I am voicing a public machaah against myfriend’s distortions of R. Hirsch’s view on this issue. Just about everything he wrote is incorrect. Unfortunately, I am a bit swamped with my pursuit of secular knowledge and cannot respond it full at the moment. I hope charliehall will post an adequate response.
To begin, the very characterization of learning that doesn’t come from a Torah sefer as “secular” is antithetical to R. Hirsch’s approach. All knowledge, whatever its source, that is consistent with Torah law is Torah; it is an awareness of the very essence of this world and God’s will. Based on that, secular knowledge is not instrumental; R. Hirsch writes repeatedly that one of the notion that learning “secular” knowledge is a means to end end is blatantly false and destructive. We do not study secular knowledge to earn money, or to influence the nations of the world. We study all knowledge that is consistent with God’s will because it is consistent with God’s will and therefore informs our earthly conduct and the fulfillment of our task as Jews and Human Beings!
Indeed, R. Hirsch emphasized the need to be extremely careful when learning “secular” subjects so as to be able to tell the difference between those ideas that are consistent with Torah and those that are not. To do so, however, does not require us to limit the amount of secular knowledge we ingest – that just throws out the bad with the good. Rather, the way to ensure that we can distinguish between what knowledge is consistent with Torah and what is not is to learn the laws of the Torah. Its a difficult task: We must learn much Torah in order to know how to evaluate the secular knowledge we face, but we must also learn Torah-consistent secular knowledge in order to fully comprehend the ratzon Hashem.
Its a bit like we are all caught in an inescapable circle; we must keep running around the circle; pursuing Torah knowledge to understand how we must act and how we must evaluate secular knowledge, and also pursuing secular knowledge in order to fully appreciate God’s will and how humanity can morally perfect itself on earth. We run and we run, and we never seem to get ahead of the curve because there is always more to learn, both secular and Torah. Our task is simply to do what we can, to learn what we can, to not put aside one obligation in order to more fully fulfill the other, because perfect and complete knowledge is unobtainable anyway.
Echad Hamarbeh V’echad Hamaamit, Bilvad Sheyichavein Libo L’shamayim!