Question

Hello Rabbi, I started looking into the book Deciphering Hidden Things, and in the first chapter he deals with “matter and form.” He writes that the Rogatchover claims that the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel in several places is about whether we follow matter or form. But from the examples he gives, I didn’t sufficiently understand how he understands the concept of form. For example, in the first example he brings a dispute about whether the majority is determined by quantity or by those who are sharper, and seemingly there the point is whether we follow quality or quantity. But his second example is about the intention involved in misuse of a deposit by an agent, where he says that Beit Shammai obligate because it is a formal pulling act, and I didn’t really understand what that means (aside from the fact that there is a kind of pulling here “in the realm of thought”). Does he mean that the more fundamental dimension is the thoughts rather than the physical dimension? If so, how does that explain the first dispute? And afterward he added there that Rabbi Akiva, who holds that the ox is definitively awarded, also maintains that we follow form, and therefore no act of acquisition is needed. That connects for me somewhat to the example of the agency in misuse, but it still isn’t sharp enough. Could the Rabbi clarify these points a bit, and how they connect to Maimonides’ definitions (which he himself brings as an introduction to his discussion) of form as the essence of the thing and its true reality? Thank you very much.