Question

Hello Rabbi,
My name is H., second-year at a hesder yeshiva.
In our Orot HaTechiyah class at the yeshiva, we learned paragraph 22. When we learned the paragraph, it strongly reminded me of the opening of “Halakhic Man” by Rabbi Soloveitchik, and I’ll explain why. Rabbi Kook describes how there are two sides in a Jewish person. There is a side of spiritual enlightenment alongside halakhic, intellectual, logical analysis. He explains how this is precisely the uniqueness of Israel and why it is the secret of our wholeness.
This analysis very much reminded me of the religious man and the cognitive man in Halakhic Man. At first glance they seem as though they do not fit one another, and even contradict each other. Yet דווקא out of the contradictions, “a personality exalted in holiness bursts forth and rises.” “The psychic rupture passes into healing… according to the pain is the reward, and according to the rupture, the healing!” Both are united within one soul and create the most complete human being.
But when I approached the rabbi and showed him the parallel between the two ideas, he insisted on saying that there is not really any similarity here. I also discussed the topic with several friends, and some of them also told me that there is a difference here. They tried to explain it to me, but I did not accept their argument. They tried to explain to me that the point of departure is different for each of them, and I understood that, but in the end both describe an integration and unification of the two worlds—the spiritual and the intellectual—into a victorious harmony. So I did not find any practical difference in the practical side of the “dispute.”
I opened Rabbi Haim Navon’s book on Rabbi Soloveitchik’s thought, “Caught in the Thicket,” because for some reason I remembered having seen somewhere some comparison between Rabbi Kook’s worldview and Rabbi Soloveitchik’s, and I thought it was in that book, but I didn’t find it. I went through chapters 6 and 8 of the book because they seemed to me the most relevant to the topic, but I did not find an answer.
I would be happy if the Rabbi could explain what he thinks about this comparison. Does he agree with it, or is there really an essential difference here? What practical difference is there between the approaches? Is there any difference on the level of actual practice?
Thank you very much,