Editing Mussar (section)

== The Mussar Approach Versus Chassidus ==
Chassidus includes within it the teachings of Mussar in terms of "do good," but has an additional advantage. While Mussar focuses on "turn from evil" and dealing with negative middos that change from time to time (as the yetzer hara intensifies its focus on specific areas in different times), Chassidus focuses on contemplation of Hashem's greatness, which never changes.

The Mussar approach, in contrast, deals with refining middos.

The Frierdiker Rebbe explains the concept of the Mussar approach in a sicha that was printed in Kuntres Toras HaChassidus:

"When a person behaves like an animal, he is worse than an animal. For an animal has no daas to desire and choose something higher than bodily desires and lusts. But a person who has daas to desire and choose something higher than bodily desires, such as good middos and intellectual pursuits, yet chooses physical desires, is more degraded and contaminated than, lehavdil, an animal.

The wisdom of nullifying materialism through teaching the disgust, abhorrence, and repulsion of physical pleasures and desires, and the greatness of the punishment of Gehinnom's suffering and the like, which a person will be punished for being drawn after bodily desires - this is the wisdom of Mussar."

Mussar, therefore, deals with "bandaging external wounds" - fixing the middos of pride, laziness, anger, and the like. An excellent example of this approach can be found in the Ramchal's Mesilas Yesharim.

Chassidus did not come to negate the other two approaches - Mussar and philosophical investigation - but to add to them.

Chassidus argues that one should not be satisfied with only appealing to human intellect or only dealing with "bandaging external wounds." While Chabad Chassidus does appeal to human intellect and requires clear intellectual understanding of the concepts it presents, these concepts themselves don't originate from human intellect but from the Divine.

Chassidus explains Divine levels as they descend from the upper worlds to below, in an organized and clear order, with metaphors that ensure a person doesn't, chas v'shalom, materialize the Divine concepts he's learning about, while still feeling connected to the material being learned so that it affects him properly.

As the Frierdiker Rebbe continues:

"However, Chassidus has an advantage in that it also awakens feelings of the heart to be affected to the degree required by the knowledge and understanding of that concept learned in Chassidus."