1. "Beyond that, as Maimonides himself notes, the concern exists mainly for someone who has not mastered the principles of philosophical thinking and may become confused and reach wrong conclusions. Someone who wants to investigate seriously should first train himself in philosophical thinking, and only afterward investigate. The prohibition is only against doing so rashly"—Aristotle had not mastered it?
2. "Do not Aristotle's books, which supported the eternity of the world, uproot one of the principles of the Torah? Maimonides certainly read them and engaged with them extensively." There are very plausible interpretations that Maimonides left that view as a legitimate option.

M.V.,
I only now saw this response. Something got mixed up here, and I do not understand your second comment.
As for the first, if I understood correctly, you are asking how one can say that Aristotle had not mastered the sciences. But who said he had not? He certainly had mastered them—and still erred.

There is a slightly subtler way to explain the prohibition of "do not stray"; to my mind it is a bit more precise. The prohibition is not for someone who approaches the matter with discretion and a desire to clarify the truth, but for someone who approaches it frivolously and out of desires for deviation and boundary-breaking. (I do not mean deviation and promiscuity in the usual sense, only by analogy—that is, a deviation of the soul toward wanting to break boundaries by digging through books of idolatry and remote theologies.)
My feeling is that you cannot limit the matter only to someone trained in logic and philosophy, first because you always need more tools to examine any approach, and mainly because even someone who lacks that training has indirect ways to investigate the truth (though there still remains a problem with people who do not have even those tools).
If this is the correct interpretation, then the question would be: what about a person who wants to investigate the truth but also has the forbidden pleasure of "do not stray"? That is a question of boundaries that exists in many other places too (malicious speech for a constructive purpose about someone you hate, for example…). It seems to me the answer depends on the proportion between the importance of the investigation and the degree of psychological deviation.

I did not understand the comment. That is exactly what I wrote in both of my comments here. Maybe you only took the quotation from M.V., who commented before you. But look again at what I wrote.

As for your question about two intentions, this should be linked to several Talmudic passages that deal with two intentions. In Zevachim, "for the sake of Passover and for the sake of peace-offerings," and many others. See, for example, a similar discussion (though not identical—it speaks of two actions rather than two intentions, but one can extrapolate) in Chelkat Yoav, Orach Chayim sec. 28.

And likewise the discussion of the later authorities on two passages in Ketubot regarding coercion and consent (see the Encyclopedic Talmudit entry "Coercion").

"Even if there were an explicit prohibition in the Torah, with a heavenly voice straight from Heaven from the Holy One, blessed be He, in person… all of them forbidding by Torah law any investigation of my position—I do not recognize that prohibition and would not obey it"
If the prohibition were directly from the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself (and this would include the understanding/belief/knowledge that there is a Holy One, blessed be He, and what He is), then the source of obligation is already clear—unless the inquiry is about obligation to the Holy One, blessed be He—and therefore the prohibition would be valid.

For example: suppose the Holy One, blessed be He, appears to me and tells me that He forbids me to think that the messiah will not come, or to reflect/read/etc. in a way that would lead to such a thought. Then the prohibition is valid, and I do not see any logical problem with it.

The other side of the coin: if I suspect that there may be no Holy One, blessed be He, and therefore I feel the need to investigate and check whether that is indeed so or not, no command would prevent me from doing so. That is exactly what I said.
In general, there may be a situation in which I believe and am obligated and keep the commandments, but nevertheless I feel the need to examine myself lest I be mistaken. In such a situation, the fact that there is a command—even if I am obligated by commandments—should not prevent me from doing so.

Why can there not be a command that puts the person under obligation in an all-or-nothing choice? That is, the command is addressed to someone who is already broadly convinced but still wants to keep checking in case he discovers that he was mistaken, and it tells him that if he continues checking, by doing so he loses his service of God on the possibility that the principles of faith are in fact true. Since that possibility is primary in his eyes, perhaps the correct act is to obey it, and maybe there is no logical contradiction here.

I see no difference at all. It is the same absurdity. No system can forbid me from examining that very system. It does not matter what I currently think about it. Of course, someone can arbitrarily forbid me from checking him (if he offers me a game on condition that I not investigate him. If you do not want to, then do not play—but the rules of the game are that one does not investigate). But when someone offers me a system of thought that is judged in terms of true or false, and especially one that I am compelled to obey, he cannot forbid me from checking it. That is ridiculous.

Hello, since I read the second book in the beautiful trilogy by my teacher Rabbi Michael Abraham (definitely the best book I have read in recent years, and I have read a lot), several questions came to mind—and I believe more will come up—regarding the chapter dealing with the study of external wisdoms (chapter 3).
Your difficulty, Rabbi Michi, can be summarized in the following points:
A. The contents of thought that Maimonides speaks about are facts (whether there is a God, and who that God is, etc.). There can be no commandments and no authority with respect to facts. If a certain fact exists, no one can command me, nor has anyone any authority over me, to think or believe otherwise.
B. How can it be possible to forbid a person to check whether his view is correct? After all, as long as he has not reached the conclusion that the Torah obligates him, he has no obligation whatsoever to obey its instructions. Accordingly, one could also justify an idol worshipper continuing to cling to his mistaken path because his religion forbade him from examining it.
C. How can reason be the basis of my faith and obligation on the one hand, yet its use be forbidden when it comes to engaging these very issues? If we suspend the use of reason, then there is also no basis for accepting faith, since that is done on the basis of my intellectual understanding that this is the right and necessary thing.
D. In addition to these, one must add the fact that engaging with books of thought enriches and broadens the mind and even deepens faith itself, even if the conclusions of these books differ from the traditional ones.

I would like to propose the following solution, which in my opinion is the simple one:
We are speaking about a person who believes in Torah and commandments and observes them. Now he wants to look into books of heresy of various kinds, and since we believe that we hold the correct views, we tell him: do not look into these views, because they may confuse you and lead you into mistaken beliefs, since you are not wise enough to understand that your faith is the correct one and these things can only confuse you.
An example: a child knows that his parents are his parents, and now someone tries to convince him with all kinds of conspiracy theories—that his parents are deceiving him that he is their child, and so on. The parents command him not to speak with that person.
So this is not about commanding thought, but about commanding against reading books and entertaining reflections that bring us to such conclusions; and therefore, in order not to reach such conclusions, we are required to remove such thoughts from ourselves and not read such books. Exactly as we must remove thoughts about women from our minds so as not to come to wasting seed or sleeping with a woman in a way not permitted by Jewish law.
In this way we have solved the first difficulty. The second difficulty is thereby also solved, since this is a command addressed to the believing person.
The fourth question is not really difficult, and neither is the second one, because with regard to a person from another religion who is forbidden to examine his religion, from our standpoint he would be treated as a kind of child captured among non-Jews…

I would be happy to hear your opinion 🙂

In my opinion this does not solve the main difficulties. A person who wants to reexamine his position after he has formed one must do so. What—forming a position is permitted only once in a lifetime?
And saying that someone from another religion will be treated as a child captured among non-Jews does not help at all. Can one obligate a person to be a child captured among non-Jews? He wants and needs to form a position, and you are forcing him to be a child captured among non-Jews. Entirely unacceptable.

Hello again,
I claim there is no difficulty at all. Indeed, one should not form a position by raising hypotheses and speculations that will cause him to undermine his faith. The reason is so that he not arrive at mistaken beliefs. You are permitted to think within a very specific framework and not to apply criticism to that framework. It sounds bad, but it is fairly understandable, because from the standpoint of Jewish faith and believers, this is certainly the truth, and beginning to think perhaps not, perhaps otherwise, is basically thinking that sins against the truth—and a person can come to believe such things, and that is a mistake. Exactly like the parable of the parents who forbid their child to speak with a person trying to make him think that they are not his parents.

As for the child captured among non-Jews, I did not fully understand the rabbi's objection to what I said. The rabbi argued that by the same token we would not be able to make a claim against a person who belongs to another religion and is forbidden to examine it. And I am saying that indeed that is so—we would not make a claim against him, and the Holy One, blessed be He, would not make a claim against him either if he got stuck in a framework that forbids him to think otherwise.
And again, from the standpoint of the Jewish person, the system that forbids him from examining does not advocate that he be a child captured among non-Jews at all. Rather, it is confident that it is the correct faith, and it forbids him to examine so that he will not come to mistaken beliefs, since people can get confused and err in their conclusions.

I will note that I want to clarify this issue because it is quite important to me, so I thank the rabbi for the past—for responding to what I said—and ask for the future that he continue to share his opinion.

Aryeh, it seems you did not understand my argument. I was not trying to defend him from punishment. I was saying that punishment is not what matters here. It is only an expression of the underlying state of affairs. My claim is that there is no way to tell a person that he should be a child captured among non-Jews. Not because that would not exempt him from punishment, but because "child captured among non-Jews" is always a defense claim regarding punishment, not an instruction for how to act from the outset. Incidentally, that is why in my opinion every such person bears responsibility for his decisions (like the people of ISIS, who also claim that this is the faith and they are forbidden to examine it). If he decides to be a child captured among non-Jews, that is his problem and his responsibility.

Incidentally, I also do not accept that this is the view of Jewish tradition. Though even if it were, I would not accept it (as I said above, even from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, in person I would not accept it).

The fact that the system (what system?) is confident that it is right is its own business. In order for me to conduct myself in a certain way, I am the one who needs to be convinced that it is right. Therefore I categorically do not accept any prohibition against checking and forming a position for myself. As far as I am concerned, such a prohibition is written on ice.

And if I am somehow 80% sure that the system is right, and they offer me a new argument which from the outside I estimate has only, say, a 10% chance of convincing me—would you still just brush off such a gamble? (Ignoring for the moment the claim that acting while there is some inner defect is not a meaningful act and one is really a covert heretic, etc. The system commands only the action and ignores the motive.)

I would definitely ignore it. This is not a matter of probabilities. There is simply no meaning to a prohibition against examining arguments.

The question is this: on the one hand Maimonides forbids thinking "perhaps it is not true," while on the other hand Maimonides himself studied Aristotle's books and books of idolatry [the Sabians]. Cardigno's point explains an interpretation of the prohibition, but clearly such a prohibition cannot exist. The "simple interpretation," that it refers to someone who is already convinced, explains the prohibition on reading books, not the prohibition on "thinking."
My opinion is that when one wants to examine claims, it is certainly permitted, and at any stage in life. But one cannot reach 100% through this, and regarding that the Torah commands us to transfer things from the intellect to the emotion! That is, in my heart I should believe 100%. If when a person prays to God he tells himself, "Wait, maybe there is no God; I am praying just in case there is a God," that is ridiculous, because then he is not really praying. And if through investigation he has reached the conclusion that reason indicates there apparently is a God, he is forbidden to think heretical thoughts in his heart, because "The Merciful One desires the heart," and there is no such thing as an 80% heart. Proof for my words: the prohibition is stated as a prohibition regarding the heart, not the intellect!
I would be happy to hear the rabbi's opinion.

I disagree. It is always permissible to examine arguments. What—if I internalized something on the emotional plane, can I no longer make a mistake? At that stage and onward, is there no longer any need to form a position? Maybe I was mistaken.

I emphasized that it is always permitted to examine claims at every stage of life.
In the practical conclusion of everyday life, one has to live with 100% and not say, "I believe 80%." Just as when I hug my mother I do not think only 99% that this is my mother, even though if I wanted to check, I would check.

The opposite. The moment you believe on the basis of 1% knowledge, then your heart contains 1% of its capacity.
The heart means the whole heart. That is, after you know everything you can know.

According to the rabbi's words, if he were commanded to slaughter his son, would he refuse the Holy One, blessed be He, not because of the difficulty but because of the lack of logic in it??

I do not know. As long as I do not find myself in such a situation, I cannot know. I might doubt that it is the Holy One, blessed be He, who is demanding this of me. Or I might doubt whether it is proper to obey Him, because it is evil. I have written here more than once about the lack of sense in criticisms of Abraham at the binding of Isaac coming from someone who has never experienced a revelation and a direct divine command.

A. The fact that Maimonides himself did read books covered by "do not stray" is not difficult, because it seems that according to Maimonides the prohibition works in two ways: either just reading in order to know how that worship works and how they offer incense, in which case there is a concern one may be drawn after it; or reading books in order to test the truth of one's religion. But Maimonides did not read them as someone clarifying and testing the truth of faith; rather, for the sake of knowing what to answer, and "to understand and to teach." So seemingly, someone who reads in order to know what to answer to the heretic within himself should all the more be permitted. Though one could distinguish: to answer the heretic within oneself, perhaps only books responding to their claims are permitted, and only if that does not help, then their own books as well.
And one can add regarding the second mode that when Maimonides speaks about books under "do not stray," he means books whose actual purpose is to distance people from religion—such as the sites of Yaron Yadan and the like. Not so Aristotle's books and the like; that is not their purpose.

Although I am doubtful whether I myself would agree even to such a prohibition (and indeed elsewhere you mentioned this hesitation), because what is a person supposed to do if his urge/intellect nags him and says: how can it be that some wise person claims that my religion is nonsense and that his denial is the logical one? Let me go and check his words and arguments. It may not burn within him to the point that he is on his way to apostasy, but simply at the level that he does not feel authentic just staying with what he was born into. He sees no difficulty with his religion—certainly from what he knows and has heard until now without entering their books/sites. So basically here he is in a regular dilemma, like desire among all desires: should he obey his urge and take a beloved woman from a foreign people, or obey his Creator? And even if the opposing side has room to distinguish, still the divine command—and even the rabbinic one—is already understandable, because He/they prefer to impose such a prohibition and thereby save most of their believers, even if in doing so He/they lose or punish Rabbi Michi and people like him, rather than give free rein to investigation and be left only with Rabbi Michi and people like him.

B. And to tell the truth, now that I have come this far, one might say the same even about our original difficulty: perhaps even someone in whom doubt has already nested—it is still possible to understand the divine/rabbinic logic in forbidding investigation, because a risk is being taken here (which indeed is unfair to one side, and Maimonides already said this in the Guide for the Perplexed), whereby the Creator/the Sages understood that by forbidding examination, more people would remain in the religion—even though some would fall away precisely because of that—than in a situation where examination were allowed.

As the Guide for the Perplexed 3:34 says,
there Maimonides establishes that in any given period there will be people for whom observance of the commandments and laws will not add perfection, and may even harm them.

And these are his words:
You must also know that the Torah does not take account of exceptional cases, nor is the Torah framed according to the rare circumstance. Rather, whenever it wishes to teach an opinion, a moral trait, or a beneficial action, it directs itself to what holds true in most cases, and does not consider the uncommon case, nor the harm that may come to an individual because of that measure and that Torah-based conduct… According to this same consideration, one should not wonder that the intention of the Torah is not fulfilled in each and every individual; rather, it necessarily follows that there will be people whom that governance will not perfect… But the Torah-based governance must be absolute and universal, applying to all, even though it may suit some people and not others; for if it were according to individuals, corruption would affect all, and you would be "making each case depend on individual assessment."

In any case, if that is indeed the explanation, then a person like that—or like you (or me?)—would need to rely on the words of Rabbi Ilai, "What should a person do…"

"Or I might doubt whether it is proper to obey Him, because it is evil"—
I did not understand: how can one even think of not doing something when the Holy One, blessed be He, explicitly tells you to do it? Every intellectual conclusion in the world is limited, but a divine command is not (of course, assuming you know that it really is a divine command), and therefore one must obey it even if it seems absurd beyond absurdity, no?

I no longer remember the context. But His commanding evil is a hypothetical and impossible situation. (The validity of morality comes from God.) It is like asking whether I would obey God if He were not the Creator of the world and the giver of the Torah.