Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - Jewish Philosophy: Objective Thinking

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The opening of this shiur, in Hidabroot - Torah & Judaism’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

Well, there there is a subject that I don't talk about too often and you've been here a long time, so you'll probably be able to pick it up better than most and therefore probably a good thing to talk about when I don't have to start from the very beginning. Well, Destler has an essay on Musar. Now, Musar, as everybody understands, means moral self-improvement or ethical self-improvement, conquering your bad habits, and so forth and so on. But, Destler has a very unique approach. He says that the the goal of Musar is to reach the truth. Goal of Musar is to reach the truth. And he says this because there are certain enemies of objectivity. If I'm investigating something, I want to trust the evidence that I find, and my reasoning power, and my powers of evaluation. I have to think that I'm objective. We all know people, other people, who are dreadfully subjective, and who draw all sorts of wrong conclusions from what they see, what they hear, what they experience. Of course, that's only other people. That doesn't apply to me. I, of course, am objective. Question of Dest raises is, how do you know that? How do you know that you're objective? And it's not just a theoretical question. But there are two great enemies of objectivity to which everyone is subject. One is fairly obvious. People are not objective when the issue involved the issue that they're addressing it involves their desires. What they want, what they get pleasure

Jump to a moment

1. 0:22Well, there there is a subject that I don't talk about too often and you've been…
2. 4:58wisdom, his cleverness. Now he's investigating a matter and he's coming to his conclusions and he…
3. 9:34tale of woe that Shimon cheated him and double-crossed him and and treated him badly and…
4. 14:07investigation in the first place creates a prejudice, that's much more difficult. If I'm looking up…
5. 18:43discussing some difficult issue back and forth. Finally, Hillel made a suggestion. Of course, his suggestion…
6. 23:17not is not valid. Okay, people are subject to distortions. Where is objectivity? But they're idiosyncratic.…
7. 27:50applied. But, he documents how difficult it is to make a scientific revolution because people are…
8. 32:26their objectivity, and they also want to protect their economic base. So, for example, suppose you're…
9. 37:00on the internet, on the History Channel. Um when I was a kid, you went to…
10. 41:33Not one of them has a clue. Not one of them can tell you what's meant…

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