{"id":528,"date":"2011-03-23T11:35:46","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T15:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramchal.wordpress.com\/?p=528"},"modified":"2011-03-23T11:35:46","modified_gmt":"2011-03-23T15:35:46","slug":"ramchal-on-the-existence-of-the-yetzer-harah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/2011\/03\/23\/ramchal-on-the-existence-of-the-yetzer-harah\/","title":{"rendered":"Ramchal on the existence of the yetzer harah"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>Ramchal himself seems to take a more utilitarian attitude toward the existence of the yetzer harah <\/em>and to side with the \u201cnecessary evil\u201d approach. He first acknowledges the existence of evil in the human heart (aside from goodness) by saying simply that man is \u201cequally inclined in two (ethical) directions\u201d given that he was \u201ccreated with a yetzer hatov <\/em>and a yetzer harah<\/em>\u201d (Derech Hashem<\/em> 1:3:1). And he offers that, given the reality that \u201cmankind was created with a yetzer harah <\/em>and a yetzer hatov<\/em>\u201d it\u2019s consequently \u201cimpossible for there not to be some good and some bad\u201d among us (Derech Hashem <\/em>2:2:2); or put another way, \u201cthe world was created with (both) good and bad elements\u201d (Derech Hashem <\/em>2:3:1), so wrong and injustice are to be expected.<\/p>\n

But as he put it elsewhere, he holds that the yetzer harah<\/em> is to man\u2019s advantage in that, inasmuch as \u201csomething that needed to be rectified was created within man so that he could earn merit\u201d by rectifying it in fact (Klallei Pitchei Chochma V\u2019Da\u2019at<\/em> 1).<\/p>\n

At bottom, though, he states that man was in point of fact \u201conly placed in this world to overcome his yetzer<\/em> (harah<\/em>)\u201d (Derech Hashem <\/em>1:4:6), and that it\u2019s important to understand that \u201cyou will only be the full man worthy of clutching onto your Creator if you are \u2026 victorious in your battles\u201d to overcome your yetzer harah<\/em> (Messilat Yesharim<\/em> Ch. 1).<\/p>\n

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman<\/p>\n

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org<\/a><\/p>\n

———————————————————-<\/p>\n

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here<\/a> at a discount.<\/p>\n

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here<\/a> at a discount as well.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).<\/p>\n

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence<\/a>\u201d and \u201cRamchal<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ramchal himself seems to take a more utilitarian attitude toward the existence of the yetzer harah and to side with the \u201cnecessary evil\u201d approach. He first acknowledges the existence of evil in the human heart (aside from goodness) by saying … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}