Questions, doubts and feelings about your words
Good evening, Rabbi Michael.
I stand in a somewhat awkward place in my heart. On the one hand, I see and hear many, many criticisms of your words and opinions. On the other hand, I read your words and agree with most of them (although, there are quite a few feelings of ‘it’s impossible to say that’. And I emphasize – this is in feelings only)
I didn’t come here to challenge anything, I came here to ask where these feelings of rejection come from? Is it appropriate to ignore them?
Additionally, after reading several critiques of your words (and it is lovely that the rabbi takes care to address them appropriately), I understand that I am not the only one and that this is a general and well-founded awakening, both among some rabbis and among students. Do you think I should follow my heart and seek the logic and truth of the more established path, or should I continue to try to think to the best of my ability and pass on my heart and feelings?
(This is a question that depends on the questions ‘Should we lead the heart after the mind or the mind with the heart?’ And if we follow the heart, can rational and logical thinking provide sufficient tools for analysis? And if we follow the mind, should we abandon the emotions and the heart? Do they have intellectual and logical significance? And so on..)
The heart has no status and no weight in intellectual questions. But sometimes what you call the heart does not refer to the emotions that are embedded in you from genetics, education and environment, but to intuitions. If you have other intuitions, you certainly should not ignore them. But there are few emotions here. And even if you have other intuitions, it should only direct you to search and examine more. In the end, if you are mentally convinced, in my opinion, you must accept the thing, otherwise there is no intellectual honesty here.
By the way, I didn’t understand why appealing something is “a bad thing.” It is permissible and desirable to appeal everything.
What is meant by 'intuition'?
By the way, according to what I understood – I should direct my intellectual search according to my basic intuitions.
And do emotions really have no meaning in my faith search?
Also, I still don't feel that there is completely "intellectual honesty" here (which, by the way, is a question of whether all thinking must be clean or whether there is also room for natural inclination).
In my book Two Carts and Truth and Unstable, I emphasized this point. Feeling is emotions. Thinking that is called “natural” (meaning reaching a conclusion directly, not through logical arguments) is intuition, and it is part of the mind. Every logical argument is based on basic assumptions, and therefore the basic assumptions themselves certainly do not come from logical arguments. And even if they do, then I am talking about the assumptions of that argument. The basic assumptions come from intuition. Intuition is a mental faculty, and therefore it must certainly be used. Emotion does not deal with right and wrong, and therefore it has no importance in this matter.
Thinking should be clean, of course, not because it “should” but because otherwise it would be wrong. But cleanliness comes from emotions and not from intuitions, and so on.
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