Pretty sure he would have burned his own works out of frustration if he saw what everyone thinks he is now. lol. Have you read the Seder Vikuach version of Mesilas Yisharim?
I remember reading Mesilat Yesharim years ago, and realizing that it was not what it was said to be.
It's clearly deeply Kabbalistic, and also undertones of being upset at the masses for not focusing enough on the deeper elements. Ironically, it became people's way of getting "deeper" in a different way, by working on their character through the sefer, which is entirely not what it was written for.
Oh wow, so much I didn't know about the Ramchal. I only knew that he was censured and that many of his works were destroyed. I knew about him being a playwright and.poet. I recall the history books I read back in yeshiva portraying him as a casualty of the war on Sabbateans spearheaded by the Ya'avetz. I also recall that he died young; his youth was another thing that invited the comparisons to Shabbetai Zevi.
Stories of talking to a maggid were not as uncommon back then. I recall that R Yosef Karo claimed to have a maggid from heaven talking to him, and this allegedly influenced a lot of his halachik writings. But Karo lived before Shabbetai Zevi, and Karo also was no spring chicken.
IIRC, it was the Vilna Ga'on who first gave Mesilat Yesharim a hechsher. He said that in the first (seven?) chapters there is not one extraneous word (but he stops at that chapter as he reads the mishna of R Pinchas ben Yair differently than Luzzatto did). I believe he also said that if he lived at the time, he would have crawled all the way from Vilna to Amsterdam just to learn one word of Torah from the Ramchal.
Not to be picky but he also wrote Derech Hashem and Daas Tevunos in Amsterdam, which were certainly based on his original views but which have never been considered controversial in the context of previous kabbalistic and generally mystical writings. Your suggestion that he changed course when he moved is not backed up. How do you know he did not simply time down the rhetoric to better achieve his teaching goals? Do the earlier publications really say would things that are not building on preexisting kabbalistic thought?
You're right. The controversy was about his claims of direct revelation and subversion of authority, not his theology. He didn't fundamentally change course in Amsterdam but toned the kabbalistic stuff down so his works can be better accepted
I've spent an enormous amount of time Mesilas Yesharim and Ramchal in general and often teach it. I always emphasize that ironically, Ramchal himself makes it clear that MY is not a work of mussar (he says this almost explicitly in the dialogue version). If it's a work about "chasidus," which he distinguishes from the practice of seeing to live as a tzadik. The latter is about following the word of God, which is fairly straightforward in principle. The former is about following the will of God, which is not explicit anywhere and which requires the ultimate wisdom to figure out and apply. You literally need to start with understanding the purpose of creation and the role of the individual, building your own understanding of the "true good," which he says is the most elusive concept out there and is easy to get wrong. At the same time, he says the subject of chasidus, despite being the most highly intellectual field, is primarily the mitzvos of the heart. When read and understood correctly, it's the most brilliant exposition of the ultimate scope of Judaism, briefly from a conceptual point of view but primary from a process point of view, on the bookshelf.
If you would have been alive then, you certainly would have been one of his supporters.
I'm actually a gilgul of the ramchal 😉
If you were you would go for the jugular and pick R Akiva or Moshe or both
Pretty sure he would have burned his own works out of frustration if he saw what everyone thinks he is now. lol. Have you read the Seder Vikuach version of Mesilas Yisharim?
Great article, as always.
I remember reading Mesilat Yesharim years ago, and realizing that it was not what it was said to be.
It's clearly deeply Kabbalistic, and also undertones of being upset at the masses for not focusing enough on the deeper elements. Ironically, it became people's way of getting "deeper" in a different way, by working on their character through the sefer, which is entirely not what it was written for.
Oh wow, so much I didn't know about the Ramchal. I only knew that he was censured and that many of his works were destroyed. I knew about him being a playwright and.poet. I recall the history books I read back in yeshiva portraying him as a casualty of the war on Sabbateans spearheaded by the Ya'avetz. I also recall that he died young; his youth was another thing that invited the comparisons to Shabbetai Zevi.
Stories of talking to a maggid were not as uncommon back then. I recall that R Yosef Karo claimed to have a maggid from heaven talking to him, and this allegedly influenced a lot of his halachik writings. But Karo lived before Shabbetai Zevi, and Karo also was no spring chicken.
IIRC, it was the Vilna Ga'on who first gave Mesilat Yesharim a hechsher. He said that in the first (seven?) chapters there is not one extraneous word (but he stops at that chapter as he reads the mishna of R Pinchas ben Yair differently than Luzzatto did). I believe he also said that if he lived at the time, he would have crawled all the way from Vilna to Amsterdam just to learn one word of Torah from the Ramchal.
Not to be picky but he also wrote Derech Hashem and Daas Tevunos in Amsterdam, which were certainly based on his original views but which have never been considered controversial in the context of previous kabbalistic and generally mystical writings. Your suggestion that he changed course when he moved is not backed up. How do you know he did not simply time down the rhetoric to better achieve his teaching goals? Do the earlier publications really say would things that are not building on preexisting kabbalistic thought?
You're right. The controversy was about his claims of direct revelation and subversion of authority, not his theology. He didn't fundamentally change course in Amsterdam but toned the kabbalistic stuff down so his works can be better accepted
I've spent an enormous amount of time Mesilas Yesharim and Ramchal in general and often teach it. I always emphasize that ironically, Ramchal himself makes it clear that MY is not a work of mussar (he says this almost explicitly in the dialogue version). If it's a work about "chasidus," which he distinguishes from the practice of seeing to live as a tzadik. The latter is about following the word of God, which is fairly straightforward in principle. The former is about following the will of God, which is not explicit anywhere and which requires the ultimate wisdom to figure out and apply. You literally need to start with understanding the purpose of creation and the role of the individual, building your own understanding of the "true good," which he says is the most elusive concept out there and is easy to get wrong. At the same time, he says the subject of chasidus, despite being the most highly intellectual field, is primarily the mitzvos of the heart. When read and understood correctly, it's the most brilliant exposition of the ultimate scope of Judaism, briefly from a conceptual point of view but primary from a process point of view, on the bookshelf.