Halakhic man Book

The idea here is that the Jewish religious scholar, a type called "halakhic man," has a personality and a method that blends elements of mystic spirituality and rational philosophy. This is explained in the introductory passage. Here's an excerpt from Part I, Section I (Lawrence Kaplan's translation from the Hebrew):

"Halakhic man is an anti-nomic type for a dual reason: (1) he bears within the deep recesses of his personality the soul of a homo religiosus, that soul which, as was stated above, suffers from the pangs of self-contradiction and self-negation; (2) at the same time halakhic man’s personality also embraces the soul of cognitive man, and this soul contradicts all of the desires and strivings of the religious soul. However, these opposing forces which struggle together in the religious consciousness of halakhic man are not of a destructive or disjunctive nature. Halakhic man is not some illegitimate, unstable hybrid. On the contrary, out of the contradictions and antinomies there emerges a radiant, holy personality whose soul has been purified in the furnace of struggle and opposition and redeemed in the fires of the torments of spiritual disharmony to a degree unmatched by the universal homo religiosus. The deep split of the soul prior to its being united may, at times, raise a man to a rank of perfection, which for sheer brilliance and beauty is unequaled by any level attained by the simple, whole personality who has never been tried by the pangs of spiritual discord. ‘In accordance with the suffering is the reward’ [Avot 5:23] and in accordance with the split the union! This spiritual fusion that characterizes halakhic man is distinguished by its consummate splendor, for did not the split touch the very depths, the innermost core, of his being? There is much truth to the fundamental contention…that there is a creative power embedded within antithesis; conflict enriches existence; the negation is constructive, and contradiction deepens and expands the ultimate destiny of both man and the world." (Part I, Section I)

There's a riff on the Beast-or-Angel? theme:

"But man himself symbolizes, on the one hand, the most perfect and complete type of existence, the image of God, and, on the other hand, the most terrible chaos and void to reign over creation. The contradiction that one finds in the macrocosm between ontic beauty and perfection and monstrous 'nothingness' also appears in the microcosm—in man— for the latter incorporates within himself the most perfect creation and the most unimaginable chaos and void, light and darkness, the abyss and the law, a coarse, turbid being and a clear, lucid existence, the beast and the image of God. All human thought has grappled with this strange dualism that is so pronounced in man and has sought to overcome it." (Part II, Section II)

Halakhic man, on R. Soloveitchik's interpretation, seems to have the inner resources to overcome his own chaos and evil; he doesn't seem to need to abase himself and turn to God. (On that subject, R. Soloveitchik even quotes the Talmudic story in which rabbis use religious reasoning to challenge God's own ruling on the purity of an oven, upon which God accepts their counterargument and happily acknowledges, "My children have defeated me!") Through scholarship and commitment to Jewish law, therefore, and not primarily through reliance on or deference to God, halakhic man becomes good.

Soloveitchik does not, however, discuss how to convince other people to be good or at least less evil. It seems to me that not everyone can be a halakhic man: not even all Jews, because not all have this personality type or level of scholarship, and by definition certainly not any non-Jews, because they aren't bound to follow Jewish law. This leaves us high and dry on the broader question of how to create a more ethical world that addresses all the types of wrongdoing and harm that may come from any direction. Yeshiva University's Talpiot journal first published his essay in 1944.