophy
did make testable claims. And those were falsified.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Time flies...
micha at aishdas.org                    ... but you're the pilot.
http://www.aishdas.org                       - R' Zelig Pliskin
Fax: (270) 514-1507