Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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M A S M I D ini; llicir iloi nines to millions ol |ic()|ilc. It es- tablished man not as a chance wamlcrlm in spate but as an essential part of the natural process. Iliim.iii iiiiii.ilive was restored as a factor deter- miiiiiiL; ilic- course of events. Morality was neither a set of rarefied abstractions nor petty trivialities that must be lightly regarded in the triumphant sweep to empire. Rather, it was the ajiplication of spiritual values to situations pre- vailing in every-day life. It brought the contem- plative Greek down from his ethereal throne and raised the cold, stolid Roman from the ground. Man was accorded a position in the universe in which he could find peace and happiness. Any approach to an understanding of life is of necessity colored by the doctrine of reality that underlies it. A philosopher must seek to under- stand the real and the actual before he can pre- sume to discuss the fundamental aspects of exis- tence. Is reality embodied in a system of universal concepts and ideals or is it to be found in cold, brute, inert matter. ' Is the actual to be sought in the realm of the mind, in those ideas which we perceive only in thought, or does it lie in the atomistic configurations we see and feel? Do our senses deceive us and record only an illusory world of non-realities, or is our mind a knave, concocting images and airy concepts that have but a fantastic existence. ' General or particular, matter or form, spirit or nature, — which is the myth and which the reality. ' The ever-recurring strain of this problem runs in an undercurrent through the entire history of philosophic speculation. Its manifold aspects find expression in every thinker of note. In early Greek thought, Heraclitus and Parmenides had already enunciated the problem in its most ele- mentary terms. To Parmenides, reality lay in the world of static entities. Being can be understood only in terms of universal ideas. Change, motion, development, are unreal and chimerical. In our daily life we cannot embrace the permanent and durable. Only the transient and the accidental lie within our grasp. For Heraclitus, on the other hand, a fluxing world of particular objects represented the actual. Change rather than per- manence, particular rather than general, express r aliiy in lis highest form. Since their time, the strc.un of philosophic thought has burrowed two parallel channels, following the original course of either Heraclitus or Parmenides. Others have tried .11 various times to bridge the gap between Inilli by an harmonization of these extreme posi- tions. Usually the extremists have been modified hy those of more temperate views. Plato, for example, though recognizing to a partial degree the Heraditean world of particulars, apotheosizes Parmenides ' realm of concepts. The World of Ideas becomes to him the ultimate reality. SpKrcific entities achieve significance only as they partake of the universal ideas. His disciple Aristotle at- tempts a fusion of the general and the particular. The blending of matter and form in the creation of the actual is the expression of his attempt to avoid an extremist view by a successful com- promise. Augustine, the Platonist, is followed in the development of Catholic doctrine by Aejuinas. the Aristotelian. Maimonides, the Naturalist, rebels against the Platonism of Philo and of Judah Halevi. Hegel, preaching the ab- solutism of Geist, induces by reaction Marx, in- sisting on the material basis of all moral and spiritual values. In general, we can distinguish two antithetically opposed view-points battling for supremacy. The Idealists, who could claim as their members such dignitaries as Plato and Augustine, Hegel and Kant, assert the reality of Ide.is, of Spirit, of Geist, of Mind. Particulariza- tions, matter, physical entities, have no inherent significance; only as they manifest the continuity of ideas do they acquire a meaning of their own. Everything must be explained in categories of mind, of concepts. Nature, per se. does not constitute reality. It must be viewed, instead, as spirit. In contradistinction to this strain of thought are the arguments of the Mechanical Materialists. Democritus and Hobbes, Holbach and Feuerbach, struggling valiantly for the cause, espouse the Tbirty-lhree

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M A SMID Ihc iL,terual JVLind of the h,ternal JreopU b) D.wtD W. Pi;tix;orsk.v Aristotle ' s assertion that all men desire to know enunciated a fundamental truth of human nature. And if Aristotle designated as men only the Greeks, it was because of his conviction that only those of Hellas could achieve knowledge. From time immemorial this desire to know has prodded man in his search for divine secrets, for the Open, Sesame that will reveal to man ' s view the vast vista of universal knowledge. In this never-ending quest, three approaches dominate the field of human thought, the Greek, the Roman, and the Jewish. These three great cultures, that were conceived in antiquity, have recorded their impress on human speculation in a manner that renders the influence of even the former two, a living and vital one in our own day. Each is characterized by a distinctiveness that makes it possible for us to speak of a mind, characteristically Greek, Roman, or Jewish. The nature of these respective genii and a proper un- derstanding of the peculiarly Jewish traits of mind may go far in explaining the immortality of the Jewish nation. The Greek and Roman cultures speak their message to the world, garbed in the raiment of more modern civilizations, or through the musty pages of tattered books. The Jewish mind persists and addresses itself to humanity through living exemplifiers of the practical value of its profound philosophical teachings. The Greek and Roman minds scintillated during their respective hey-days. Exhausted by their spurt into the glorious heights of supremacy, they fell by the wayside. Jewish thought continued its steady gait and marched through history even to the modern era. The Greeks brought to bear on the universe and its problems an approach essentially intel- lectual. Mind, they felt, was an ideal plumbing line with which to fathom the depths of the uni- verse. Everything could be explained in terms and categories of mind. Thus they initiated that all-inclusive search that extended not only to the realm of the purely physical sciences but to the study of hum an and social relationships as well. AH aspects of existence were to be approached from the perspective of mind. To abstract the general from the particular, the universal from the specific, was their major preoccupation. The Greek was then primarily a contemplator. The field of positive action did not represent the sphere of his activities. He shone as a thinker rather than as a doer. But the star of Greece waned and that of Rome rose to dazzle the horizon. Like the Eagle which symbolized its essence, the Roman genius gave to the world a philosophy of action. To conquer not in the domain of ideas but in the physical sense was the ambition of Rome — an ambition that it realized as its armies marched through country after country, taking possession of the soil in the name of the Empire. Philosophy and speculation were pursuits for the aged and the infirm. Able-bodied human beings must concern themselves with physical exploits. Politics and economics were the doors through which one could enter upon an understanding of the uni- verse. Abstract thought opened on a blind alley in which people wandered aimlessly and to no purpose. Progress can be realized only by energy .md forcefulness. Shining forth in the chaos of ideas like a beacon that was not dimmed by the flashes of radiance that momentarily outshone its glow, the Jewish mind directed life in different channels. Combining thought and action, theory and prac- tice, into a practical doctrine of life, its sobering influence was felt as both Christianity and Moham- medanism borrowed prolifically from it in spread- Thiily-tu ' o

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M A SMID reality of the physical world and the specific objects within it. The world beccmes a purely quantitative affair. Everything is reduced to brute matter. The motion of atoms or matter in void, their arrangement in manifold formations, account for the existence of specific entities and the di- versity of things. Hence, unlike Aristotle and Maimonides, the Mechanists deny the existence of qualities or spiritual forces. The former, though asserting that form or spirituality are no- tional unless united with the material, neverthe- less fully recognize its actuality. Hcbbes, on the contrary, repudiates the validity of all moral con- siderations. Matter in motion offers the explana- tion for the state of affairs that obtains at any given period. Concepts, morals, mind, are a fleeting fantasy — categories we ourselves have created to aid us in a classification of the objects around us for the relationships into which we enter with our fellow-beings. The implications of this problem are as pro- found as they are numerous. Within their scope lies the entire realm of human speculation. Our doctrine of the universe and of man. of society and its history, are directly determined by our notion of reality. The reality of this world and the existence of a hereafter, a problem that has formed the basis of a controversy that figures prominently in the history of philosophy, are theses that are condi- tioned by our concept of the actual. Does the world we perceive constitute our only abode, or does man pass after life has left him into a higher form of existence? Must man regard himself merely a visitor on earth, sojourning for a brief moment before entering eternal life, or must he consider his notion of the world-to-come an illusory nonenity. A kindred problem confronts us when we seek to understand the nature of man. Shall we regard man as a novel configuration of atoms, fundamentally no different from, and really part and parcel of, the material world ? Does man ap- proach nearer to his self-realization when he identifies himself with his material environment, when he forsakes the non-existent entities that his imaginative mind has concocted? Or shall we regard man as standing spellbound before the vast vista of Universal Ideas and increasing in stature as he merges with and finds a place in the con- tinuity of spiritual values? In short, is man merely .t child of nature, whose life and conduct is not merely conditioned but determined by the play en him of the material forces of which he constitutes a part, or is he a son of the gods who acquires significance as he unites with and loses himself in the spiritual elements of the universe? The Idealists if they are to carry their convic- tions to their logical conclusion must afiirm that, while this world may have a relative reality, ab- solute existence is embodied only in the after- world. Life after death is more fundamentally real than earthly existence. Thus Plotinus re- gards the world as a conglomerate of evil forces that debase man ' s true being. Man must, therefore, lead a life of asceticism. He must deny himself physical pleasure and material enjoyment, regard- ing other-worldliness as the acme of perfection. Man must strive for independence from temporal and spatial relationships, a release from illusory and unreal attachments and seek absorption into the stream of the timeless, infinite, conceptual world. The Mechanist, on the other hand, ridicules the belief in immortality as a myth without substance. Man ' s last heart beat signalizes his descent into eternal oblivion. His flesh decomposes into dust, his bones feed the worms — and his existence is a closed book. Therefore, they assert, let man live while he may. Let him enjoy the benefits of this world to the fullest degree. Man sinks into the mire of materialism, blind to the higher values of life. But man, according to either of these views, is stripped of his individuality. He is denied the opportunity of realizing a fulness in his life that can render it richer and more meaningful. If the Idealist unites man with the continuity of spiritual forces, he divorces him from his relationship to Thirty-jour