Well, last time I think we spoke about, to sort of try to elaborate the Chovos Halevavos's שכל הניצל מכל פגע, sources of mistake, of distortion, of corruption, of sevarah, how a person, a society can mistakenly think that what's wrong, what's illogical, is really compelling al pi sevarah. So in continuing that, we'll read a little bit together, you should have it in your mail from the Rav Saadia Gaon's hakdamah a little bit what he talks about exactly this question. Do you have it, Abbas? So we're reading Rav Kapach's translation. For this edition, he printed the Judeo-Arabic as well. So the right-hand column is the translation. So on page beis, the bottom paragraph. והנה הודיע תחילה גורמי השיבוש לבני אדם ואמר. Earlier he had said how the nefesh is a source of understanding maskalos, but now I want to present what causes distortions. כיון שיסוד המשכלות מבוססות על המוחשות. We apply our reason to what our senses perceive. והרי בדברים הניסגים בחוש יפלו הספקות באחת משתי סיבות. In terms of perception, we can fall short for either of two reasons. או בגלל חוסר ידיעת המבקש את מבוקשו. The person doesn't know what he's looking to, he doesn't know sufficiently enough to be able to identify what he's looking for. He's going to give an example which will clarify this shortly. או מפני שהקל על עצמו והזניח העיון והחקירה. Or because he wasn't assiduous enough in looking. Domeh leadam, so here's an example to illustrate those two sources of failure, those two scenarios where the person comes up short. דומה לאדם המבקש את ראובן בן יעקב. So he's told, you know, to go to a certain place and to find Reuven. שאפשר שאפשר שיסתפק בו בגלל אחת משתי סיבות. He could not attain certainty in finding and identifying Reuven ben Yaakov for either of two reasons or both. או מפני שאינו מכירו היטב מחמת העדר עמדו לפניו ולכן אינו מכירו.
He doesn't know sufficiently what Reuven ben Yaakov looks like. So when he looks at people, so they told him, oh, he's more or less average height and he has brown hair. So he looks at someone, is that Reuven? Is that not Reuven? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. He doesn't really have such a command in terms of what he's looking for to be able to identify it. או מפני שראה זולתו וחשב שהוא ראובן. Or no, maybe he has a more detailed description, a detailed description which really would successfully set Reuven apart, Reuven ben Yaakov apart from other people. However, he just looks very quickly, he looks very superficially, and he doesn't... He doesn't look carefully enough, he doesn't scrutinize, and that's why he'll misidentify. ונוהג בקלות והזניח החקירה והרי תוצאות הקלה שהוא ידרשהו בקלות ורפיון מחשבה לפיכך לא יכירהו.
Either by not looking carefully enough, so he'll misidentify or he'll see Reuven and not recognize that Reuven's right in front of him because he won't see all the simanim he's looking for because he's just not applying himself, he's not exerting himself to look carefully. Okay, that's the mashal. That's the mashal in terms of perception of the senses. So in terms of reason, כך גם הנמשל כך גם הדברים המושכלים יפלו בהם השיבושים
for either of these two reasons will create distortions. או מפני שהדורש את המדעים המושכלים אינו יודע דרכי ההוכחה.
So the nimshal to not knowing what Reuven ben Yaakov looks like, not having a clear and detailed description of what Reuven ben Yaakov looks like, the nimshal to that is אינו יודע דרכי ההוכחה והרי הוא חושב את ההוכחה כדבר שאינו הוכחה וכן יעשה מה שאינו הוכחה כהוכחה.
So Rav Saadia Gaon is illustrating more in the realm of philosophy, but it's basically this is the same as what we were explaining in terms of what we alluded to in terms of what we would see at Ish HaHalacha in terms of knowing the canons of logic, knowing what's a proof, what isn't a proof. If a person doesn't understand what's a compelling argument, what isn't a compelling argument, what's a cogent argument, what isn't a cogent argument, so then he'll let's say you want to say a chiddush in learning and someone will bring a raya from A to B but he doesn't realize that that isn't an acceptable comparison, that isn't an acceptable raya. So the person will think that no he's saying something which is dictated, which is supported by sevara, but that's only because his sevara is faulty in not knowing how to engage in proper reasoning and therefore what is a proof, what isn't a proof. So he'll think that he's proven what hasn't been proven and he'll dismiss as unproven what in fact is proven. או שהוא יודע דרכי העיון. Maybe the person really does know how to reason, to think. He does know when something has been logically demonstrated, when it hasn't been logically demonstrated. Again, if you would apply that to learning, he knows what's a correct comparison, what isn't a correct comparison, what's halakhic reasoning, what's aggadic reasoning, he knows all that. אלא שהוא מתייחס לעניין בקלות וברפיון. There's an intellectual laziness. That's again this is parallel to what we saw in the Rambam in the Moreh, right? That we mentioned that the Rambam in the Moreh when he quotes that question about והייתם כאלוהים יודעי טוב ורע, that the superficiality, that if a person engages in sevara but does so superficially, so that also will yield the distortions. וימהר להחליט על מדע מסוים בטרם יסיים מלאכת העיון בו.
Kol sheken, says Rav Saadia Gaon, kol sheken that there are going to be errors אם נצטרפו באדם שני הדברים גם יחד. he doesn't know he doesn't know how to be m'ayein again where whether it's how to be m'ayein in the realm of philosophy, whether it's how to be m'ayein in the realm of learning, which is the context Rav Saadia Gaon is talking about, or whether it means in the tchum of learning halacha. v'im zos, and the second deficiency, אינו מעיין עד שיסיים מה שהוא יכול באותו דבר, and even whatever abilities he has, he doesn't make the most of because again he's too he's too he's too intellectually lazy. הרי זה יהיה רחוק ממבוקשו או שיתייאש ממנו. kol sheken, just skipping the psukim that he quotes, skipping two lines. kol sheken, now Rav Saadia Gaon now highlights a third source of mistaken svara, of mistaken conclusions which the person will erroneously think are supported have been established by svara when in reality that's not the case at all. כל שכן אם נצטרף לשני הדברים הללו דבר שלישי. There can be a third flaw, a third source of error in applying and employing svara, והוא שהמבקש אינו יודע מה הוא מבקש. So to illustrate these three, let's say in the context again Rav Saadia Gaon means in context of his sefer obviously in terms of philosophical truths, but but to illustrate them maybe in terms of learning, so דון מיניה ואוקי באתרה. So Rav Saadia Gaon says as follows. A person can say a shtikel Torah and the shtikel Torah can be not require a biggest svara for any or a combination of three reasons. One is a person quotes a raya to his chiddush and the raya isn't a raya because he doesn't have a sense for what is a raya and what isn't a raya. A person can know, he knows what's a good raya, but again he was intellectually lazy, he didn't think through, he didn't think it through deeply enough, fully enough to see the fallacy, to see the error because he was intellectually lazy. yegi'ah b'Torah doesn't only measured quantitatively by how many hours a person sits in front of the sefer, it's how much the person exerts himself mentally to be learning to the fullest of his ability and to be understanding things as well as he can. So one is a person doesn't know what a raya is. The other is a person knows what a raya is, but again because of intellectual laziness he fails to see what he could, what he's really capable of seeing, that the raya he's giving is no raya. The third, and in some ways this is really the most... I don't know if fundamental, is a person has a kasha, he doesn't really even have a feel for what's a teretz. He doesn't know what he's looking for. He doesn't know what... okay, there's a contradiction here, but what does a teretz look like? You know, what does a teretz look like? It seems again to illustrate it all the way at the end of the spectrum in terms of its, I don't know, most crude manifestation, not as uncommon as one would like it to be. People who either have no capacity or just it lies dormant within them for thinking conceptually, so everything they process is on the surface level. So they don't know what a teretz looks like. You know, they don't know the teretz is, again, the kashya is on the surface and the teretz lies beneath the surface. And if a person doesn't understand what it means to have a conceptual understanding of something, only sort of can only see the... and that's why, I don't know, sometimes people are very quick to just dismiss thing as, "Oh, it's a stira, oh, he changed his mind, oh, this, oh, that," because they don't know what a teretz looks like, so they can't imagine that there is a compelling teretz. It's... but it's not wise to elaborate on people's mistakes, so I'm saying it somewhat in half-sense, but hamavin yavin. You know, when we gave the example last week before we had gotten up to the next section in Ish HaHalacha, so we said that, you know, the fuller understanding would come. There are tremendous implications to what the Rav explains how halacha is an ideal system. It doesn't begin by just looking to regulate and legislate concrete realities, but is rather a world of ideas and is an ideal system. That has tremendous implications for what a sevara is and what's mistaber in halacha or isn't mistaber in halacha. And a lot of things that one would think are mistaber in a, let's say, human legal system, which begins with the concrete and is entirely designed to be pragmatic, and what's a sevara in an ideal system, the world of ideas, can sometimes be polar opposites. That's both not knowing what the answer is, it's also not knowing darkei iyun, and it sort of combines both. Bechol panim, this is Rav Saadia Gaon's three again, which parallel not everything we spoke about, but certainly two of the things we spoke about last time.