Maimonides and His Heritage (S U N Y Series in Jewish Philosophy)

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MAIMONIDES AND HIS HERITAGE

SUNY series in Jewish Philosophy

Kenneth Seeskin, editor

MAIMONIDES AND HIS HERITAGE

EDITED BY

Idit Dobbs-Weinstein Lenn E. Goodman James Allen Grady

Published by

Stat e Un i v e r s i t y of New Yor k P r e s s Al ba n y © 2009 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Maimonides and his heritage / edited by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Lenn E. Goodman, and James Allen Grady. p. cm. — (SUNY series in Jewish philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-7655-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Maimonides, Moses, 1138–1204. 2. Philosophy, Jewish. 3. Philosophy, Medieval. I. Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit, 1950– II. Goodman, Lenn Evan, 1944– III. Grady, James Allen, 1980– B759.M34M324 2009 296.1'.81—dc22

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction List of Abbreviations

vii ix xix

ONE

Maimonides as Biblical Exegete

1

Arthur Hyman TWO

Philosophical Themes in Maimonides’ Sefer Ahavah

13

Menachem Kellner THREE

Maimonides on Joy

37

Moshe Sokol FOUR

Maimonides’ Psychology

51

Alfred L. Ivry FIVE

Bahya and Maimonides on the Worth of Medicine

61

Lenn E. Goodman SIX

The Ambiguity of the Imagination and the Ambivalence of Language in Maimonides and Spinoza

95

Idit Dobbs-Weinstein SEVEN

The Philosophical Mysticism of Maimonides and Maimon Gideon Freudenthal v

113

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C ON T EN TS

EIGHT

Persecution and the Art of Representation: Schocken’s Maimonides Anthologies of the 1930s

153

Martina Urban NINE

Maimonides in the Crucible of Zionism: Reflections on Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s Negative Theology

181

Paul Mendes-Flohr TEN

Can We Be Maimonideans Today?

193

David Novak

Bibliography List of Contributors Index Locorum Subject Index

211 225 227 237

Acknowledgments

The editors express their warm appreciation to the sponsors of the Vanderbilt conference on Maimonides and his Milieu: The Matchette Foundation and the Vanderbilt University Law School, Divinity School, Medical School, Center for the Study of Religion and Culture, Jewish Studies Program, Philosophy Department, and University Research Scholars Program. Special appreciation to Lynne Perler, program administrator of the Vanderbilt Jewish Studies Program.

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Introduction

The year 2004 marked the eight hundredth anniversary of the death of Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), the philosopher, physician, and jurist known in the traditional Jewish sources as the Rambam, that is Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, and in Islamic texts as Mūsā bin Maimūn. Maimonides’ three great legal works include the celebrated and still authoritative fourteen-volume code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah. His active medical practice is reflected in his ten medical works. His achievements in philosophy find fullest expression in the Guide to the Perplexed. Written in Arabic, twice translated into Hebrew during his lifetime, into Latin soon after his death, and later into many European languages, the Guide aims to reconcile Aristotelian and Neoplatonic metaphysics and cosmology with the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinic tradition. From the time of its first appearance the Guide was studied by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and its creativity in bridging the outlooks of faith and reason exerts a formidable influence down to the present day. This book is a celebration of the depth and breadth of Maimonides’ achievements and of a heritage extending over eight hundred years. The chapters gathered here explore Maimonides’ historical context, intellectual background, and, above all, the richly multifaceted and rigorous thinking reflected in his work. Maimonides’ writings bring together a Greek scientific outlook in logic, astronomy, medicine, and mathematics with the ethical, legal, spiritual, and social values of his Judaic heritage. Part of Maimonides’ success rests on his ability to take full advantage of the achievements of his Muslim predecessors in philosophy, theology, and the sciences. His intellectual openness makes his work an enduring model of creative synthesis and critical appropriation. His insights and his openness to challenge and dialogue with thinkers of diverse outlooks and with a large, ethically concerned public, make his writings an enduring source of intellectual stimulation, not only for the many ix

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specialist scholars who scrutinize his texts but for a wide and lively audience of non specialists. In today’s environment, where cultural differences so often seem to erect insurmountable barriers, and where faith and reason are so regularly presumed to be deadly enemies, only one of which will emerge unscathed from combat, Maimonides is a shining exemplar of the possibilities of intellectual growth nourished by rigorous reasoning and openness to new ideas. Part of what makes the Rambam a great philosopher is his confidence that ethical and spiritual commitments are strengthened in the end by open inquiry and the scientific understanding. And part of what makes him great is his openness to all who have something to teach, enacting the rabbinic dictum, “Who is wise? One who learns from every human being.” Reflecting his engagement with the foremost philosophical minds of his era, Maimonides cites his Muslim contemporary Ibn Rushd (Averroes) for the motto that inspires his own synthetic method: “Listen to the truth, no matter who pronounces it” (“Eight Chapters,” Introduction). Likewise, Maimonides’ thought exemplifies a rich interdisciplinary commitment to which contemporary intellectuals aspire but rarely achieve with such mastery. Unlike many of his predecessors and successors, Maimonides has an impact on the Jewish tradition that extends far beyond his rich contributions to the very definition of Jewish identity and practice. His jurisprudence builds a coherent and livable home in the forest of biblical and rabbinic norms. His philosophical writings speak directly to our own concerns with the nexus between science and religion, ethics and law, philosophy, theology, and experience. His medical writings speak with a clear voice as to the meaning and precious value of health, situating health itself in the larger context of a scheme of values that finds the meaning of human life not just in the living but in higher and uniquely human aims. This book aims to reflect the diversity of Maimonides’ commitments and works, no one facet of which can be fully appreciated without the rest. Thus, for example, Maimonides’ philosophical magnum opus, the Guide, draws upon his medical and legal practice and writings, as well as on the Bible and the rabbinic canon. His major halakhic work, the Mishneh Torah, draws on his philosophical and scientific works. The essays gathered here represent the work of scholars of diverse disciplines, and philosophers and theologians of diverse outlooks, each of whom brings a distinctive method and perspective to the appraisal of Maimonides’ work. Together, these chapters offer a sampling of the Maimonidean heritage in its own rich diversity, ranging through his distinct contributions to philosophy, theology, medicine, and Jewish law, to studies of the impact of his ideas and his persona on later generations down to the present time. The first five chapters are devoted to Maimonides as the exemplary medieval Jewish thinker in his milieu; the last five address his impact on latter Jewish thought and practice—focusing on those thinkers who walked in his footsteps, laboring

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within the framework that Maimonides himself laid out, or ranging beyond, often individualistically, finding in his work something that they could make uniquely their own. Arthur Hyman, Menachem Kellner, and Moshe Sokol (Chapters 1, 2, 3) closely examine key elements of Maimonides’ contributions to the Jewish religious tradition, in the biblical hermeneutics of the Guide to the Perplexed and in his Halakhic works. Alfred L. Ivry (Chapter 4) sets out Maimonides’ philosophical psychology against the backdrop of the Islamicate Aristotelian tradition, and especially that of the Muslim Platonist al-Farabi. Lenn Goodman (Chapter 5) examines Maimonides’ links to Islamic and Jewish philosophy as he worked out his distinctive contribution to medicine as a practical science of human health and flourishing in body, mind, and spirit. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein (Chapter 6) examines Maimonides’ profound impact on Spinoza’s psychology and philosophy of language, exploring the roles of language and imagination in generating and sustaining opinions, sound and unsound. Gideon Freudenthal (Chapter 7) studies Maimonides’ impact on the thought of the neo-Kantian, philosopher-mathematician, Solomon Maimon, who was so overwhelmed by the thought of the Rambam that he took his name as his own. Martina Urban (Chapter 8) examines the work of German Jewish editors of Maimonides prior to the Shoah. Their editing and translations, she argues, deploy the texts they select as nodes of philosophical resistance. Paul Mendes Flohr (Chapter 9) examines the impact of Maimonides’ name and image in the political life of the influential Israeli physicist-philosopher and activist, Yeshayahu Leibowitz. And, finally, David Novak (Chapter 10) assays the relevance of Maimonides’ theology today for Jews and non-Jews. Looking at the chapters a bit more closely: Arthur Hyman begins with the question of Maimonides’ intellectual role. Unlike his famous Islamic predecessors, al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, who considered the existing philosophical literature deficient, Maimonides did not write any purely philosophical work. If the Guide itself is not philosophy, Hyman asks, to what genre does it belong? His answer is that the Guide is a special kind of commentary addressed to Jews. Hyman argues further that Maimonides’ halakhic works too are based on the Bible rather than the rabbinic literature. In support of this claim, he cites the centrality of prophecy and Mosaic prophecy in particular, in Maimonides’ conception of the revealed Law and its authority. For Maimonides, it is the Torah, even more than the Talmud, that provides the fundamental and direct guidance for the practical and intellectual life of every Jew. The 613 biblical commandments are not only prescriptive but foundational. The further commandments that the Rabbis derive are also prescriptive, of course, but secondary. Hyman’s argument would show us that the Rabbis clearly cannot be ranked with the prophets in the Maimonidean scheme, precisely because the effulgence of revelation in their case comes to them by way of the Mosaic Torah.

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Focusing on the Book of Love (or Devotion), a portion of the Mishneh Torah concerned with prayer and its role in worship, Menachem Kellner, in “Philosophical Themes in Maimonides’ Sefer Ahavah,” argues that Maimonides’ naturalism does not undermine but actually liberates human choice. Through close readings of this halakhic text with recurrent recourse to pertinent passages in the Guide, Kellner proposes that Maimonides is a philosophical nominalist, for whom God’s radical transcendence entails a demystification and dehypostatization of all the properties and contraries traditionally associated with God. Against prevalent ontological interpretations of such categories as sin, holiness, ritual purity, and the like, Kellner seeks to show that for Maimonides such distinctions, including those between Jew and gentile and between Hebrew and other languages, were conventional, and historically situated. Just as the Torah itself seeks to purify the acts and symbolisms of worship and purge itself of any suggestion of the ancient practices of pagan ritual, so Maimonides seeks to purge the Torah’s interpretation and the application of its norms and rules of worship of any lingering superstitious accretions, not hesitating to criticize rabbinic authorities in the interest of that project. Kellner examines Maimonides’ extended treatment of the daily prayers, the acts of worship incumbent on all Jews, as rituals meant to foster love and awe of God. The object of the norms surrounding these acts is not the mode of worship itself but the instilling of a true awareness of God. For love of God, properly understood, arises from knowledge of God and is manifested in practice through observance of the commandments. The liturgy is understood only with the aid of an appreciation of its historicity: Just as the Torah did not demand of the ancient Israelites that they abandon animal sacrifice, since that was the familiar mode of worship (and the people had already been called upon to alter not only their way of life but also their very conception of the divine), so now, in Maimonides’ own time, most Israelites seem unable to conceive worship without prayer. But verbal prayer is itself an accommodation to human finitude, and its modalities are not ends in themselves. The meaning of any commandment is found not in the form but in the goal of the obligation. Kellner argues that Maimonides’ austere intellectual interpretation of Mishnaic and Talmudic precepts aims to undermine literalism and reification, so as to draw the reader away from anthropomorphism and toward a philosophical understanding of the divine wisdom manifest in nature. Maimonides’ insistence on making as few concessions as possible to such popular Jewish beliefs as the notion of Israel’s unique election or the sanctity of the Hebrew language, Kellner reasons, enables Maimonides vividly to portray just how universal the wisdom and the message of the Torah really are. In contrast to any strictly intellectual reading, Moshe Sokol’s essay aims to show us the affective dimension of the Maimonides’ value system. His chapter, “Maimonides on Joy,” focuses on the halakhic manifestations of joy,

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as mandated in the celebration of holidays such as the festivals of Pesaḥ, Shavuot, and Sukkot. Lest we understand this sort of joy reductively, simply in terms of intellectual pleasure, Sokol points out that in Maimonides’ interpretations the joy of the three festivals is linked first and foremost with bodily well-being, which the Guide in turn associates with political well-being. Examining Maimonides’ interpretations of the observances of Sukkot and Purim, Sokol notes a tension between sociopolitical and personalist readings of the ritual rejoicing of Sukkot. The distinction is clear from the difference in observances expected of the many and those incumbent on the learned. The experience of the latter, elite group is meant to be ecstatic. Their only communal obligation is to feed the poor—quite a contrast with the spirit of high hilarity commonly connected with this holiday. The two kinds of rejoicing, individual and national, are emblematic of two quite different kinds of liberation: One celebrating and symbolizing the transition from work to leisure that renders study possible for the learned; the other, reenacting the transition from the barren desert to the land of plenty. Sokol suggests that the aim in both cases might be the evocation of “proto-messianic” emotions. The commandment of rejoicing that relates to Purim, however, as contrasted with that of Sukkot, prescribes giving joy to others, emulating God, who liberated his people, and realizing, in a practical way, our creation in God’s image. Sokol finds here a post-theoretic plane of morality, which he calls not proto-messianic but micro-messianic. Alfred Ivry’s chapter, “Maimonides’ Psychology” contests the view that Maimonides’ critique of philosophy betrays an attitude of agnosticism or skepticism on his part. Recognizing the limits of human knowledge, Ivry argues, does not debar Maimonides from the ranks of philosophers. On the contrary, such a critique is of the essence in philosophy. Viewing Maimonides as a philosopher, Ivry observes, sets a standard of high consistency for him, which proves to be heuristic, since it enables us to uncover his real commitments. Focusing on Maimonides’ psychology, Ivry reads Maimonides’ affirmations of personal immortality as concessions to familiar articles of faith, which collapse on closer scrutiny. For Maimonides’ thesis that human knowledge depends on contact or “conjunction” with the agent intellect, and his denigration of the imagination as a source of falsehood, reveal that the rational soul, the authentically immortal component in a human being on Maimonides’ account, would need to shed its individuality insofar as it is to realize immortality. Maimonides’ cognitive psychology, as Ivry sees it, unlike the corresponding views of al-Fārābī and Aristotle, which Maimonides endorses, is mediated and limited by his negative response to the arbitrariness he found in the voluntaristic theology of the Kalām and by his rejection of the anti-naturalism he saw in the conception of possibility put forward by these dialectical theologians. Maimonides’ intellectualism, subordinating will to knowledge, Ivry argues, undermines his commitment to human free will, just as subsuming the

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fulfilled human mind within the agent intellect undercuts his professions of faith in personal immortality. Maimonides’ real position, Ivry argues, has had many critics and will doubtless leave many of our own contemporaries dissatisfied. But, as Ivry points out, many philosophers—from Plato on, we might say—see the submersion of individuality not as a real loss at all but as the price we pay, both for knowledge and for a credible, attainable immortality. Lenn Goodman’s chapter, “Baḥyā and Maimonides on the Worth of Medicine,” studies the values that Maimonides brings to his medical thinking and practice. Goodman opens with reflections on the idea that resort to medicine might have seemed problematic to a serious theist like Maimonides: Wasn’t God supposed to be the ultimate healer? Baḥyā ibn Pāqūda, the ancient rabbis, the Muslim philosophers and physicians, and the Torah itself help Maimonides to set aside this question and view medicine not as an affront to God’s rule but as a divine gift that it would be foolish and ungrateful to reject. For the Rambam, however, medicine is not just acceptable or useful. Its purpose is to extend our lives and thus enhance our ability to pursue our ultimate goal: realizing our inner affinity to God. Maimonides’ approach to medicine is rational and naturalistic, activist and humanistic, but never merely valetudinarian: Health is never an isolated end in itself but always a means to the higher ends of our moral betterment and our intellectual and spiritual fulfillment. Our prayers for good health are acknowledgments of God’s ultimate sovereignty and expressions of thanks for nature and the arts that make good health possible. They are not incantations and are not seconded by amulets or other paraphernalia of superstition. The practice of medicine is a sacred obligation, founded in the biblical commandment to restore what another has lost. That obligation extends to all who have the means to effectuate it and includes not just the provision of surgical or medical interventions but the affording of all that is necessary or conducive to the restoration of good health. The sanctity of the human person, which stands at the heart of biblical humanism, demands, beyond that, that we care for ourselves and one another, by appropriate diet and exercise, avoidance of dangerous substances, and maintenance of a safe and wholesome environment. Since health serves our higher goal, of living as befits creatures fashioned in the image of God, Maimonidean hygiene is mental and moral, as well as physical. It includes not just therapies for the body but exercise of our moral capabilities, so as to make our psyches suitable vehicles for the ideas that will perfect us spiritually and intellectually, bringing us, as Maimonides projects our goal, ever closer to God. Examining Maimonides’ philosophical legacy, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein’s essay, “The Ambiguity of the Imagination and the Ambivalence of Language in Maimonides and Spinoza” seeks to demonstrate the affinity between Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s critical projects and their ethicopolitical aims. Reading Maimonides as a materialist philosopher and a thoroughgoing nominalist,

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she argues that Spinoza’s nominalism, his profound mistrust of language as a vehicle of truth, parallels Maimonides’ critique of language. Spinoza echoes Maimonides’ arguments, even when their idioms differ. In a close comparative analysis of their chief philosophical works, DobbsWeinstein traces the multifaceted relations between language and imagination to show how language and imagination conspire to generate both knowledge and the authoritative doxa that the two thinkers seek to expose as sources of prejudice and superstition. Such doxa are powerful forces of attraction and repulsion; they vigorously resist critique and contrary opinion. Dobbs-Weinstein sees both Maimonides and Spinoza as profoundly concerned with prejudices concerning normative categories that are predominantly the province of theologico-political authorities who promulgate and defend their doxa as truth. For Maimonides the guilty parties are the Rabbis and the Mutakallimun, especially among his coreligionists; for Spinoza, they are the theologians and metaphysicians. Insofar as prejudices are powerful affects, Dobbs-Weinstein argues, both thinkers address the psychology of the affects, especially love and hate, pleasure and pain, the primary affects that guide attraction and repulsion. Both thinkers reject the idea of an overarching teleology and seek to overcome the normative categories consequent upon such a teleology, deeming those categories to be projections of the human imagination. The orientation of desire, then, becomes a question of education and habituation, which might lead either to bondage or to freedom. Dobbs-Weinstein concludes that education and psychic health depend on the work of a guide who strives to undermine all authoritative belief, all doxa, and simultaneously to generate a desire for free inquiry, which will open the way to many and varied critical interpretations. These in turn become avenues to freedom. In “The Philosophical Mysticism of Maimonides and Maimon” Gideon Freudenthal aims to demonstrate the unity of reason, worship, and peak religious experience in Maimonides’ philosophy and to investigate its reception and ongoing, indeed lifelong, modification by Solomon Maimon, the lateeighteenth-century Neo-Kantian philosopher and mathematician. Unlike many Maimonidean scholars, Freudenthal argues, on the basis of the p’shat, that Maimonides’ philosophy is mystical and that mystical philosophy is compatible with rationalism, when both are properly understood. Relying on the Aristotelian identification of knowledge, knower, and known, Freudenthal argues that mysticism and rationalism are two sides of the same coin. Drawing upon this unity, he sees in Maimonides’ thought and in Maimon’s first response to it a pinnacle of reason, where knowledge, religious experience, and worship coincide. Freudenthal lays out Maimonides’ treatment of this higher noetic state and describes Maimon’s initial adoption of what he took to be the Maimonidean account. Freudenthal then provides a detailed examination of Maimon’s gradual transformation of this account into his own. In its metamorphosis,

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the view becomes first a recasting of Spinoza or Leibniz; then, in its mature imago, a form of skepticism. As a result of his skeptical turn, Maimon can no longer embrace the real possibility of the threefold unity of the intellect. Replacing the certainty that follows from that unity is a hypothetical. The mystical union with the infinite intellect, once made possible by the unity of knower, knowledge, and the act of knowing is now superseded by eudaimonia. Freudenthal concludes that, for Maimon, the practice of mathematics alone creates objects about which there can be real certainty. Only here does the human intellect act in the image of God. As its title suggests Martina Urban’s chapter, “Persecution and the Art of Representation: Schocken’s Maimonides Anthologies of the 1930s,” is motivated by Leo Strauss’ seminal work Persecution and the Art of Writing. Strauss studied the practice of esoteric writing in response to persecution in the premodern and preliberal period. But, as Urban reminds us, Strauss himself found the topical relevance of his analysis in the situation of Jews as the Nazi regime came to power in Germany. Studying the anthologies of Maimonides’ writings produced by the then German Jewish Schocken publishing house in the 1930s, Urban finds in these seemingly innocent publications covert expressions of Jewish protest and resistence. Written in a conservative idiom that concealed their political import, the anthologies present models of spiritual self-assertion in a time when political emancipation was rescinded and more direct forms of expression were all but impossible. Strauss’ hermeneutic is one facet of Urban’s work. The other is his thorough-going critique of modernity, especially that of the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah and its liberal ethos, as exemplified by Hermann Cohen and Julius Guttman. Although none of Strauss’ contemporaries were as radical critics of liberalism as Strauss was, the anthologists shared his view that Maimonides’ philosophy of law provided a vital check on the universalist claims of reason. Maimonides was, in that regard, the best resource for them to call upon in addressing their theologico-political predicament. Urban’s essay studies three anthologies, one edited by Nahum Glatzer and Ludwig Strauss, one by Alexander Altmann, and one by Nahum Glatzer. She carefully situates their calculated use of the conservative idiom of their adversaries and discloses its subtle subversion in the nuanced translations and the specific selections the volumes provide. Specifically, the anthologists deployed Heidegger’s philosophical terminology and Schmitt’s political existentialist idiom, so as to appear to confine themselves to the parochial constraints permitted. Yet, even as the darkness of tragedy closed in on their readers, they used the very particularity of the Torah as an ethical check on the arrogance of power to affirm a liberal Jewish humanism. Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s appropriation of Maimonides provides the focal point of Paul Mendes-Flohr’s essay, “Maimonides in the Crucible of Zionism: Reflections on Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s Negative Theology.” Unlike the anthologists who saw Jewish destiny in terms of suffering and who endowed passivity

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with a transhistorical ethical value, Yeshayahu Leibowitz engaged in an active political critique of both secular and religious institutions, meant precisely to safeguard the holy from desecration. A staunch advocate of the separation of religion from politics, Leibowitz made Maimonides his ever-present source. He condemned as idolatry the political exploitation of religious symbols and the religious exploitation of political power. But the Maimonides who inspires Leibowitz and who is the subject of Mendes-Flohr’s essay, is radically at odds with the thinking of Leo Strauss, the exemplary academic reader of Maimonides, whom Leibowitz overtly challenges. It is the vision of Maimonides as a proto-humanist modern Jew who views politics as a moral force to advance social justice that is the target of Leibowitz’s most ardent criticism. For Leibowitz, Maimonides was not the rational philosopher but the religious man. It is in the tension between the renunciation of political power and the simultaneous engagement in political critique that Mendes-Flohr locates an apparent paradox in Leibowitz’s thought, a paradox which the chapter seeks to resolve through an analogy with the dialectical theology of Karl Barth. Despite Leibowitz’s polemics against popular religion, in his campaign to purge it of anthropomorphism and idolatry, and despite his insistence that true religious consciousness is apolitical and radically private, Leibowitz, like Maimonides, finds a social and indeed instrumental role in the commandments, as a clear expression of the communal locus of Judaism. For to be a Jew is to be a member of the community of Israel, responsive and responsible to one’s fellow Israelites. Still, all social engagement is but a preparation for the attainment of true perfection. In the end, as Mendes-Flohr notes, Leibowitz’s polemics against anthropocentric values and against what he takes to be a wrongheaded, humanistic view of justice manifest his profound commitment to a religious humanism and a higher vision of a humane and just Israel. The final chapter, by David Novak, looks to the future, asking in what sense it is possible for us to be Maimonideans today. Understanding the Jewishness of a thinker’s work to be manifested most clearly in a commitment to the canonical texts of the Jewish tradition, Novak identifies the intended audience of the Guide as committed Jews who are troubled by the seeming dissonance of philosophy (as constituted in Maimonides’ day) with that canonical tradition. Christians and Muslims too might profit from study of this work—as, in fact, they have. But Novak doubts that atheists will find much in Maimonides that is of use to them, if atheists are those who feel so sensitized to talk of God that they bridle at the very mention of the name. And similarly, he doubts that secularists, those who find no relevance in the very idea of a revealed law, will be able to profit much from the scriptural jurisprudence that pervades Maimonides’ ethical, religious, and halakhic work. Focusing on Maimonides’ bold assertion that the Torah is a divine creation, Novak glosses that idea as at once denying that the Torah is somehow

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cosmic, extra-natural and ahistorical and denying that it is merely a human artifact, a human invention. The biblical laws, on this account, are historically conditioned, to be sure. But they are also (like all creation) expressions of God’s transcendent will and wisdom. They call upon us not only to contemplate God’s perfection but also to emulate his grace, generosity, and creativity, insofar as in us lies. With these thoughts in mind, Novak invokes a sharp distinction between seeking reasons for the commandments (which he takes to suggest that the practical obligation is primary and essential, the purposes proposed being mere “afterthoughts,” ex post facto and more or less arbitrary rationales) and the more authentic quest for reasons of the commandments, that is, approaches to the divine goodness that the system of the mitzvot laid out in the Torah seeks to articulate as a way of life for its recipients, real expressions of God’s creative wisdom and rational will. Moses, then, can be seen as grasping “all the commandments a priori by virtue of knowing their true origins in God’s purpose,” while lesser prophets and students of prophecy trail after, “in an a posteriori way, first experiencing the commandment and then inferring from that experience what seems to be the reason or explanation for its having been commanded by God”— although the rabbinic Sages, relying on their own profound grasp of the reasons of the commandments could operate as if a priori. (Hence Maimonides’ attribution to them of an authority like that of the prophets whose revealed law they expound.) Returning to the question of his essay’s title, “Can We Be Maimonideans Today?” Novak offers a qualified affirmative: If being a Maimonidean means accepting the body of his opinions categorically and uncritically, that clearly seems to be both impossible and undesirable. If it means adopting the substance of his teleological cosmology, complete with the celestial spheres, animated by supernal, disembodied intelligences, that seems irretrievably out of reach. And so much the better. For as Maimonides himself says, when the Rabbis say “the Sages of the nations triumph,” they mean that one must accept the findings of science as to the constitution of nature. But if we restrict the purchase of Maimonides’ teleological vision “to the domain of human existence, especially in its social and religious manifestations,” Novak concludes, then a Maimonidean outlook remains possible and even valuable: regarding nature, “our best strategy might be to seek to constitute the natural world as a place hospitable to purposeful human existence.” We might not be able “to constitute human existence within a larger teleological natural order. “Recognition of that fact might actually lead us back toward a more biblical view of the human role in the cosmos. For human beings are the only creatures said to be made in the image of God.”

Abbreviations

CCARJ GW HPQ HTR HUCA JAOS JHI JHP JJTP JPS JQR JSQ JSS JTS LCL MGWJ MT PAAJR TdIE TTP

Central Conference of American Rabbis Journal Maimon, Gesammelte Werke History of Philosophy Quarterly Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of the History of Ideas Journal of the History of Philosophy Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy Jewish Publication Society Jewish Quarterly Review Jewish Studies Quarterly Journal of Semitic Studies Jewish Theological Seminary Loeb Classical Library Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums Maimonides, Mishneh Torah Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research Spinoza, Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Multivolume works are cited by volume and page number thus, Ginzburg, 5.34 refers to page 34 in volume 5 of Legends of the Jews. Maimonides’ Guide is cited by part and chapter: III 51. The Mishneh Torah is cited as MT by volume (Roman numeral) and tractate (Roman numeral in small capitals), tractate title, chapter, and article (Arabic numerals). Thus MT XIV v Laws of Kings and Wars, 6.8–10, refers to volume fourteen of Maimonides’ Code, Tractate five, titled The Laws of Kings and Wars, chapter six, articles eight through ten. Citations from Spinoza’s Ethics are as follows: E2P17S, for Ethics Part II, Proposition 17, Scholium.

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ONE

Maimonides as Biblical Exegete Arthur Hyman

One of the striking features of Maimonides’ oeuvre is that he did not write any purely philosophic work. In this he differed markedly from such predecessors as al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and his contemporary Averroës, who wrote a variety of commentaries on Aristotelian works, as well as philosophic encyclopedias and independent philosophic treatises. As reason for such lack of interest, Maimonides maintained that the existing philosophic literature in Arabic is adequate for anyone having an interest in pure philosophy. Maimonides writes in Guide II 2: Know that my purpose in this Treatise of mine was not to compose something on natural science, or to make an epitome of notions pertaining to the divine science according to some doctrine or to demonstrate what has been demonstrated in them

and he continues for the books composed concerning these matters [he has in mind works composed by Arabic philosophers] are adequate. If, however, they should turn out not to be adequate with regard to some subject, that which I shall say concerning that subject will not be superior to everything that has been said about it.1

From this statement and the lack of any purely philosophic works by Maimonides, with the exception of a Treatise on the Art of Logic,2 the question may be asked: If the Guide to the Perplexed is not a philosophic work, to what type of literature does it belong? In answer to this question I wish to propose that it is best understood as a commentary on the Bible—although it must be spelled out what kind of commentary it is—and that it is addressed to Jews. Beyond that I wish to argue that even Maimonides’ halakhic works, the Sefer 1

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A RT H U R H Y M A N

ha-Mitzvot and the Mishneh Torah are essentially based on the Bible rather than on the rabbinic literature. The question may then be asked why the Bible is so central to Maimonides’ thought. I wish to suggest that the answer to this question lies in Maimonides’ theory of prophecy and specifically in his description of the prophecy of Moses. It may be affirmed generally that, for Maimonides, the Bible provides direct guidance for the practical, as well as intellectual, life of every Jew. That the Bible, rather than the rabbinic literature, is the major guide for Jewish life emerges, first of all, from his Sefer ha-Mitzvot (Book of Commandments), a work in which Maimonides enumerates the commandments of which Jewish tradition speaks.3 At the beginning of the work, setting down the principles that guide his enumeration of the commandments, he states emphatically that rabbinic ordinances are to be excluded from this enumeration. In enunciating this principle he takes issue with the author of the Halakhot G’dolot, a pre-Maimonidean code, who counts such rabbinic ordinances as the lighting of Hanukkah candles and the reading of the Megillah on Purim among the biblically ordained commandments. For Maimonides, rabbinic ordinances are still obligatory, but the biblical commandments are fundamental. In support of this opinion, Maimonides cites the biblical verse “torah tzivah lanu Mosheh, morashah K’hillat Ya‘akov” “Moses commanded us the Torah, an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob” (Deuteronomy 33:4). According to the rabbinic interpretation, the numerical value of the letters of the word torah equals 611. If to this number is added the numerical value 2, for the first two of the Ten Commandments, which the Jewish people heard directly from the mouth of God, the total number of the commandments in the Torah is 613. On the basis of the biblical verse, with its emphasis on Torah and the rabbinic interpretation of the verse, Maimonides concludes that the 613 commandments of which the tradition speaks must all be biblical. So he states in the Sefer ha-Mitzvot, as the first of the fourteen principles on which his enumeration is based, that “it is not fitting to count within this enumeration commandments that are rabbinic.”4 A similar reliance on the Bible appears in Maimonides’ Code, the Mishneh Torah. For the work is organized on the same scheme that Maimonides had used in Sefer ha-Mitzvot. Hence, at the outset of the work,5 he once again lists the biblical commandments on which the work is based, and he begins his exposition of each group of laws with the biblical commandments on which the laws to be discussed are founded. In composing the Mishneh Torah, “in plain language and terse style so that the entire oral law might become systematically known to all,” he works from the biblical foundation to the rabbinic elaboration. He concludes: I have entitled this work Mishneh Torah, so that a person who first reads the written law and then this compilation will know from it the whole oral law, without having occasion to consult any other book between them.6

M A I MON I DE S A S B I B L ICA L E X EGE T E

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Turning now to the Guide to the Perplexed, we find that Maimonides states that the first purpose of this work is to explain the meaning of biblical terms and that its second purpose is to explain the meaning of obscure biblical parables. He writes in the introduction to the Guide: “The first purpose of this Treatise is to explain the meaning of certain terms occurring in the books of prophecy [the Bible].”7 A little later in the introduction he writes: “This Treatise [the Guide] has a second purpose: namely, the explanation of very obscure parables, occurring in the books of the prophets, but not explicitly identified there as such.”8 Invoking a distinction between those who have also studied philosophy and ordinary people (including those who only study the legal portions of the Bible and rabbinic law), Maimonides distinguishes the modes of exegesis appropriate for each group. He says in the introduction to the Guide that the work is written not only for those who have philosophic training but also for “the vulgar, the beginners in speculation and those who have not engaged in any study other than the science of the law.”9 Such tyros have studied only the legal portions of the Law. Accordingly, Maimonides opens his work with an exposition of difficult biblical terms and parables, primarily those that describe God in anthropomorphic terms. One of the major themes of Maimonides’ philosophy is that anthropomorphic and anthropopathic terms predicated of God must be understood, even by ordinary people, non-anthropomorphically, that is, spiritually. In expressing this opinion Maimonides differed fundamentally from his contemporary Averroës who, in his Decisive Treatise Determining the Connection between Religion and Philosophy,10 urged that one should not expect ordinary people to think of God in incorporeal terms. Invoking the Qur’ānic story in which Muḥammad declared a slave woman to be a believer because she held that God is in heaven, although that implied a physical notion of God, Averroës argued that to require ordinary persons to hold a noncorporeal conception of God brought them to unbelief, since ordinary people can conceive only of corporeal beings as existent. Maimonides’ difference with Averroës here is not just theological but also psychological. Averroës believes that ordinary people cannot understand that incorporeal beings exist. To teach them that God does not have a body or corporeal attributes leads them to unbelief. Maimonides, by contrast, insists not only that ordinary people can understand that God does not possess a body or any corporeal attributes, but that to leave them in the belief that God has a body or any corporeal attributes is to leave them in unbelief. Thus, in all his writings, halakhic and philosophical, Maimonides makes it a fundamental principle that even ordinary persons must understand that God cannot properly be described by corporeal attributes. In Guide I 35, for example, he writes: Just as it behooves [one] to bring up children in the belief, and to proclaim to the multitude, that God, may He be magnified and honored, is one and

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none but He is to be worshipped, so it behooves [one to require] that they should be made to accept on traditional authority (‘al derekh ha-kabbalah) the belief that God is not a body and that there is absolutely no likeness in any respect whatever between Him and the things created by Him.11

That corporeal attributes cannot be predicated of God and that He is unlike any of His creatures are fundamental principles of Maimonides’ thought. How strongly Maimonides believed that even ordinary people must think of God in noncorporeal terms is also clear from his halakhic writings. For example, he lists as the third of the thirteen principles which every Jew is required to believe, that God is incorporeal. This principle, according to the Introduction to Pereq Ḥeleq, requires: The denial of corporeality [to God], namely that we believe that the unitary being that we have mentioned [God] is neither a body nor a power in a body and that no corporeal accidents, such as motion, rest, and place belong to Him, either essentially or accidentally.12

Even more severely, he counts among heretics (minim) one who believes in the existence of God, yet maintains that He has a body or a physical shape (Mishneh Torah Hilkhot T’shuvah 3.15).13 For corporeal attributes would introduce multiplicity in God, and that would be a form of idolatry. Similarly he writes in Guide I 36: I do not consider as an infidel one who cannot demonstrate that the corporeality of God should be negated. But I do consider as an infidel one who does not believe in its negation; and this particularly in view of the existence of the interpretation of Onqelos and of Jonathan ben Uziel [the traditional authors of authoritative Aramaic translations of the Torah] . . . who cause their readers to keep away as far as possible from the belief in the corporeality of God.14

The first step in Maimonides’ battle against anthropomorphism comes in his biblical exegesis. He seeks to show that even in the Bible anthropomorphic terms can have a nonanthropomorphic meaning, and he generalizes the point, taking it as legitimate to interpret all biblical anthropomorphisms in a nonanthropomorphic way. The resulting understanding is accessible even to those with no philosophic training. In chapter 11 of his Treatise on the Art of Logic Maimonides discusses the varieties of equivocal terms.15 He distinguishes six cases: completely equivocal terms, univocal terms, amphibolous terms, terms used in general and particular, metaphorical terms, and extended terms. Terms, like ‘animal’ apply univocally to man, horse, scorpion, and fish. For all these belong to the animal kind. These are inapplicable to God, since their univocal application requires some common genus, species, or common difference, whereas God and His creatures have no common genus, species, or differentia. Similarly, terms used in general and particular, like the Arabic


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kawkab and the Hebrew kokhav, which in their general sense refer to any star and in a particular sense refer to Mercury, cannot be applied to God, since they refer to a genus and a member of one of its species, whereas God and His creatures cannot have this relation. Finally, extended terms, like the Arabic ṣalāṭ and the Hebrew t’fillah, which at first refer to any request and later to prayer, a specific request, are inapplicable to God since these terms are related as a species to certain of its members. But God and His creatures cannot have this relation. This brings us to the three kinds of equivocal terms that can be predicated of both God and creatures. These are terms that do not refer to an essential attribute but involve a mere nominal likeness or some accidental attribute. An example of the first such kind is ‘ayin, which in both Hebrew and Arabic signifies the eye that sees as well as to the spring of water. Such completely equivocal terms have only a name in common, not any property. These are the most likely candidates for application to God and creatures. Amphibolous terms like ‘man,’ applied to Zayd (Reuben in the Hebrew), a certain man, to his corpse, and to his picture, do relate to the notion of a human being. But their connection is accidental and not of the essence. Third come metaphorical terms, like the Arabic al-’asad and the Hebrew aryeh, whose first meaning refers to a lion but which have a derived sense applicable to a courageous human being. As with amphibolous terms, the common factor is not of the essence. While his exegetical method permits Maimonides to interpret anthropomorphic terms predicated of God and creatures in a non–anthropomorphic sense and thereby to resolve the anthropomorphism, it does not solve the problem of the likeness between God and creatures. For terms predicated amphibolously and metaphorically still imply some point of comparison between God and creatures. To address this problem Maimonides must turn to the philosophic interpretation of such terms. His solution is to hold that accidental attributes predicated of God must be understood as attributes of action,16 while essential attributes predicated of God must be understood as negations, or, more correctly, as negations of privations.17 But Maimonides does not require this kind of precision of ordinary people. Maimonides shows similar leniency toward predicates expressive of passions or emotions, such as ‘merciful’ or ‘angry.’ From a strictly philosophical perspective such attributes cannot be predicated positively of God, since passions or emotions imply a change in the person of whom they are predicated. From a philosophic perspective they must be understood as attributes of action. While a philosophically trained person must be aware of this, Maimonides does not stress it as necessary for the ordinary person. In Guide I 35 he says that the addressee of the work, who has philosophic training, must understand that God is not subject to emotions or passions, but concedes that this truth need not be taught to an ordinary person.18 Similarly, he does not make God’s lack of emotions or passions one of his thirteen principles. Finally

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he states in Guide III 28 that it is permissible, at least for ordinary persons, to think of God as having anger, a passion, in order that people, particularly ordinary people, will obey the Torah. Let us examine two examples that show how Maimonides applied the philological distinctions presented in his Treatise on the Art of Logic to his biblical exegesis. The first is taken from Guide I 2, where Maimonides interprets the story of the Garden of Eden. According to Genesis, God forbade Adam and Eve to eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Having been tempted by the serpent, they eat from the tree and come to know good and evil, a knowledge that they did not previously possess. Maimonides addresses an interpretation that, in receiving the knowledge of good and evil and thereby becoming like elohim, Adam and Eve seem to have been rewarded, not punished, for their transgression. Maimonides undertakes to show that, in fact, Adam and Eve were punished not rewarded. He begins his exegesis by citing Onqelos’ interpretation of the passage, according to which the meaning of elohim is ravrevaya’, that is, ruler. Maimonides reasons, following Onqelos, that the term elohim is a wholly equivocal term that can mean both God and ruler. The clever serpent draws upon this equivocation in the term elohim. The serpent suggests to Eve that, after eating from the tree, she and Adam will become like elohim, intending them to take this to mean “like God.” The serpent, however, is aware that the term, elohim, is equivocal and knows that they will become like elohim, in the sense of rulers, an inferior state. In becoming like rulers, Adam and Eve acquire practical knowledge, knowledge of good and evil, losing the privileged status they had prior to eating from the tree. They no longer live according to theoretical knowledge alone. On Maimonides’ interpretation, becoming like elohim, rulers, is a punishment rather than a reward. An example of an amphibolous use of a term is provided in Guide I 3, where Maimonides criticizes persons who suppose that, in biblical usage, t’munah is to be understood only as figure, or physical shape. Against this opinion, Maimonides argues that t’munah is an amphibolous term with different meanings in different biblical passages. In one sense t’munah does refer to the figure or physical shape of an object, as when Deuteronomy 4:25 prohibits the making of a graven image or figure of anything (pesel t’munat kol). In another sense, however, t’munah refers to an imaginary form. For example, in Job 4:13, Eliphaz speaks of a night vision that appeared to him, a phantasm. He states that he could not discern the appearance of its figure (mar’ehu t’munah). This passage opens the way to a second meaning of t’munah, as an imaginary form. Finally, the term t’munah refers to the nonphysical essence or nature of something, as is apparent in Numbers 12 and its declaration that the prophecy of Moses is essentially different from that of other prophets. To other prophets, God appeared in a vision (mar’eh) or in a dream (ḥalom), both physical appearances, whereas Moses beholds the t’munah of God. Maimonides interprets this to mean that Moses understood the truth about God


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by way of the intellect, not the senses or the imagination. In the light of this interpretation, Maimonides interprets all biblical passages in which the term t’munah is applied to God as referring to an intellectual, nonanthropomorphic, truth about God rather than to a physical appearance. This brings us to the section of the Guide addressed to people who have studied philosophy. We can now ask how Maimonides uses his philosophical interpretation of the Bible to resolve the perplexities, or better, the indecisions, of such people. Any interpreter must bring a set of principles to this task. For Maimonides, in the Guide, these principles stem from philosophical ideas and modes of argument. In its introduction he describes its addressee as having two characteristics: He is “a religious man for whom our Law has become established in his soul and has become actual in his belief, who is perfect in his religion and character.”19 Nevertheless, having “studied the sciences of the philosophers and come to know what they signify,” he has become perplexed about the meaning of equivocal, metaphorical, and amphibolous terms appearing in scripture and, beyond that, about the concepts suggested there. Maimonides wants to help such a person see that there is no necessary conflict between biblical and philosophic ideas. Thus, in both his philosophic and halakhic writings, Maimonides identifies the biblical account of creation, Ma‘aseh B’reshit, with philosophical physics. He identifies the biblical description of the divine throne, Ma‘aseh Merkavah, with philosophical metaphysics. The Guide, Maimonides promises, will reveal “the science of the Law in its true sense,” helping to resolve, for this student of philosophy, what he had set out to resolve for the ordinary believer by linguistic means. Maimonides’ method proceeds in two steps. He first counters fallacious philosophic arguments, showing that the arguments for the existence of God, His unity and incorporeality proposed by Kalām thinkers are fallacious.20 However, in such cases as these, correct demonstrative arguments can be found. In another case, Maimonides shows that Kalām arguments for the creation of the world are not simply fallacious. No demonstrative arguments for the creation or eternity of the world are possible. The second step of Maimonides’ method is to establish a correct interpretation of the biblical text by means of correct philosophic arguments. That philosophic arguments in the Guide are a form of biblical interpretation becomes very clear in Maimonides’ discussion of creation. He states in Guide II 25 that, were it possible to demonstrate the eternity of the world, he would have readily interpreted biblical verses accordingly, just as he assigned non–anthropomorphic meanings to the Bible’s anthropomorphic terms.21 The difference is that in the case of anthropomorphic verses there were demonstrative arguments that God does not possess a body, while for the world’s eternity no such arguments exist. Maimonides devotes thirteen chapters (Guide II 13–25) to proving this point. In Guide II 19, he shows that Aristotle himself did not think he had demonstrative arguments for the eternity of the world. Even Aristotle recognized, according to Maimonides, that

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arguments for the eternity of the world were only dialectical. Nevertheless, Aristotle found the arguments for the eternity of the world that he offered more persuasive than arguments for creation. Against Aristotle’s eternalism, Maimonides presents arguments based on astronomical observations designed to show that irregularities in astronomical phenomena show that the world in fact was created. It is unlikely that Maimonides would devote thirteen rather sophisticated chapters in his Guide to showing that the world was created if he really believed in the eternity of the world and, further, that his arguments for creation were simply a concession to the imagination of ordinary believers. It would seem to follow that Maimonides uses a variety of philosophic syllogisms as means of biblical interpretation. One does well to turn to the Treatise on the Art of Logic for an analysis of such syllogisms and to the Guide for examples of this kind of interpretation.22 Maimonides, like other medieval logicians, divided syllogisms into different kinds. There are, first of all, demonstrative syllogisms, described in the Treatise as syllogisms the premises of which are certain. These are the surest syllogisms and are accepted by all rational beings. There are also dialectical syllogisms, based on conventions. Conventional premises are known among one people but not among another. The acceptability of a premise that is known among many people is stronger than one that is known among few. However Maimonides seems to hold that dialectical syllogisms are cognitively significant, presenting a truth, even though these syllogisms are less certain than those produced by demonstration. There are also rhetorical syllogisms, the premises of which belong to tradition. Less certain than apodictic or even dialectical syllogisms, rhetorical syllogisms are still cognitively significant. Maimonides’ major point seems to be that all three forms of syllogism are cognitively significant, although they differ in degree of certainty. Thus, all three forms are useful for interpreting biblical concepts for those who have philosophic training. In light of the distinctions of the three kinds of syllogisms, we find that few concepts are demonstrated apodictically in the Guide. It seems that Maimonides’ literary device for indicating that an argument is apodictic is that he presents the argument anonymously. The only arguments of this kind in the Guide seem to be those that he presents for the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God in Guide II 1. He does not present philosophic arguments in support of the premises on which these demonstrations are based. He gives the conclusions of the arguments, referring the reader once again to the general philosophic literature existing in Arabic for their proof. Listing twenty five propositions on which philosophical proofs for the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God are based, he writes in the Introduction to Guide II, “Aristotle and the Peripatetics after him have come forward with a demonstration for every one of [the propositions he lists].”23 We have already noted that the argument for creation is dialectical, but it appears that arguments for prophecy, providence, and similar topics are


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dialectical as well. Once again, there is a literary device that Maimonides uses to indicate that an argument is dialectical: For the concept under discussion, he presents a variety of opinions that have been held, with arguments for each opinion. He then presents his own opinion, showing that the arguments supporting his view are more likely or more persuasive than the arguments for the views with which he disagrees. On divine providence, for instance, he begins by presenting the position of Epicurus, who denied providence altogether, whether general or particular, and held that everything happens by chance.24 Next, he presents the opinion of Aristotle, according to whom the species are determined by the laws of nature while individuals are left to chance. Then he discusses the opinion of the Ash‘arites, who held that everything is determined directly by the will of God. Finally he mentions the Mu‘tazilites, who present human beings as having free choice and believe that divine providence extends not only to human beings but also to animals and inanimate creatures. Having listed these four views, Maimonides argues that the opinion of Epicurus has been disproved philosophically. But he allows that there is some truth in the opinions of Aristotle, the Ash‘arites, and the Mu‘tazilites. Nevertheless, these opinions are inferior to the one he proposes. Aristotle based his opinion on the nature of what exists, the Ash‘arites developed their view so as not to have to ascribe to God any kind of ignorance or lack of power, and the Mu‘tazilites derive their view from the assumption that God is just, for it is unjust to punish someone whose actions are compelled. However, the Mu‘tazilites go too far in extending God’s providence to animals and inanimate things. In this case Aristotle is right in ascribing what happens to animals and inanimate things to chance. Maimonides’ own opinion is that divine providence exists, but it extends only to human beings. The effect of divine providence, even in humans, is greater or lesser, according to the degree of an individual’s intellectual development. Maimonides goes on to show that this is known by human reason, as well as by the Law of Moses. Describing his own opinion that divine providence extends only to human individuals, and not to animals or inanimate subjects, Maimonides writes in Guide III 17: In this belief . . . I am not relying upon the conclusion to which demonstration has led me, but upon what has clearly appeared as the intention of the book of God and the books of our prophets. This opinion, which I believe, is less disgraceful than the preceding opinions [the three mentioned] and nearer than they to intellectual reasoning.25

Maimonides then presents arguments in support of his opinion. Again pointing to the inadequacy of the three opinions he rejects, Maimonides describes his opinion as one that “corresponds to the intelligible and to the text of the law.”26 While Maimonides does not describe the nature of the argument as dialectical, it is clear that it is in agreement with his description of dialectical arguments in the Treatise on the Art of Logic.

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As a final point, I wish to argue that the congruence of philosophy and the Law of Moses, the Torah, emerges from Maimonides’ description of the prophecy of Moses.27 According to this description, which occurs in his Commentary on the Mishnah28 and in his Mishneh Torah29 and to which he alludes in Guide II 39, the prophecy of Moses is distinguished from the prophecy of other prophets in four respects. The most significant of these differences is that “the prophets other than Moses received prophecy in an allegory or riddle, while Moses received his prophecy clearly and lucidly.” From this description it follows, as Maimonides states, that Moses’ prophecy was rooted in the intellect alone, while the prophecy of the other prophets depended on the human imagination and the senses. Describing the prophecy of Moses in the seventh of his thirteen principles, Maimonides wrote: “There remained no veil he did not rend and penetrate, nothing physical to hold him back, no deficiency, great or small, to confuse him. All his powers of sense and imagination were suppressed, and pure reason alone remained.”30 Thus, the Law of Moses, the Torah, is as close to reason, that is philosophy, as any law can be. This closeness leads Maimonides to emphasize, in his legal writings, that halakhah is based primarily on the Torah, rather than on rabbinic deductions. For the same reason, he relies on the philological considerations laid out in the Treatise on the Art of Logic for his interpretation of the Bible for the masses; it is in this way that he can bring their understanding of the biblical text, and particularly their understanding of the nature of God, closer to philosophic truth. Finally, syllogisms listed in the Treatise on the Art of Logic—again philosophic arguments—make it possible for him to show the religious person who has studied philosophy that no contradiction exists between biblical teachings, correctly interpreted, and philosophic truths. NOTES 1. Citations of the Guide are from the Arabic, Dalālaṭ-al-Hā’irīn, ed. I. Joel, 176; the medieval Hebrew, Moreh Nevukhim, trans. Ibn Tibbon, 220–221; the modern Hebrew, trans. Schwarz, 268; and the English, trans. Pines, 253. For a general bibliography of Maimonides as a biblical exegete, see Jacob I. Dienstag, “Biblical Exegesis of Maimonides in Jewish Scholarship.” For various categories of Maimonidean biblical exegesis, see Shalom Rosenberg, “‘Al Parshanut ha-Miqra’ be-Sefer ha-Moreh.” 2. The Maimonidean authorship of The Treatise has been challenged recently by Herbert Davidson, Moses Maimonides, 313–322. For a reply to Davidson, see Ahmad Asnawi, “Réflexions sur la terminologie logique de Maimonide et son contexte farabien,” esp. 69–78. 3. Sefer ha-Mitzvot, trans. Moses Ibn Tibbon, 5–7; in English, The Book of Commandments, 2.368–73. 4. Sefer ha-Mitzvot, 5; English, 2.368.


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5. MT, ed. S. Frankel, 5–21; Hebrew and English, ed. and trans. M. Hyamson, 5a-17b; Judaeo-Arabic and Modern Hebrew, ed. and trans. J. Kafih, 9–12. 6. MT, ed. Frankel, 4; ed. Hyamson, 4b; ed. Kafih, 9. 7. Guide, ed. Joel, 2; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 4; trans. Schwarz, 9; trans. Pines, 5. 8. Guide, ed. Joel, 2; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 5; trans. Schwarz, 11; trans. Pines, 6. 9. Guide, ed. Joel, 2; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 4; trans. Schwarz, 10; trans. Pines, 5. 10. Averroës, The Decisive Treatise Determining the Connection between the Law and Wisdom, trans. G. F. Hourani, 59–60; Arabic, with English trans. by Charles E. Butterworth, 19–20. 11. Guide, ed. Joel, 54; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 69; trans. Schwarz, 83; trans. Pines, 70–71. 12. Haqdamot ha-Rambam la-Mishnah, ed. Y. Shailat, 370 (Arabic), 141 (Hebrew); English translation in A Maimonides Reader, ed. I. Twersky, 418. The translation here is my own. 13. MT, ed. Frankel, 199; ed. Hyamson, 84b. 14. Guide, ed. Joel, 57; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 72–73; trans. Schwarz, 87–88; trans. Pines, 85. 15. Arabic: ed. Israel Efros, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 34 (1966), 35–38. Medieval Hebrew: trans. Mosheh Ibn Tibbon, ed. Israel Efros, 57–59 and English: trans. Israel Efros, 59–61. For a further discussion of this chapter in the Treatise on the Art of Logic, see H.A. Wolfson, “Maimonides’ Division of Attributes”; Wolfson, “The Amphibolous Terms in Aristotle, Arabic Philosophy, and Maimonides”; Wolfson, “Maimonides on Negative Attributes.” 16. Guide I 52–53: ed. Joel, 80–83; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 101–104; trans. Schwarz, 123–229; trans. Pines, 118–223. 17. Guide I 58. 18. Guide, ed. Joel, 54–55; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 69–70; trans. Schwarz, 84–85; trans. Pines, 81. 19. Guide Introduction: ed. Joel, 2; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 4; trans. Schwarz, 10–11; trans. Pines, 5. 20. Guide I 73–76. 21. Guide, ed. Joel, 229; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 286; trans. Schwarz, 341–342; trans. Pines, 327–328. 22. Treatise on the Art of Logic, chapter 8. Arabic: 21–24; Medieval Hebrew: 39– 42, English: 47–49. For a further discussion of the topics of this chapter, see Arthur Hyman, “Demonstrative, Dialectical, and Sophistic Arguments in the Philosophy of Maimonides.” 23. Guide, ed. Joel, 165; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 205; trans. Schwarz, 249; trans. Pines, 235. 24. Guide III 17. 25. Guide, ed. Joel, 340; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 427; trans. Schwarz, 480; trans. Pines, 471.

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26. Guide, ed. Joel, 342; trans. Ibn Tibbon, 431; trans. Schwarz, 483; trans. Pines, 474. 27. For a fuller and more nuanced discussion of Moses and the Law of Moses, see Kalman P. Bland, “Moses and the Law according to Maimonides.” 28. Introduction to Pereq Ḥeleq, Haqdamot ha-Rambam la-Mishnah, 371–372 (Arabic), 142–244 (Hebrew); A Maimonides Reader, 419–420. 29. MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 8, ed. Frankel, 60–61; ed. Hyamson, 43a. 30. Introduction to Pereq Ḥeleq, Haqdamot ha-Rambam la-Mishnah, 371 (Arabic), 142 (Hebrew); A Maimonides Reader, 409. Translated here after Weiss, as anthologized in Twersky.

TWO

Philosophical Themes in Maimonides’ Sefer Ahavah Menachem Kellner

I N T RO D U C T I O N

In Maimonides’ vision Judaism was a remarkably naturalistic religion yet one that assigns its followers significant responsibility.1 Their actions are conceived as gateways to a philosophy, which in turn is understood to hold the deepest meaning of the Torah. That philosophy, for Maimonides, was best expressed in the vocabulary of the neoplatonic Aristotelianism that Maimonides saw as one of the highest expressions of the human spirit. This Judaism was at once deeply elitist and profoundly universalist. Maimonides was moved to crystallize his vision of Judaism by his concern that the religion, in his day, had become debased and paganized. A kind of philosophical nominalism and an emphasis on God’s transcendence led Maimonides to treat in practical terms many notions that other religious thinkers might see as representing realities or actual properties of things. Among the entities that Maimonides sought to dehypostasize or demystify were holiness, ritual purity, and impurity, the Hebrew language, the land of Israel, the people of Israel, the divine glory (kavod), the divine presence (sh’khinah), angels, and sin. For him the distinctions between the holy and the profane, the ritually pure and impure, the permissible and impermissible, and especially the Jew and Gentile were institutional, social, and historical, not ontological. In each of these areas Maimonides implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) critiques important facets of the regnant rabbinic culture of his day. Focusing on that critique allows us to understand that Maimonides’ overall aim in his writings was not simply to harmonize philosophy and Torah, as is often said, but to use philosophy to purify a corrupted, paganized distortion of Torah. The Judaism that Maimonides sought to purify was that of the ancient mystical 13

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M ENACH EM K ELLN ER

tradition, which found its most sophisticated expression before Maimonides in the Kuzari of Judah Halevi and later in the writings of Moses Naḥmanides and the Kabbalists.2 L OV E O F G O D I N T H E S E F E R A H AVA H

Maimonides might not know quite how to answer if we asked him whether he thought a Jew should lead a spiritual life. But if asked how a Jew ought to lead a holy life, he would have an answer, one that he elucidates in the Mishneh Torah. The holy life, he would say, both makes possible and is made possible by love of God. Maimonides calls the second of the Mishneh Torah’s fourteen books Sefer Ahavah (The Book of Love). It contains six treatises or sections: Hilkhot K’ri’at Sh’ma‘ (Laws Concerning the Recitation of the Shema) Hilkhot T’fillah (Laws Concerning Prayer and the Priestly Blessing) Hilkhot Sefer Torah (Laws Concerning Phylacteries, Mezuzah, and the Torah scroll) Hilkhot Tzitzit (Laws Concerning the Fringed Garment) Hilkhot B’rakhot (Laws Concerning Blessings) Hilkhot Milah (Laws Concerning Circumcision)

In the Introduction to the Mishneh Torah Maimonides explains that he has included in its second book all the commandments which we have been commanded to fulfill constantly so that we love God and be ever mindful of God, such as: recitation of the Shema, prayer, phylacteries, and the priestly blessing. Circumcison is included among them since it is a mark in our flesh serving as a constant reminder, even when there are no phylacteries or fringes, etc. I have called this book Sefer Ahavah.

The Sefer Ahavah thus includes those commandments which are fulfilled continually and both express and stimulate love of God. That theme finds expression in the two places in which Maimonides discusses the Sefer Ahavah in the Guide to the Perplexed. In the first of these, he writes: The ninth class [of commandments] comprises all the other practices of worship prescribed to everybody [viz., Israelites as well as Priests and Levites] such as prayer and the recitation of the Shema and other things we have enumerated in the Sefer Ahavah . . . The utility of this class is manifest, for it is wholly composed of works that fortify opinions concerning the love of the deity and what ought to be believed about Him and ascribed to Him.3

In III 44, Maimonides characterizes the book as follows:

PH I LOS OPH ICA L T H E M E S I N SE F E R A H AVA H

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The commandments comprised in the ninth class are the commandments that we have enumerated in the Sefer Ahavah. All of them have manifest reasons and evident causes. I mean that the end of these actions pertaining to divine service is the constant commemoration of God, the love of Him and the fear of Him, the obligatory observance of the commandments in general, and the bringing about of such belief concerning Him, may He be exalted, as is necessary for everyone professing the Law. Those commandments are: prayer, the recital of the Shema, the blessing after food and what is connected with it, the priestly blessing, phylacteries, mezuzah, acquiring a Torah scroll and reading it at certain times. All these are actions that bring about useful opinions. (Pines, 574)

The Sefer Ahavah, then, includes acts of worship incumbent on all Jews. Since these practices strengthen love and awe of God and teach sound ideas about God, they are eminently justified. The emphasis here is on worship, not as reflecting love of God but as instilling it and teaching true doctrines. Given what Maimonides says in the Guide to the Perplexed, it is strange that he chooses as his motto for the Sefer Ahavah the verse, O how I love Your Torah! It is my study all day long (Psalms 119:97) and not a verse like You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (Deuteronomy 6:5).4 A possible reason is that for Maimonides love of God is consequent on knowledge of God, which knowledge, in turn, arises from study of the Torah in its fullest sense. All Jews are commanded to love God: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (Deuteronomy 6:5). What is the nature of this love? Maimonides consistently connects it to knowledge of God, but without reducing the former to the latter. He makes the connection early in the Mishneh Torah: And what is the way that will lead to the love of Him and the fear of Him? When a person contemplates his great and wondrous works and creatures and from them obtains a glimpse of His wisdom which is incomparable and infinite, he will immediately love Him, praise Him, glorify Him, and long with an exceeding longing to know His great name . . . (MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 2.1)5

The more knowledge, the more love: “One only loves God with the knowledge with which one knows him. According to the knowledge will be the love: if the former be little or much, so will the latter be little or much.”6 In Hilkhot T’shuvah (Laws Concerning Repentance), Maimonides describes the love of God in erotic terms: What is the love of God that is befitting? It is to love God with a great and exceeding love, so strong that one’s soul (nafsho) shall be knit up with the love of God such that it is continually enraptured by it, like love-sick individuals whose minds (da‘atam) are at no time free from passion for a

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particular woman, and are enraptured by her at all times . . . even more intense should be the love of God in the hearts of those who love Him; they should be enraptured by this love at all times . . . 7

He restates the point: “It is known and certain that the love of God does not become closely knit in a man’s heart until he is continuously and thoroughly possessed by it and gives up everything else in the world for it” (MT Hilkhot T’shuvah 10.6). Maimonides makes much the same claim in the Guide, defining the passionate love of God as “an excess of love, so that no thought remains that is directed toward a thing other than the Beloved.”8 All this may help us understand why the Sefer Ahavah follows the Book of Knowledge in Maimonides’ Code. Indeed, in the Book of Knowledge, Hilkhot T’shuvah ends with a chapter devoted to love of God, providing an elegant transition to the Sefer Ahavah.9 Maimonides, as I understand him, holds that knowledge (and hence love) of God alone is not the highest human goal. The vita contemplativa must be completed in the vita activa, and the one who truly knows and loves God will seek to imitate God, Who acts with kindness, justice, and equity in the world (Jeremiah 9:23). Knowledge of God must be followed by love of God, which finds expression in action, that is, observance of the commandments.10 L OV E A N D L I T U RG Y

How does all this square with an established liturgy, the main subject of the Sefer Ahavah? The question gains force in the light of another Maimonidean text. Why does the Torah command the building of sanctuaries? Maimonides answers when he describes God’s “wily graciousness and wisdom” in accomplishing His ends indirectly. He points out that Many things in our Torah are due to something similar to this very governance on the part of Him who governs, may He be glorified and exalted. For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible. And therefore man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed. (Guide III 32; Pines, 525)

We humans must pass through many stages of growth before we attain full maturity. Israelites at the time of the Exodus had been accustomed to worship God with sacrifices. So God’s wisdom and “gracious ruse, which is manifest in regard to all His creatures, did not require that He give us a Torah prescribing the rejection, abandonment, and abolition of all these kinds of worship.” Had God done so, the Israelites leaving Egypt would not have been able to accept and observe the Torah. Maimonides offers an analogy: Just as the newly freed Israelites could not readily conceive of worship without sacrifices, so the Jews of Maimonides’ own day might have trouble conceiving of worship without prayer. To do away with animal sacrifice at the time of


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the Exodus would be like sending a prophet in his own time who, in “calling upon the people to worship God, would say: ‘God has given you a Torah forbidding you to pray to Him, to fast, to call upon Him for help in misfortune. Your worship should consist solely in meditation without any works at all’” (III 32; Pines, 526). So God suffered the above-mentioned kinds of worship to remain, but transferred them from created or imaginary or unreal things to His own name, may He be exalted, commanding us to practice them with regard to Him, may He be exalted. (III 32; Pines, 526)

The sacrificial cult is God’s accommodation of the Torah to the needs of the infant Israel, like a wise parent’s feeding a babe on milk or soft food. But formal prayer is also an accommodation. Maimonides himself, the great codifier of such prayer, opens his discussion of the liturgy by calling set prayer an accommodation to historical circumstances: It is a positive commandment to pray every day, as it is said, You shall serve the Lord your God (Exodus 23:25). Tradition teaches that ‘service’ is prayer. It is written, serving Him with all your heart and soul (Deuteronomy 11:13), about which the Sages said, “What is service of the heart? Prayer.” The number of prayers is not fixed in the Torah, nor is their format, and neither does the Torah prescribe a fixed time for prayer. Women and slaves are therefore obligated to pray, since it is a positive commandment without a fixed time. (MT, Hilkhot T’fillah1.1) After the Jews were exiled by the evil Nebuchadnezzar, they mingled with the Persians, Greeks, and other nations and gave birth to children in these foreign lands. These children spoke a confused language, composed of many languages, and could not speak well in any single language, as it says, their children spoke the language of Ashdod and the language of those various peoples and did not know how to speak Judean (Nehemiah 13:24). (1.4) Because of this, when one of them prayed, he was unable to ask for what he needed or praise the Holy One, blessed be He, in Hebrew, without mixing in other languages. Seeing this, Ezra and his court ordained eighteen blessings . . . (1.5)

Both set prayer and the sacrificial cult, then, are accommodations to human frailty and historicity. Both are means to other ends, not ends in themselves. Prayer does not accomplish something. It is not a form of theurgy. Set prayers, like sacrifices, are communal acts. True worship, for Maimonides, is intensely personal and intellectual.11 In a more perfect world, in the days of the Messiah, say, might not both sacrifice and fixed prayers be superseded by worshipful contemplation of God? Still, Maimonides codifies the laws of prayer and sacrifice in great detail in the Mishneh Torah. Why? He was not a halakhic positivist. He was convinced that all the laws of the Torah express God’s perfect understanding of human

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nature. He was also committed to the Torah as a system that must be accepted in toto. So he, like the rabbinic tradition to which he adhered, held that halakhot, even if promulgated for transient reasons, remain obligatory. For, on his view ta‘amei ha-mitzvot (reasons for the commandments) are given to explain why the commandments were promulgated, not to state the reasons why we must obey them.12 There are close to a dozen places in Sefer Ahavah where Maimonides’ austere, abstract, and ultimately philosophical Judaism finds expression. Here follow my discussions of those passages. P H I L O S O P H I C A L T H E M E S I N S E F E R A H AVA H

1. We read, in Hilkhot K’ri’at Sh’ma‘: What does one recite? The three paragraphs beginning with the words Hear (Deuteronomy 6:4–9); If, then, you obey (Deuteronomy 11:13–21); and The Lord said (Numbers 15:37–41). The paragraph Hear is recited first because it contains commandments concerning God’s unity, the love of God,13 and the study of God, which is the basic principle upon which all depends.14 After it, If, then, you obey, is recited, since the passage commands obedience to all the other commandments. After that, the paragraph concerning the fringes is recited, since it also contains a command to recall all the commandments. (1.2)

In the second sentence of this passage the phrase “and the study of God” translates the Hebrew u-talmudo. The interpretation of that word makes a great difference to the meaning of the passage. The sentence might be translated (incorrectly) as: “One recites the paragraph Hear first because it contains a commandment concerning God’s unity, love of God, and study of His Torah,15 which is the great principle upon which all depends.”16 A straightforward talmudist reads this sentence with great satisfaction: Torah study is made “the great principle upon which all depends,” for such study is grounded in the first paragraph of the Shema (you shall teach them diligently to your children—Deuteronomy 6:7). But what I take Maimonides to be saying is that the study of God is the basic principle on which all depends. One who knows Maimonides will see that he is calling here for study of physics and metaphysics. One could expatiate on this point at length (and many of us have!). But a text from the Guide makes the point economically: Do you not see the following fact? God, may His mention be exalted, wished us to be perfected and the state of our societies to be improved by His laws regarding actions. Now this can come about only after the adoption of intellectual beliefs, the first of which being His apprehension, may He be exalted, according to our capacity. This, in its turn, cannot come about except through divine science and this divine science cannot become actual except after a study of natural science. This is so since natural science borders on divine science, and its study precedes that of divine science in time as has


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been made clear to whoever has engaged in speculation on these matters. Hence God, may He be exalted, caused His book to open with the “Account of the Beginning,” which, as we have made clear, is natural science. (Introduction; Pines, 8–9)

The passage teaches clearly that proper obedience to God’s commandments depends on a metaphysicially sound conception of God, which is won only through the study of metaphysics—which depends in turn on physics.17 Maimonides draws an intimate connection between metaphysics and halakhah, as indeed he does in our passage from Hilkhot K’ri’at Sh’ma‘ 1.2.18 The rabbinic texts Maimonides draws on in this passage are instructive. Mishnah B’rakhot relates: R. Joshua b. Korḥah said: why was the section of hear placed before that of and it shall come to pass? So that one should first accept the yoke of the kingdom of heaven and then take upon himself the yoke of the commandments. Why does the section of and it shall come to pass come before that of and the Lord said? Because and it shall come to pass is applicable day and night, whereas and the Lord said is applicable only to the day. (2.2)

On this the Talmud comments: R. Joshua b. Korḥah said: why is the section of hear placed before that of and it shall come to pass? It has been taught: R. Simeon b. Yoḥai says: It is right that Hear should come before and it shall come to pass because the former prescribes learning [lilmod]19 and the latter teaching [le-lamed],20 and that and it shall come to pass should precede and the Lord said because the former prescribes teaching and the latter performance. (B’rakhot 14b)

Rabbi Joshuah ben Korḥah teaches that Deuteronomy 6:4–9, Hear, O Israel . . . , the first paragraph of the Sh’ma‘, precedes the second since in the first paragraph one accepts God’s sovereignty and only in the second does the text talk about the commandments. This makes excellent sense: what is the point of talking about commandments if one does not accept the authority of the commander? R. Simeon bar Yoḥai offers another reason: the first paragraph involves study, the second teaching. It is fair to say that in Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot K’ri’at Sh’ma‘ 1.2, Maimonides subtly interprets R. Joshua ben Korḥah’s understanding of “acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of heaven” in terms of the study of physics and metaphysics. He reads the teaching of R. Simeon bar Yoh ai as to what is ˙ one is commanded to learn in Deuteronomy 6:4–9 in a similar vein, taking it, again as a reference to physics and metaphysics. Moshe Sokol raises an interesting question: Why does Maimonides say that Deuteronomy 6:4–9 includes a commandment to study God (u-talmudo) and not to know God (u-yedi‘ato)? For the opening line of the Mishneh Torah calls knowledge of God the “foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all the sciences” and makes achieving this knowledge a positive commandment.21

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The passage from the Talmud here quoted may help answer this question. Maimonides always tries to remain as close as possible to his rabbinic sources. In many places the Mishneh Torah simply translates or condenses the language of the Talmud. Rabbi Simeon bar Yoḥai uses the terms study and learning (from the root l-m-d). In paraphrasing that passage Maimonides uses a term derived from the same root (talmudo). 2. In Hilkhot K’ri’at Sh’ma‘, we also learn: One may recite the Shema in any language he knows. One who recites in any language must also diligently avoid mistakes in that language, and must take care to pronounce the words properly in that language just as he must take care when reciting it in the holy language. (2.10)

The first sentence of this paragraph follows M. Soṭah (7.1) and presents no problems. The second sentence refers back to issues discussed by Maimonides in the two preceding paragraphs in Hilkhot K’ri’at Sh’ma‘. At the end of 2.8 Maimonides had written: “One must take care to pronounce the letters clearly; if he did not, he still fulfilled his obligation.” In 2.9 he explains: How does one take care to pronounce the letters clearly? He should exercise care not to pronounce a stop as a spirant, nor a spirant as a stop, nor a quiescent shewa as a mobile shewa, nor a mobile shewa as a quiescent shewa. Therefore, he must pause between two similar letters, when one ends a word and the other begins the following word, as in “with all your heart.”22 He must recite be-khol, pause and then continue and recite levavkha. So also with ve-avadetem meherah (Deuteronomy 11:17) and ha-kanaf petil (Numbers 15:38). One must clearly pronounce the “zayyin” of tizkeru (Numbers 15:40). One must extend the “dalet” of ehad (Deuteronomy 6:4) sufficiently to proclaim God’s sovereignty over the heavens, the earth, and “the four corners of the world.”23 One must not cut the “het” in the word ehad short such that it sound like eihad.24

So if one does not know Hebrew and chooses to recite the Sh’ma‘ in English translation, it is not sufficient for the translation to be precise (i.e., that one “diligently avoid mistakes in that language,” 2.8). In addition, one “must take care to pronounce the words properly in that language, just as he must take care when reciting it in Hebrew.” For example, the first paragraph of the Sh’ma‘: Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.


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The word ‘might’ ends with the letter t and the following word, ‘take,’ begins with it. One must be careful to pronounce these two words distinctly: recite might, pause and then continue and recite take. This, at least, is what Maimonides’ irascible glossator, R. Abraham ben David, takes him to mean and faults him mightily for it. He says that Maimonides’ ruling is rationally unacceptable (ein zeh mequbbal al ha-da‘at), since all other languages are but a commentary (perush) on the Hebrew, “and who would diligently avoid mistakes in a commentary?” Does R. Abraham here assume that Hebrew is the original language of humankind, or even the one true language—all others being mere commentaries on it? That might read too much into his comment. What clearly arouses his ire is his failure to find a textual basis in the Talmud for Maimonides’ ruling.25 But it seems safe to assume that R. Abraham did not like Maimonides’ implicitly setting Hebrew on a par with other languages. That equation, however, is central to many of Maimonides’ philosophical and religious doctrines.26 R. Joseph Karo, apparently aware of these issues (cf. his commentary, Kesef Mishneh, ad loc.), sought to draw the sting. He applies Maimonides’ ruling not to the need for precision in the recitation of one’s prayers in another language but to the need for accuracy in translation. A fair-minded reader would probably find R. Abraham’s to be a less tortured reading of Maimonides’ ruling. Not that R. Joseph Karo was not a fair-minded reader. But he did hold views about the special nature of the Hebrew language that were widely accepted in the Kabbalah.27 Apparently he could not believe that Maimonides found no substantial difference between Hebrew and other languages. That the Sh’ma‘ may be recited in any language is settled law. Since the Sh’ma‘, when read in Hebrew, must be pronounced very carefully, it follows, Maimonides apparently held, that when recited in any other language it must be pronounced equally carefully. Maimonides’ distinction here between matter and manner is typical of his outlook but quite atypical of many other writers in the Jewish tradition. 3. Maimonides, in Hilkhot T’fillah, states: What does facing the sanctuary involve? Outside of the Land of Israel, one should turn to face the Land of Israel and say the ‘amidah prayer. In the Land, one faces toward Jerusalem. In Jerusalem one faces the sanctuary. In the sanctuary one faces the holy of holies. A blind person or one who cannot determine the direction, or one traveling in a boat28 directs his mind to the Divine Presence [Sh’khinah] and says the ‘amidah prayer. (5.3)

Maimonides’ source is Mishnah B’rakhot: One riding on an ass alights; if he cannot alight, he turns his face . . . ; if he cannot turn his face, he directs his heart towards the holy of holies. One sitting in a boat, or in a cart, or in a barge directs his heart toward the holy of holies. (4.5–6)

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The Talmud comments: “A blind person, or one who cannot determine the direction, directs his mind towards his Father in heaven” (B. B’rakhot 30a). Only rarely does Maimonides ignore or alter halakhic determinations of the Talmud. But he does subtly recast his sources the better to express the austere, intellectual, and spiritual vision of Judaism he favored. The Mishnah speaks of a person sitting in a boat, cart, or barge (and who cannot therefore easily turn to face the holy of holies); the Talmud, ad loc., adds the blind person, or one who is not sure of the direction, and instructs such a person to “direct his mind towards His Father in heaven.” Maimonides makes two small changes to his sources: (a) he collects together in one group those who cannot know the direction (the blind), those who do not know the direction, and those who cannot conveniently turn to face the holy of holies and instructs them (b) not to direct their hearts towards the holy of holies (the Mishnah) nor toward their Father in heaven (the Talmud) but, rather, toward the Divine Presence (Sh’khinah). What is the significance of this? The holy of holies is a concrete place; our Father in heaven is a highly anthropomorphized way of naming God;29 Divine presence, on the other hand, is a much less personalized way of referring to God. Moreover, Maimonides takes great pains in all his writings to depersonalize, deontologize, dehypostasize the notion of the Divine Presence. The upshot of these attempts is this: sh’khinah is a metaphorical expression for the divine wisdom evident in nature.30 Thus, when Maimonides takes the opportunity provided by mishnaic and talmudic texts to instruct the reader of the Mishneh Torah how to focus during prayer, he instructs such a one to contemplate God’s wisdom evident in nature—that is, to think about physics and metaphysics.31 4. In the next paragraph,32 Maimonides does not so much alter the received text of the Talmud as make it clear what he thinks it means. Comparing his understanding with the apparent simple meaning of the text, captured in the commentary of his near-contemporary Rashi, makes Maimonides’ outlook stand out clearly: What does correct posture involve? While standing in prayer, one should place one’s feet next to each other and direct one’s eyes downwards, as if looking at the earth [eretz], but his heart should be directed upwards, as if he were standing in heaven. One should rest his hands upon his heart, his right hand clasping the left, standing like a slave before his master, in dread, awe, and fear. He should not rest his hands upon his hips.

Yevamot 105b reads: One who prays should direct his eyes downwards as if looking at the earth [eretz], as it says (I Kings 9:3), [The Lord said to him, “I have heard the prayer and supplication which you have offered Me. I consecrate this House which you have built, and I set My name there forever.] My eyes and My heart shall ever be there.”


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Rashi writes: “direct his eyes downwards as if looking at the land [eretz]—i.e., toward the Land of Israel, since the Divine Presence [sh’khinah] is there.” Maimonides takes the text to relate to the attitude to be adopted in prayer, expressed by downcast eyes. Rashi applies the text to the centrality of the Land of Israel and its special status as dwelling place of Divine Presence (sh’khinah). Rashi pretty clearly has the stronger case. The entire context of the halakhic discussion here relates to facing the holy of holies in Jerusalem during prayer. And the verse cited in his Talmudic source relates to the Temple in Jerusalem. Maimonides, I suspect, seeking to deemphasize the centrality of the Land of Israel in connection with prayer and to emphasize universal rather than particularistic aspects of prayer, shifts the focus from territory to a moral and spiritual theme, subtly reworking his rabbinic source and shifting the center of gravity from what he saw as immature metaphysics to a more spiritual plane. 5. Occasionally, if rarely, Maimonides will add something to the received law that reflects his own agenda. The following, I suspect is an example of this: Torah scrolls, tefillin, or mezuzot written by a sectarian must be burned. But if written by an idolater, an apostate Jew, a traitor,33 a slave, a woman, or a minor, they are unfit and must be put away,34 since it says, Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:8–9)—only he who is obligated to the binding35 and who believes in it36 may write them. If found in the possession of a sectarian and it is not known who wrote them, they must be put away; but if found in the possession of a Gentile, they are fit. One may not purchase Torah scrolls, tefillin or mezuzot from Gentiles for more than they are worth, so as not to get them used to stealing or taking them by force.37

Maimonides’ apparent source is a baraita in Tractate Giṭṭin:38 R. Naḥman says: We have it on tradition that a Torah scroll written by a sectarian should be burned; one written by a Gentile39 should be put away. One found in the possession of a sectarian should be put away; one found in the hands of a Gentile—some say it should be put away, others say one may read from it . . . Torah scrolls, tefillin, or mezuzot written by a Idolater, a traitor, a slave, a woman, a minor, a Cuthite, and an apostate Jew are unfit since it says, Bind them as a sign on your arm and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:8–9)—only he who for whom the binding obtains, does the writing obtain; he for whom the binding does not obtain, the writing does not obtain. (45b)40

Maimonides here appears to be innovating: in order to write Torah scrolls, t’fillin, or mezuzot, one must not only be obligated to obey the laws concern-

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ing them, one must also believe in something. Maimonides is not clear about what one must believe. He writes: “only he who is obligated to perform the binding and who believes in it may write them.” I am not sure what it means to say that one believes in the binding. But whatever it means, Maimonides is not simply commenting on his Talmudic source. He is adding something new that reflects his own claims (in his Thirteen Principles) concerning the essential character of Jewish orthodoxy. 6. Maimonides’ vision of Judaism made as few concessions as possible to what he considered popular distortions of the religion. A clear example is found here:41 It is customary to write the word Shaddai42 on the outside of the mezuzah, opposite the space between the paragraphs. Since it is on the outside, it is not objectionable. But those who write the names of angels, holy names, verses, or special shapes on the mezuzah are included in the category of those who have no share in the world to come, since these fools not only cancel the commandment, but make of a great commandment, the unification of the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, His love, and His worship, a charm for their own benefit since they, in their stupidity, think that this a matter which benefits them concerning worldly vanities.43 One must take great care to fulfill the commandment of the mezuzah, since it obliges everyone always. Every time one comes in or goes out, he will encounter the unity of God’s name, remember His love, awaken from his sleep and from his concentration on temporal vanities, and realize that nothing exists forever and ever but knowledge of the Rock of the Universe. One is immediately back to one’s senses44 and follows the paths of the upright. The Sages said:45 One who has Tefillin on his head and his arm, and fringes on his clothing, and a mezuzah on his doorway is assured of not sinning, since he has many reminders; these are the angels which save him from sinning, as it says, The angel of the Lord camps around those who fear Him and rescues them. (Psalms 34:8)

The second of these two paragraphs explains the first. The mezuzah is a “great commandment,” since each time a person sees it, he or she will “encounter the unity of God’s name, remember His love,46 awaken from his sleep and from his concentration on temporal vanities and realize that nothing exists forever and ever but knowledge of the Rock of the Universe.” Treating the mezuzah as a good luck charm radically demeans it and thus destroys one’s share in the world to come. What do the sources say about this? Well, actually, nothing. The two paragraphs reflect Maimonides’ own position, and there are no clear-cut Talmudic texts on which to base them. Indeed, Maimonides’ rejection of the mezuzah as a good luck charm contradicts the thrust of ‘Avodah Zarah 11a47 and Menaḥot 33b,48 as Kesef Mishneh ad locum points out.49 In an attempt to save the situation, Kesef Mishneh argues that using


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a mezuzah as a talisman is forbidden, but that fulfilling the commandment of the mezuzah does protect the house at which the mezuzah is affixed. There are three further expressions of Maimonides’ philosophical Judaism in the second of these two paragraphs: (a) “Every time one enters or leaves he will confront the unity of God’s name, remember his love.” Whose love? The Hebrew is ambiguous, but it is likely that Maimonides means human love of God, not God’s love of humans. Throughout his writings, Maimonides emphasizes our obligation to love God (through knowledge). Rarely does he mention God’s love of humankind. The only passage I know in all his writings that emphasizes God’s love for humanity comes in “Laws Concerning Idolatry” (1.3). But the present passage finds its context in Sefer Ahavah, where the clear reference of the title is to human love for God, not divine love of human beings. (b) Seeing the mezuzah makes one “realize that nothing exists forever and ever but knowledge of the Rock of the Universe.” This sentence reflects Maimonides’ adoption of the theory of the acquired intellect. According to this theory, humans achieve immortality50 only through their intellectual attainments. All that survives death is what we have learned. This is a position that Maimonides espouses in all this major writings. The point is made in his commentary on the Mishnah,51 in the Mishneh Torah,52 and in the Guide.53 (c) Affixing a mezuzah to one’s doorways, wrapping oneself in a ṭallit, adorning oneself with t’fillin, all these acts remind one of eternal verities. It is as if one were protected from sinning by angels gathered about him.54 The angels here are clearly metaphorical. This is an expression of Maimonides’ naturalization of biblical angels.55 7. Maimonides did not attribute an “ontological” holiness to Torah scrolls. This claim may be better understood if we note a distinction made by Boaz Huss in a study of the Zohar.56 Huss distinguishes: (a) the authoritative character of canonical texts from (b) the sanctity of the information contained in those texts (such that “the text is believed to be a textual conduit between the community and the divine world . . . the study and exegesis of sacred texts has a ritualistic character and may become part of the community’s established rites” p. 262); and (c) the holy character of the nonsemantic aspects of the book (such “as the sound of its words, the form of its letters, or the physical volume itself” p. 263). The recitation of such texts, “even without understanding its content, is perceived as religiously potent” (295). I have demonstrated elsewhere that for Maimonides, the sanctity of the Torah is a function of its origin and its meaning.57 The nonsemantic aspects of the Torah are important because of that origin and meaning, and as such are carefully defined and defended by halakhah. But they have no discernible significance in and of themselves.58 Maimonides’ emphasis throughout is on the authority of the Torah and the role it plays in Jewish life.59 He is interested in the message contained in the Torah scroll, and only secondarily in the scroll itself.

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This reading is underscored by a much-debated responsum of his. In Hilkhot Sefer Torah, we read: We thus find twenty matters, each of which renders a Torah scroll unfit; if one of them is found, the scroll becomes like the Pentateuchs from which children are taught. It does not have the sanctity of a Torah scroll and it is not read from publicly. (10.1)

Despite this straighforward position, a responsum of Maimonides’ written in the margin of his own copy of Hilkhot Sefer Torah complicates the picture. The text of the Mishneh Torah there reads: A Torah may be written book-by-individual-book. These do not have the sanctity of a complete Torah scroll. One does not write a partial Torah,60 containing various passages. Nor is a partial Torah to be written for children to study from. This is permissible if the scribe plans to finish at least one volume of the Pentateuch. It is permissible to write a partial Torah if one writes only three words on each line. (7.14)

This much-debated responsum61 addresses a question as to how a community should act if it had only one invalid Torah scroll or none at all.62 Should the public reading be performed, and, if so, with or without the traditional blessings? Maimonides’ reply is emphatic: one ought to read, and one may make the blessing. The commandment on which the blessing is made, he insists, is that of studying Torah, not of reading from a fit Torah scroll: “It is the study of the Torah (he-hagiyah ba-Torah) which is the commandment on which we make the blessing.” Making the blessings over readings from an invalid Torah scroll, he says, was the practice of the scholars of the West [Spain and North Africa], such as Rabbi Joseph Ha-Levi (Ibn Megash) and R. Isaac of Fez (Alfasi).63 Most of the scholars of the East (presumably a reference to Geonic Babylonia) did not acknowledge a distinction between reading and studying and insisted that blessings be made only when a fit Torah scroll is read from. Rashba (cited by Kesef Mishneh in its gloss to Hilkhot Sefer Torah 10.1) asserted that this was a juvenile responsum by Maimonides and that Hilkhot Sefer Torah 10.1 reflects his mature position. Kesef Mishneh, ad loc., opines that the position presented in the Mishneh Torah relates to behavior in the first instance (le-khatḥilah), while the responsum deals with a case where no fit Torah scroll is to be had (be-de’avad). Among our contemporaries, Rabbi Rabinovitch cites the responsum without comment. Rabbi Kafih cites Rashba’s position, to the effect that the responsum was written by a younger Maimonides, while the text in Hilkhot Sefer Torah 10.1 reflects his settled position. The Shulḥan ‘Arukh, Oraḥ Ḥayyim 143:2–3, rules that one may not make a blessing over an invalid Torah scroll.64 Maimonides’ reasoning in this responsum is most instructive. That blessings are made over the reading of the Torah means that there is a commandment


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to read. What is the nature of that commandment? Apparently, for Rashba, Kesef Mishneh, Shulḥan ‘Arukh, and Rav Kafih (among many others) Jews are commanded to read from a fit Torah scroll, and it is only that reading that fulfills the commandment. For Maimonides the commandment is to study what the Torah teaches; for that, an invalid Torah scroll, or even a codex, suffices. Clearly the responsum indicates that what primarily interested Maimonides was the content of the Torah, not its secondary status as a holy object. 8. In Hilkhot Sefer Torah, we read: If one went from place to place with a Sefer Torah, he may not place it in a sack on the back of an ass and ride upon the ass. But if he did so for fear of robbers, it is permitted. But if there is no cause for fear, he holds it near his breast opposite his heart and rides on the beast. Anyone who sits in the presence of a Torah scroll must comport himself gravely, in awe and fear, since the Torah is the trustworthy witness before all the inhabitants of the world, as it says, Take this book of Teaching and place it beside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, and let it remain there as a witness against you (Deuteronomy 31:26). One must respect the Torah to the utmost of one’s capacity. The early sages said (Mishnah Avot 4.18): anyone who profanes the Torah will be profaned by others, while one who respects the Torah will be respected by others. (10.11)

Maimonides’ statement that “the Torah is the trustworthy witness before all the inhabitants of the world” reflects his position that the commandments of the Torah are meant to be understood and appreciated by Gentiles, and, it is very likely, ultimately adopted by them.65 So far as I can discover Maimonides is the only authority to read Deuteronomy 31:26 as teaching that the Torah is a witness against the Jews before all the inhabitants of the world.66 This reading of the verse, and its use here in Hilkhot Sefer Torah reflects a fundamental Maimonidean attitude, according to which the wisdom of the Torah is accessible to all (and I undertand him to think, ultimately addressed to all). That this is Maimonides’ view should really not be surprising, given that he holds that the deepest secret wisdom of the Torah ma‘aseh b’reshit and ma‘aseh merkavah, can be found (if one knows how to look) in the sciences of physics and metaphysics. This attitude of Maimonides’ finds expression in a number of places, especially when he makes reference to Deuteronomy 4:5–8: See, I have imparted to you laws and rules, as the Lord my God has commanded me, for you to abide by in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. Observe them faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, “Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people.” For what great nation is there that has a god so close at hand as is the Lord our God whenever we call upon Him? Or

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what great nation has laws and rules as perfect as all this Teaching that I set before you this day?

A typical Maimonidean comment on this passage is found in his introduction to Pereq Ḥeleq, the tenth chapter of Mishnah Sanhedrin. There he writes, of people who take rabbinic aggadot literally: As God lives, this group destroys the glory of the Torah and extinguishes its light, for they make the Torah of God say the opposite of what it intended. For He said in his perfect Torah that other peoples . . . on hearing of all these laws will say, ‘Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people’. But this group expounds the laws and teachings of our sages in such a way that when the other peoples hear them they say that this little people is foolish and ignoble.67

The wisdom of the Torah should be apparent to Gentiles—unless corrupted by foolish Jews. Indeed, Maimonides claims in his “Epistle to Yemen,” the Gentile nations recognize the wisdom of the Torah and are therefore jealous of the Jews. He writes: Since God has singled us out by His laws and precepts, and our preeminence over the others was manifested in His rules and statutes, as Scripture says in narrating God’s mercies to us: what great nation has laws and rules as perfect as all this Teaching that I set before you this day? (Deuteronomy 4:8); all the nations, instigated by envy and impiety, rose up against us in anger, and all the kings of the earth, motivated by injustice and enmity, applied themselves to persecute us. They want to thwart God, but He will not be thwarted.

For the Gentile nations to envy the rules and statutes of the Torah, the wisdom inherent in them must be manifest to those in whom they arouse envy. This should surprise no one. For Maimonides, the deepest secrets of the Torah are ma‘aseh b’reshit and ma‘aseh merkavah, physics and metaphysics.68 Not that it needs proving, but Maimonides’ use of Aristotle proves that he rejects the possibility of a “Jewish physics.” Thus, even the deepest secrets of the Torah are, in principle, accessible to Gentiles. This interpretation of the passage in Deuteronomy is by no means standard. The Talmud (B. Shabbat 75a), for example, reads it as follows: R. Samuel b. Nahmani said in R. Johanan’s name: How do we know that it is one’s duty to calculate the cycles and planetary courses? Because it is written, for this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples: what wisdom and understanding is in the sight of the peoples? Say, that it is the science of cycles and planets.

Maharsha (R. Solomon Edels, 1555–1631) explains that knowledge of seasons and constellations is common to all people while knowledge of the Torah


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belongs only to Israel.69 Maharsha may not have been seeking explicitly to counter Maimonides’ position, but that is the upshot of what he says. Maimonides makes understanding the wisdom of the Torah something accessible to all human beings. This reflects his rejection of all claims of inherent Jewish superiority over Gentiles, which in turn reflects his unwillingness to see the distinction between Jew and Gentile in ontological terms. In the felicitous expression of Daniel Lasker, the difference between Jew and Gentile is one of software, not of hardware.70 9. In Hilkhot B’rakhot, we read: One who sees inhabited Jewish homes makes the blessing, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who sets up border markers for the widow.”71 One who sees destroyed Jewish homes makes the blessing, “the true Judge.” One who sees Jewish graves makes the blessing, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who created you in justice, nourished you in justice, sustained you in justice, killed you in justice, and Who in the future will raise you to life in the world to come. Blessed are You, Lord our God, Who resurrects the dead.”72 (10.10)

Maimonides’ source (B. B’rakhot 58b) leaves out the expression “to life in the world to come” and ends the blessing as follows: “Who in the future will raise you in justice.” For those who recognize that Maimonides sharply distinguishes life in the world to come from resurrection of the dead, this change cannot be seen as insignificant.

We have surveyed a dozen texts in Sefer Ahavah where Maimonides’ halakhic discussion seems clearly influenced by philosophical considerations. Maimonides turns the acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of heaven into a call to study physics and metaphysics and in line with that makes an opportunity to instruct the reader of the Mishneh Torah to focus her or his mind during prayer on God’s wisdom evident in nature—that is, to think about physics and metaphysics. In the same vein he describes the wisdom of the Torah as something in principle accessible to all human beings. These are all indications of a philosophically universalistic conception of Judaism. Further indications of this are his subtle deemphasis of the Land of Israel and the indications we found of his view of Hebrew as a language like all other languages, a view that was later to find explicit expression in the Guide of the Perplexed. This last point is connected to his rationalistic approach to religion, an approach that finds further expression in his construing the sanctity of Torah scrolls in terms of what the Torah teaches, and not in the physical scroll itself. So, too, his comments on the nature of God, on the way in which

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humans are to love God, his anger at writers of amulets, and his understated efforts to dehypostasize angels. Maimonides’ dogmatic conception of faith, a reflection of his Aristotelian epistemology, and his view that the ultimate reward for a life well-lived is intellectual existence in the world to come as opposed to physical resurrection, are further expressions of his efforts to present the religion of the Torah in terms congenial to an Aristotelian rationalist. Additionally, many of those philosophical views reflect Maimonides’ desire to demystify and dehypostatize—to free the religion of which he writes from the accretions of paganism and superstition by which he found it to be infected. We have before us several possible conclusions from this survey: Writing an entire book about the details of Jewish prayer, Maimonides gives expression to his philosophical outlook in fewer than a dozen places. For him halakhah is clearly foremost, philosophy secondary. Alternatively, in his book on the details of statutory prayer, whenever a possibility presents itself, Maimonides made sure that his philosophical views found expression. To my mind, neither of these alternatives alone is entirely adequate. Maimonides the halakhist and Maimonides the philosopher are not two separate personalities. Maimonides was clearly aware that his philosohically informed halakhah was anathema to many of his contemporaries, and there is no doubt that he often trod lightly. But that is no reason to doubt that he was convinced that his was the truer conception of Judaism, and that had the Sefer Ahavah been written by the first Moses, it, too, would have presented a philosophically informed halakhah.

NOTES 1. I would like to thank W.Z. Harvey for his very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Fuller argumentation for some of the points made here may be found in my Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism. 2. I refer primarily to what is often called the ‘Heikhalot Literature.’ For details see Maimonides Confrontation With Mysticism, chapter 1 and Moshe Idel, “Sitre ‘Arayot in Maimonides’ Thought.” 3. Guide III 35 (Pines, 537). Hereafter, citations of extended quotations from Maimonides are given in the text. 4. My thanks to Shmuel Morell for pointing this out to me. Isadore Twersky notes that the verse “has an obvious verbal connection with the book’s title, but it also plays upon the themes of constancy and continuity and rather subtly links up love expressed through actions with meditation and contemplation. The reciprocity between action and reflection, deeds maintaining as well as manifesting love of God, is thus noted pithily” (Introduction to the Code, 260–261). 5. Book of Knowledge, trans. Hyamson, 35b. 6. MT Hilkhot T’shuvah (Laws Concerning Repentance) 10.6; Hyamson, 92b. 7. Hyamson, 92b.


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8. Guide III 51 (Pines, 627); cf. I 39 (Pines, 89). Further, on love and knowledge, see Steven Harvey, “The Meaning of Terms Designating Love in Judaeo-Arabic Thought.” 9. See Howard Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought, 240. Boaz Cohen offers a more prosaic explanation for the contents of “The Book of Love.” He opines that Maimonides “chose the name Love after Deut. 6:4–9. In the three paragraphs of the Sh’ma‘, most of the subdivisions of the book are alluded to” (“The Classification of the Law,” 534). 10. This section is drawn from the introduction to my translation of The Book of Love (YJS). 11. Cf. Guide III 51. 12. For what is to my mind a convincing account of how Maimonides could see the commandments as still binding even though they reflect ancient events and realities, see Josef Stern, “Maimonides on Education,” 118. Kenneth Seeskin had earlier made a similar argument in No Other Gods, 13–49. 13. My comments above on love of God in Maimonides must be taken into account here. 14. Compare MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 1.1–7, esp. paragraph 6. Maimonides here refers to one “basic principle,” which implies that affirming God’s unity, loving God, and studying God are all, at base, the same thing. 15. Or perhaps, even, “and study of His Talmud.” 16. Hyamson, The Book of Knowledge, translates: “and studying his words”; Boruch Kaplan, Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, has: “and the study of Torah”; S.T. Rubenstein, Rambam le-‘Am, explains the passage as referring to the commandment of Torah study; Nachum Rabinovitch, in his Mishneh Torah commentary, Yad Peshutah, agrees, citing B’rakhot 2b. These modern translators and interpreters follow the understanding of the term implicitly held by the traditional sixteenth-century commentaries Leḥem Mishneh (Abraham ben Moses de Bouton) and Kesef Mishneh (Joseph Karo). I have found only one modern who understands the passage properly: not surprisingly, Rabbi Joseph Kafih in his edition of the Mishneh Torah. Diana Lobel informs me that the late and lamented Isadore Twersky used to emphasize the correct interpretation in his classes on Maimonides. 17. Key texts here include MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 4.13 and Maimonides’ commentary to M. Ḥagigah 2.1. For discussions of this issue see the following studies by W. Z. Harvey: “R. Ḥasdai Crescas and His Critique of Philosophic Happiness”; “Averroes and Maimonides on the Obligation of Philosophical Contemplation (I‘tibar)”; and “Maimonides’ First Commandment, Physics, and Doubt.” 18. And indeed, as he does by opening the MT with four chapters on metaphysics and physics. 19. Rashi explains that this passage contains the words Recite them [when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up], which, he says, connote Torah study. 20. Rashi explains that the passage contains the words and teach them to your children, which, he says, can only be done if one has previously studied Torah himself. 21. MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 1.1; 1.6.

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22. Be-khol levavkha; the first word ends with the letter “lamed” and the second begins with it. 23. Lit. “the four directions.” The point here (based on a discussion in B’rakhot 13b) is that one ought to extend the word ‘one’ (or its last letter) long enough selfconsciously to (re-)accept God’s sovereignty over the universe. 24. Which could be construed as meaning “is not one.” 25. As Jacob Levinger notes in his Darkehi ha-Maḥshavah ha-Hilkhatit shel haRambam (Maimonides’ Techniques of Codification), 142–143. 26. In two notorious passages, Guide II 30 (Pines, 357–358) and III 8 (Pines, 435– 36), Maimonides maintains that Hebrew is in no essential way unlike other languages. I examine this point in detail in “Maimonides on the ‘Normality’ of Hebrew.” In that same essay I show that, in place after place, Maimonides makes the content of what is expressed much more important than the language in which it is expressed. This article is revised as chapter 5 in my Maimonides’ Confronation with Jewish Mysticism. 27. For one useful statement, see Moshe Idel, “Reification of Language in Jewish Mysticism.” 28. And thus presumably not sure where he is vis-à-vis Jerusalem. 29. The expression occurs only once in the MT, and that occurrence is in a prayer that Maimonides quotes in the prayerbook appendix to Sefer Ahavah. 30. I argue this in detail in chapter 6 (on Sh’khinah) in Maimonides’ Confrontation with Jewish Mysticism. 31. Students of the Mishneh Torah are not likely to be bothered by Maimonides’ move in light of an oft-cited rabbinic text (Sanhedrin 22a): “one who prays should see himself as if the Divine Presence were opposite him, as it says (Ps. 16:8): I am ever mindful of the Lord’s presence [He is at my right hand, I shall never be shaken].” This passage serves as the basis for Maimonides, MT Hilkhot T’fillah 4.16. 32. I thank James Diamond for drawing my attention to this passage. 33. Hebrew: moser; one who unjustly delivers a Jew into Gentile arms. The Talmudic source (Gittin 45b) reads masur, which Rashi translates as malshin, one who “rats” on a fellow-Jew. 34. On the need respectfully to put away or bury certain kinds of holy texts, see M. Shabbat 16.1 and MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 1.8. 35. Thus excluding women, minors, and slaves. 36. That is, in the obligation to write them, thus excluding Gentiles, apostates, and traitors. “And who believes in it,” is not found in Maimonides’ source (B. Giṭṭin 45b) and reflects his own agenda. 37. MT Hilkhot T’fillin 1.13. 38. I follow the version of the Talmud as cited by Nachum Rabinovitch, reflecting the text as preserved in Raphael Rabbinovicz (1835–1888), Dikdukei Sofrim (= Variae Lectiones in Mischnam et in Talmud Babylonicum) and in the Halakhot of Yitzḥaq Alfasi (1013–1103), printed in standard editions of the Talmud. 39. “Gentile” in Mishneh Torah often denotes “idolater.” See Y. Blidstein, “On the Status of the Resident Alien in Maimonides’ Thought.” For a clear statement, see: MT Hilkhot Ma’akhalot Assurot 11.8.


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40. In his commentary to our passage in the Mishneh Torah Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch points out that Maimonides excludes the Cuthites (whom Maimonides considered Idolaters in all respects [Ḥullin 6:1]), and then classified the remaining persons into two groups: a) sectarians, idolaters, apostates, and traitors, and b) slaves, women, and minors. Rabbi Rabinovitch wants to read Maimonides as follows: the expression “and who believes in it” excludes sectarians, apostates, and traitors, whereras the expression “who is obligated to bind them” excludes slaves, women, and minors. The idolaters, Rabbi Rabinovitch tacitly acknowledges, destroy this scheme, since they neither believe nor are obligated. 41. The following paragraphs are MT Hilkhot T’fillin 5.4 and 6.13. For background, see Martin L. Gordon. “Mezuzah: Protective Amulet or Religious Symbol?”; Eva-Maria Jansson, “The Magic of the Mezuzah in Rabbinic Literature”; and Yehezkel Lichtenstein, “The Mezuzah as an Amulet.” 42. One of the names of God; for its first appearance in the Bible, see Genesis 17:1. It may also be taken (midrashically) as an acronym for “Guardian of the Religion of Israel” or “Guardian of the doorways of Israel.” 43. Kesef Mishneh notes that Maimonides here contradicts ‘Avodah Zarah 11a. 44. That is, focuses on what is truly important. 45. Menaḥot 43b. 46. Throughout his writings, Maimonides emphasizes the obligation of humans to love God (through knowledge), while rarely mentioning God’s love of humans (the only passage I know of in all his writings in which God’s love for humans is emphasized is MT Hilkhot ‘Avodah Zarah 1.3. My thanks to Warren Z. Harvey for drawing my attention to this passage). 47. “[When] Onkelos the son of Kalonymus became a proselyte, the Emperor sent a contingent of Roman [soldiers] after him, but he enticed them by [citing] scriptural verses and they converted to Judaism. Thereupon, the Emperor sent another Roman cohort after him, bidding them not to say anything to him. As they were about to take him away with them, he said to them: ‘Let me tell you just an ordinary thing: [In a procession] the torchlighter carries the light in front of the torchbearer, the torchbearer in front of the leader, the leader in front of the governor, the governor in front of the chief officer; but does the chief officer carry the light in front of the people?’ ‘No!’ they replied. Said he: ‘Yet the Holy One, blessed be He, does carry the light before Israel, for Scripture says. And the Lord went before them . . . in a pillar of fire to give them light’(Exodus 13:21). Then they too converted. Again he sent another cohort ordering them not to enter into any conversation whatever with him. So they took hold of him; and as they were walking on he saw the mezuzah which was fixed on the door-frame and he placed his hand on it saying to them: ‘Now what is this?’ and they replied: ‘You tell us then.’ Said he, ‘According to universal custom, the mortal king dwells within, and his servants keep guard on him without; but [in the case of] the Holy One, blessed be He, it is His servants who dwell within whilst He keeps guard on them from without; as it is said: The Lord shall guard thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and for evermore’(Psalms 121:8). Then they, too, converted to Judaism. He sent for him no more.” 48. “R. Ḥanina said, Come and see how the character of the Holy One, blessed be He, differs from that of flesh and blood. According to human standards, the king dwells within, and his servants keep guard on him from without; but with the Holy

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One, blessed be He, it is not so, for it is His servants that dwell within and He keeps guard over them from without; as it is said, The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand (Psalms 121:5).” 49. Twersky, in Introduction to the Code, puts the point as follows: “the underlying Talmudic text is reinterpreted, transmuting the ‘angels’ of the verse into the spiritual effects of the commandments” (481). See the translation of Rabbi Eliyahu Touger who comments, “‘these are the angels’—who are brought into being by his fulfillment of the mitzvot [of t’fillin, tzitzit, and mezuzah]” (130). This certainly proves the truth of Maimonides’ observation in Guide II 25 (Pines 327) to the effect that the gates of interpretation are never closed. 50. There is considerable debate among scholars today over whether or not humans, on Maimonides account, can actually achieve immortality (“a share in the world to come”). For details, see Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought, 142–143 and 242–243. 51. Sanhedrin, Introduction to Pereq Ḥeleq. In the bilingual (Arabic/Hebrew) edition of Rabbi J. Kafih, 4.204. 52. MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 4.9 and MT Hilkhot T’shuvah 8.2–3. 53. Guide I 30 (Pines, 63), I 40 (Pines, 90), I 41 (Pines, 91), I 70 (Pines, 174), I 72 (Pines, 193, implicitly), I 74 (Pines, 220), III 8 (Pines, 432–433), III 27 (Pines, 511), III 51 (Pines, 628), and III 54 (Pines, 635). 54. For Maimonides, tallit and t’fillin are worn by men, not women, a point emphasized to me by Rivka Kellner. 55. On angels in Maimonides see Lenn Goodman, “Maimonidean Naturalism,” and the chapter on the subject in Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism. Howard Kreisel goes so far as to summarize Maimonides’ position concerning angels in the following terms: “The separate intellects, together with the celestial spheres and the natural existents and forces of the sublunar world are the ‘angels’ spoken of in the Bible and in rabbinic literature according to Maimonides. The only existents not considered by him to be angels are the ‘angels’ as they are literally depicted. Such creatures do not exist in his ontology. Maimonides considers the biblical and rabbinic descriptions of the angels to be imaginative representations, primarily of the separate intellects,” (Kreisel, “Moses Maimonides,” 255). 56. Boaz Huss, “Sefer ha-Zohar as Canonical, Sacred, and Holy Text.” 57. See Menachem Kellner, “Revelation and Messianism.” 58. Thus, it is not likely that Maimonides would attach much importance to the recitation of Torah texts without understanding them, and so far as I know, there is not a single example of the use of gematria (Hebrew numerology, in which letters and words are assigned numerical values) or notarikon (a technique which usually involves turning Hebrew words into acronyms) in all of his writings. (Even in places where his sources use gematria, Maimonides does not; compare Guide I 15 with Genesis Rabbah 68.12.) Compare also MT Hilkhot K’ri’at Sh’ma‘ 2.8–10 with the glosses of Rabad. Maimonides mentions the term notarikon in his commentary to M. Shabbat 12.5, but only by way of explaining the mishnaic text (and he there takes the word to mean nothing more than “abbreviation”).


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59. This has interesting parallels to his views concerning the authority of the Sages (which is institutional, and not “ontological”); see M. Kellner, Maimonides on ‘The Decline of the Generations’. 60. Here, and in the rest of the paragraph, mgillah. 61. See the notes in Blau, “Pe‘er ha-Dor,” and in Maimonides, She’elot u-T’shuvot, pp. 29–33. 62. Responsa (Blau) no. 294. 63. On the scholars of the West, see Twersky, Introduction to the Code, p. 54, n. 85. 64. See also B. Barry Levy, Fixing God’s Torah, 188 and 220. 65. I support this claim in Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People and in “Overcoming Chosenness.” For important background to the discussion, see Menachem Hirshman, Torah Lekhol Ba’ei ‘Olam. Hirshman’s central argument is presented in “Rabbinic Universalism in the Second and Third Centuries.” 66. Twersky, in his Introduction to the Code, observes: “The interpretation of Dt. 31:26 is new” (p. 421, n. 164). 67. I cite the translation found in Twersky, A Maimonides Reader, 407. See also Guide III 31; Pines. See Twersky’s discussion in Introduction to the Code, 385–387. 68. For details, see my translation: “Maimonides Commentary on Hagigah II.1.” 69. My attention was drawn to this comment of the Maharsha by Charles B. Chavel in his translation of Maimonides’ Book of Commandments, 2.375. 70. See Lasker, “Proselyte Judaism.” 71. The unredeemed Jewish people are likened to widows. For the expression here, see Proverbs 15:25. 72. B. B’rakhot 58b.


THREE

Maimonides on Joy Moshe Sokol

My aim in this essay is to examine closely a number of Maimonidean texts, many halakhic in nature, in an effort to unravel Maimonides’ conception of joy. My argument is that when these texts are considered in the context of Maimonides’ philosophical views, frequently as articulated in the Guide, they yield a rich and fascinating portrait of joy and the avenues to its achievement. It should first be pointed out that this essay is quite different in subject from that of Hava Tirosh Samuelson’s recent book on eudaimonia in the Jewish sources.1 While that learned work contains a detailed chapter on Maimonides, it does not cite the texts considered here, primarily because it addresses Jewish conceptions of the summum bonum, and focuses little on the emotional dimension of happiness. Moreover, there is an intuitive distinction between happiness or eudaimonia, on the one hand, and joy or simḥa on the other. Recent empirical studies of what psychologists now call “subjective well-being,” a state that correlates with at least part of eudaimonia, flesh this distinction out. Joy is purely emotional, while subjective well-being is a far broader condition, which, scholars argue, includes not only the presence of positive emotions, such as joy and affection, but also the relative absence of negative emotions, such as sadness and anxiety, as well as judgments about personal life satisfaction, which are cognitive in nature. Thus happiness, construed as subjective well-being, is a far more inclusive state than joy, which is no more than one of its many constituents.2 While Maimonides mentions joy in numerous contexts, all cataloged and carefully discussed in a comprehensive article by Gerald Blidstein,3 I shall focus here on what are the most important halakhic occasions of joy, the Jewish holidays, where the experience of joy, according to the halakha, is sometimes biblically mandated. I shall also examine a particularly significant set of texts related to the holiday of Purim, where joy is likewise of 37

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fundamental importance.4 While these sources may not give us a complete picture of Maimonides on joy, they will, I believe, shed considerable light on important aspects of it. T H E T H R E E F E S T I VA L S

Maimonides asserts in Hilkhot Yom Ṭov 6:17 that there is a biblical obligation to rejoice during the Shalosh Regalim, the festivals of Pesaḥ, Sukkot, and Shavuot. In Temple times this was fulfilled by bringing certain sacrifices. Nevertheless it included, and according to Maimonides continues to include to this day, a series of other behaviors, which he famously describes in the next halakha: Thus children should be given parched ears, nuts and other dainties; women should have clothes and pretty trinkets bought for them, according to one’s means; and men should eat meat and drink wine, for there can be no real rejoicing without meat to eat and wine to drink. And while one eats and drinks himself, it is his duty to feed the stranger, the orphan, the widow, and other poor and unfortunate people, for he who locks the doors to his courtyard and eats and drinks with his wife and family, without giving anything to eat and drink to the poor and the bitter in soul—his meal is not a rejoicing in a divine commandment, but a rejoicing in his own stomach. (Hilkhot Yom Ṭov 6:18)5

Whatever one’s reaction to Maimonides’ view of the divergent needs of men and women delineated here, several points should be stressed. First joy is largely associated here with material well-being—with eating, drinking, and fine clothing, falling squarely under what Maimonides in Guide III 27 calls well-being of the body. This is consistent with (although not quite identical to) Maimonides’ generic explanation for the Three Festivals in Guide III 43, where he says “the festivals are all for rejoicings and pleasurable gatherings, which in most cases are indispensable for man; they are also useful in the establishment of friendship, which must exist among people living in political societies.”6 Here too the stress is on material and now social well-being. Given this material conception of joy in Hilkhot Yom Ṭov, Maimonides is concerned about the potential for selfishness in a holiday focused on food, drink, and fine clothing, and he insists on the importance of caring for the needy and poor. And again, because of his material conception of joy, Maimonides is equally concerned about the likelihood of frivolity implicit in that account, and a concomitant absence of spirituality. Here is what Maimonides writes in the next two paragraphs: Although eating and drinking on festivals are included in the positive commandment to rejoice on those days, one should not eat and drink all day long, the proper procedure being as follows: In the morning, people

M A I MON I DE S ON JOY

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should go early to the synagogue or the house of study, recite the prayers and read the lesson in the Law appropriate to the day, and then return home and eat. Then they should return to the house of study, and study Scripture or Mishnah until noon. After noon they should recite the afternoon prayer, and then return home and eat and drink for the rest of the day until nightfall. (6.19) When one eats and drinks and rejoices on a festival day, he should not overindulge in wine, merriment, and frivolity, in the belief that the more he does of this the more he is fulfilling the commandment to rejoice. For drunkenness, excessive merrymaking, and frivolity are not rejoicing but madness and folly, and we were commanded to indulge not in madness and folly but in the kind of rejoicing which partakes of the worship of the Creator of all things. (6.20)7

Maimonides thus insists not only on the importance of caring for the needy, but also (1) that much of the holiday be spent in prayer and study; and (2) that the joy itself be contextualized by divine service. Despite these many constraints designed in some sense to “elevate” the holiday, it is nevertheless still true that rejoicing on the festivals is halakhically associated most closely with material well-being, or well-being of the body. Let us now examine Maimonides’ account of one of the Three Festivals in particular, Tabernacles, or Sukkot. S U K KO T

In the rabbinic tradition, the festival of Sukkot was an especially joyous holiday. Maimonides writes in Hilkhot Lulav 8.12 that “in the Temple there was extra joy.” In Guide III 43 he goes much further, writing that Sukkot “aims at rejoicing and gladness.”8 This implies that joy is the whole point of the holiday, a striking claim, that requires some explanation. In Hilkhot Lulav 8.13–15 Maimonides describes the joyous festivities at the Temple during Sukkot. What form did this rejoicing take? Fifes sounded, and harps, lyres, and cymbals were played. Whoever could play a musical instrument did so, and whoever could sing, sang. Others stamped their feet, slapped their thighs, clapped their hands, leaped, or danced, each one to the best of his ability, while songs and hymns of praise were being recited. (8.13) It was a religious duty to make this rejoicing as great as possible, but participation in it was not open to non-scholars or anyone else who wished to take part. Only the great scholars in Israel, heads of academies, members of the Sanhedrin, elders, and men distinguished for their piety and good deeds—these only danced and clapped, made music, and rejoiced in the Temple during the Feast of Tabernacles. Everyone else, men and women, came to watch and listen. (8.14)

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Rejoicing in the fulfillment of the commandment and in love for God who has prescribed the commandment is a supreme act of divine worship. One who refrains from participation in such rejoicing deserves to be punished . . . If one is arrogant and stands on his own dignity and thinks only of self-aggrandizement on such occasions, he is both a sinner and a fool . . . Contrariwise, one who humbles and makes light of himself on such occasions achieves greatness and honor, for he serves the Lord out of sheer love . . . True greatness and honor are achieved only by rejoicing before the Lord, as it is said, “King David leaping and dancing before the Lord,” etc. (8.15)9

The joy described here is not material or social, like that of Three Festivals generally, but ecstatic in nature. It was associated with music and dancing, which, interestingly, were spiritual practices important for the Sufi mystics of Maimonides’ own day. Moreover, the celebrations were limited to the elite, while the average citizen merely stood by and observed. Indeed, the practices described here are not social, as in Maimonides’ characterization of the Three Festivals generally, but in certain respects even antisocial. For not only are the masses excluded from them, but King David was criticized by his own wife for his excesses while dancing in honor of the ark, and King David serves as Maimonides’ model for ecstatic dancing and singing. Thus in the Mishneh Torah the joy associated with this aspect of the Sukkot observance moves in an entirely different direction from the joy associated with the Three Festivals generally, and indeed even stands in tension with it. This too requires some explanation. Maimonides’ peroration about the importance of joy in the performance of mitzvot is certainly consistent with his comments cited earlier about the Three Festivals generally. Nevertheless, the emphasis given here on this point, and the stress on the ecstatic and on the moral and social implications of ecstatic worship, are striking. Also significant is the introduction of a phrase, which does not appear in Hilkhot Yom Ṭov, “ahavat ha-El,” “love of God.” It is surely worth asking why this phrase first makes its appearance here. At one level, of course, the answer is obvious. Love of God may be exactly the kind of passionate experience linked to the ecstatic states Maimonides describes here. But is there more to it? In numerous places Maimonides associates love of God with knowledge of Him, the former flowing from the latter.10 Moreover, it is precisely the knowers of God, the intellectual elite, who participate in these ecstatic celebrations. But what might be behind the special role of knowledge of God for Sukkot in particular, more so than the other two festivals? In Guide III 43 Maimonides draws a comparison between Sukkot and Pesaḥ, its closest analogue. Sukkot is like Pesaḥ in that both teach a moral quality as well as a belief. The moral quality in both cases is gratitude for God’s redemption and protection of Israel. The belief is in God’s capacity for miracles, performed in liberating Israel from Egypt, a memory sustained by these celebrations. Sukkot is distinctive, however. Maimonides first focuses on its season. Recognizing that Sukkot originates as a harvest festival, he provides his


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own original reading of its significance. He references the Nicomachaean Ethics (VIII 9, 1160a 25–28), where Aristotle explains that it was a general practice in ancient times to celebrate and offer sacrifices after the harvest, when people were at leisure. Sukkot too, “a season of leisure when one rests from necessary labors,” affords ample and appropriate opportunity for “rejoicing and gladness.” The stress on Sukkot as a season of leisure is, so far as I know, Maimonides’ original contribution. That he allies this interpretation with Aristotle’s understanding of harvest festivals is surely not without interest.11 Later in the same chapter of the Guide Maimonides takes up another major feature of the festival, the obligation to take the Four Species. After discussing the homilectical and poetic character of midrashic rationales of their symbolism of the four, he proposes that the purpose of the Four Species is to signify or indicate the joy and gladness felt by the Israelites on leaving the desert, a land barren of such verdure, and entering the Land of Israel, which was blessed with fruit bearing trees and rivers in abundance. The Four Species, themselves, fragrant, fresh and enduring products of a fertile land, are thus understood by Maimonides to provide a vehicle for celebrating the agricultural blessings of the Land. What emerges from Maimonides’ analysis in the Guide? Two transitions seem central. First, there is the transition from the labors of farming and its deprivations to a postharvest leisure blessed with plenty, silos bursting with produce. This takes place on the plane of the individual. Then there is the transition from the deprivations of traveling through a barren desert to a life of relative wealth in the fertile Land of Israel. This takes place on the national plane. The two transitions mirror one another. I would like to suggest that the end states of each of these transitions, individual and national, are what might be termed proto-messianic. Here is how Maimonides characterizes the messianic era in the famous concluding two paragraphs of Mishneh Torah, in Hilkhot Melakhim 12:4–5 (and echoed in his Introduction to Pereq Ḥeleq and elsewhere). The sages and prophets did not long for the days of the Messiah that Israel might exercise dominion over the world, or rule over the heathens, or be exalted by the nations, or that it might eat and drink and rejoice. Their aspiration was that Israel be free to devote itself to the law and its wisdom, [italics mine] with no one to oppress or disturb it, and thus be worthy of life in the world to come. (12.4) In that era there will be neither famine nor war, neither jealousy nor strife. Blessing will be abundant, comforts within the reach of all. The one preoccupation of the whole world will be to know the Lord. Hence Israelites will be very wise, they will know the things that are now concealed and will attain an understanding of their Creator to the utmost capacity of the human mind, as it is written: “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).12

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Note Maimonides’ assertion that in the messianic era “Israel will be free to devote itself to the Law and its wisdom.” The Hebrew term is “penu’im,” “free” or “at leisure.” The material ease described in the last paragraph about the messianic era echoes the phrases Maimonides uses in the Guide III 43 and elsewhere to describe the Land of Israel. Thus, for example, Maimonides writes in Guide III 43 that Sukkot cultivates the moral quality of gratitude, in that Jews are obligated by the Torah to live in discomfort in the huts of Sukkot to commemorate how they had lived as “wretched inhabitants of deserts and wastelands.” However with the benefaction of God they “went over to dwell in richly ornamented houses in the best and most fertile place on earth.” This is a reference to the Land of Israel. Describing the messianic state, Maimonides in his Introduction to Pereq Ḥeleq cites the passage in B. Shabbat 30b that the Land of Israel will in the future yield delicate cakes and fine woolen clothing.13 It turns out, then, that the extraordinary natural fertility and richness of the Land of Israel as described in the Guide III 43 bears the potential for a proto-messianic state even in pre-messianic history. Maimonides in Hilkhot T’shuvah” 8 interprets the significance of the material blessings promised in the Torah to those who obey God’s will as providing a this-wordly opportunity to engage undistractedly in the pursuit of wisdom. This too is proleptic for the messianic era.14 Maimonides knew Aristotle’s view, famously enunciated in the Nicomachaean Ethics (X 7, 1177b 1–15), that leisure provides the possibility of the contemplative life, which Aristotle sees as the summum bonum. Maimonides shares with Aristotle this commitment to the importance of the contemplative life, although in my view not to the same extent as Aristotle.15 Maimonides’ reliance on the Nicomachaean Ethics in Hilkhot Sukkot may thus be part of a much larger conceptual framework laid out by Aristotle that is adopted and adapted by Maimonides. The plenty and consequent leisure of life in the Land of Israel as it should be, and the plenty and consequent leisure of the postharvest season, on the national and personal planes, provide just the context necessary for a life of contemplation. And that indeed is exactly how Maimonides describes life in the messianic era made possible by messianic plenty. Leisure, and the opportunity for contemplation it provides, are thus essential features of Sukkot, especially in the Land of Israel, exactly as they are essential features of the messianic era. Sukkot, because of its harvest season roots, is the only biblical holiday designed to mimic and prefigure this messianic state. This theme underlies the ecstatic joy that Maimonides describes in the Mishneh Torah. His use of the phrase “love of God” there signals the role of philosophical knowledge in the celebrations, in which, as we saw, only the intellectual and spiritual elite, participated directly, because only they could appreciate that knowledge, and experience it. This too would explain why Maimonides asserts only in the case of Sukkot that joy is the purpose of the holiday. For it is joy that arises in the contemplation of God, which the harvest season makes possible.


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But this needs a more careful formulation. What exactly would foster this joy, which Maimonides says is the raison d’etre of the holiday? First, it was probably conditioned by the simple, normal joy anyone would feel once a difficult job was finally accomplished, and with food and livelihood secured at the completion of labors on the farm. But for Maimonides this condition provides no more than a psychological backdrop for the joy, which is ultimately the purpose of the holiday. This “higher” joy may have sprung, in part, from newly acquired, deeper knowledge of God afforded by the leisure of the holiday itself, which Maimonides describes as spent in prayer and study. It may also have sprung from knowing that the opportunity to spend far more time seeking such knowledge was nigh, with the postharvest leisure to follow. It may have sprung, too, from the messianic intimations of the holiday. Finally, and this is a point that Maimonides stresses, it may also have flowed from thinking about the miracles that God performed for the Jewish people that the holiday celebrates, and that yield so much insight into the mysterious workings of the divinity. As we shall see later on, this is of special importance, for it relates to the crucial role of understanding divine providence in the experience of Maimonidean joy. Direct textual evidence linking joy to knowledge for Maimonides may be found in Hilkhot T’shuvah 8.2. Maimonides there describes the world to come as a nonphysical state in which there are no material bodies. What then do the rabbis mean when they assert that in the world to come the righteous will sit with crowns on their heads taking pleasure from the radiance of the divine presence? How can the crowns be physical if the world to come is nonphysical? Not surprisingly, Maimonides interprets the passage figuratively—“derekh ḥidah,” “Their crowns,” he says, are a metaphor for the knowledge they have acquired. Maimonides next quotes the verse from the Song of Songs (3:11) that mentions King Solomon’s crown, and adds a verse from Isaiah (51:11) stating, “eternal joy rests on their heads.” Maimonides observes that joy is not an object that can literally rest on someone’s head. Thus, Maimonides concludes, “the crown to which the wise men referred is knowledge.” But what Isaiah said is that joy sits upon their head, not knowledge. Thus joy and knowledge are used interchangeably when described as resting on someone’s head. From this it clearly follows that joy and knowledge can be used in some contexts interchangeably. For more evidence linking joy to knowledge of God, and for a deeper understanding of why joy follows knowledge of God, we must turn to the final portion of our analysis, Maimonides’ discussion of the holiday of Purim. But before doing so it is worth observing that Maimonides’ discussion of the Three Festivals generally focuses our attention on the ways in which they contribute to the well being of the body. Our analysis of Sukkot has focused on its distinctive role in contributing to the well being of the soul. But Sukkot is one of the Three Festivals as well. Sukkot thus contributes to both dimensions, to well being of the body and well being of the soul.

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PURIM

Maimonides in Hilkhot Megillah 2.14 describes Purim as “ . . . a day of joy [simḥa] and celebration, of sending gifts to friends and to the poor.” This reference to Purim as a day of joy and celebration derives from Megillat Esther itself, and goes considerably further than Maimonides’ characterization of the Three Festivals, and even of Sukkot. While there is an obligation to experience joy on those days, even extra joy, they are not called “days of joy,” as is Purim. What lies behind this difference? Let us read further, now halakha 17: It is preferable to spend more on gifts to the poor than on the Purim meal or on presents to friends. For no joy is greater or more glorious than the joy of gladdening the hearts of the poor, the orphans, the widows, and the strangers. Indeed, he who causes the hearts of these unfortunates to rejoice, emulates the Divine Presence, of whom Scripture says, “to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.” (Isaiah 57:15) (Hilkhot Megillah 2.17)16

The similarity to Maimonides’ emphasis on helping the poor in Hilkhot Yom Ṭov regarding the Three Festivals is obvious. But consider these differences:17 1. Notice that strictly speaking the obligation in Hilkhot Megillah is not to feed the poor, as it was in Hilkhot Yom Ṭov, but to make them happy. This one happens to accomplish by feeding them, but the obligation per se as Maimonides formulates it is to be “mesameaḥ lev aniyyim”. This is hardly insignificant. What lies behind the difference? 2. Maimonides adds in Hilkhot Megillah, but not in Hilkhot Yom Ṭov, that in fulfilling this obligation one is similar to the Sh’khinah, the Divine Presence. Why does Maimonides mention this only in Hilkhot Megillah? And what exactly does he mean by “similar to the Divine Presence”? In order to gain insight into the difference between the Festivals and Purim, and to attempt to answer these questions, we would do well to note first that Megillat Esther, in verses 9:29–30, uses the terms shalom and emet, peace and truth, to characterize the Megillah itself. Do these two terms have any special significance in the Maimonidean lexicon? At the end of Hilkhot Ta‘anit, and based upon the Tosefta (Ta‘anit 3) Maimonides asserts that in the messianic era the cycle of fasts commemorating the destruction of the Temple, which plays so important a role in the Jewish calendar, will no longer obtain. All the fast days mentioned above are destined to be abolished in the time of the Messiah; indeed, they are destined to be turned into festive days, days of rejoicing and gladness, in accordance with the verse, “Thus says the Lord of


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hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful seasons; therefore love you truth and peace.” (Zechariah 8:19)18

Maimonides identifies the messianic era and its joy and gladness with the truth and peace prophesied by Zechariah. Megillat Esther also uses the term joy to describe the Purim holiday; and, as we have seen, it too speaks of truth and peace. So three values join in Purim: joy, peace and truth, all linked by Zechariah with the messianic era. When Maimonides quotes Zechariah’s prophecy, that fasts will be transformed to days of joy and gladness, he is careful to include the words truth and peace, going beyond the shortened version of the prophecy cited in the text of the Tosefta that he may well have used.19 This suggests that Purim for Maimonides bears messianic overtones. In Sh’monah P’raqim 4 he cites the same verse from Zechariah that he cites at the end of Hilkhot Ta‘anit and adds: “Know that ‘truth’ refers to intellectual virtues, because they are true and will not change, and ‘peace’ to the moral virtues on which the peace in the world depends.”20 Thus the messianic era foretold in Zechariah will be an age of intellectual perfection—knowledge of God—and moral perfection. This conception of the messianic era mirrors Maimonides’ comments on the same subject at the end of Hilkhot M’lakhim and in the Guide III 11 (although there moral virtue is made dependent on intellectual virtue). This reading reinforces our own reading of Maimonides on Sukkot. There I argued that the joy of Sukkot is linked to knowledge of God in a proto-messianic state. According to Maimonides’ interpretation of this verse in Zechariah, knowledge of God (emet) is linked to the actual messianic state, and in that same verse it is also linked to joy. The terms “truth and peace” are bound up with the term joy because “truth and peace” entail intellectual (and moral) perfection. Thus, the verse in Zechariah on Maimonides’ own reading supports our theory, that knowledge of God and joy are properties of the messianic era. But what then accounts for the differences between the joy of Sukkot and the joy of Purim as it emerges in the Maimonidean texts we have examined? Why is Purim called a day of joy and Sukkot not? Why is the mitzvah on Purim to bring others to joy, but not on Sukkot? Why is someone who does so compared to the Sh’khinah, but not someone who rejoices and feeds the poor on the other holidays? If Purim achieves knowledge of God, is its yield different in any way from the knowledge of God achieved on Sukkot? Based upon what we have seen so far, it seems likely that there would be a link between the messianic state and Purim. What is that link, and is it different from the link between Sukkot and the messianic state, which I have called “proto-messianic”? In order to attempt an answer to these questions we should turn to the Guide once again, but now to III 51. In numerous passages in that important chapter Maimonides describes joy as flowing from knowledge of God. For example, he writes “And there may be a human individual who, through

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his apprehension of the true realities and his joy in what he has apprehended achieves a state in which he talks with people and is occupied with his bodily necessities while his intellect is wholly turned toward him . . .”21 In this passage and others Maimonides characterizes the ideal state of the knower of God as including the emotion of joy, not to mention love. Unfortunately, he does not make clear just why this is so. Can we gain a deeper and more precise understanding of why knowledge yields joy? Let us turn to the first mention of the link between joy and knowledge in this very chapter. In this passage Maimonides describes an individual who focuses only on God, renounces all other than He, and directs all his or her intellectual energies “toward an examination of the beings with a view of drawing from them proof with regard to Him, so as to know His governance of them in whatever way possible.”22 Moses is referred to there as someone who achieved this rank, conversing with God, such that “because of his great joy in what he apprehended he did neither eat bread nor drink water. For his intellect attained such strength that all the gross faculties in the body ceased to function.” This passage is interesting on at least two accounts. First of all, Maimonides attributes Moses’ abstinence to his joy. Why not directly to Moses’ knowledge? Is it because of the powerful response of the emotions to what we desire? In any case, this passage makes much clearer exactly what knowledge yields the joy in question: knowledge of God’s governance of the world. Of course, all anyone can ultimately know of God, Maimonides argues in Book I of the Guide, are God’s attributes of action. Here, where Maimonides links joy and knowledge explicitly, he also makes it explicit that the knowledge that yields joy is exactly that knowledge, of divine providence, insight into how God governs the universe. But why does this specific form of knowledge yield joy? Perhaps the halakhic sources shed light on these philosophical sources. Let us return to Purim. As is well known, the holiday celebrates the Jewish redemption from the evil machinations of Haman and his dupe, King Ahasuerus. The story told in Megillat Esther derives its power in part because the mysterious and threatening turn of events yields the ultimate salvation of the Jewish people in utterly unforeseeable ways. Who could have predicted that the very gallows Haman built for Mordecai would see Haman and his sons hanged? Who could have predicted that the seemingly disastrous turn of events would lead in the end to a significant strengthening of the Jewish position? While the reader of Megillat Esther knows that all will work out well in the end, and is familiar with every twist of the plot, the actors do not. They are utterly ignorant of what will turn out to be the true meaning of the nightmare in which they find themselves enmeshed. In a single, brilliant flash, the redemption that Purim celebrates illuminates the otherwise hidden and enigmatic contours of divine providence. I would like to suggest that Purim more than any other holiday provides insight into the astonishing work of providence. So Maimonides saw the link


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between joy and knowledge on Purim as making that a day of joy more than any other. For no other day in the Jewish calendar provides such a stunning revelation of the mysteries of providence. That is just the kind of knowledge that Maimonides in III 51 says engenders joy. It is as if God had for a moment parted the veils that hide His power in the world and given observers a glimpse of the divine mysteries. This is evocative of the metaphor Maimonides uses at the beginning of the Guide,23 in describing the lightning flashes of insight, which momentarily illuminate the dark night of human ignorance. Would this occasion joy? I should certainly think so. This reading of the knowledgejoy link makes it particularly understandable why knowledge gives rise to joy, especially since the illumination in question derives from the experience of divine salvation. Death no longer waits at the doorstep. Consider now the link I have suggested between the messianic state and this knowledge of divine providence and consequent joy. Remember that the verse in Zechariah that Maimonides quotes links the messianic state to joy and knowledge. Not only that. The verse promises that the fast days commemorating the destruction of the Temple will become holidays. But why should that be so? One answer is that in the messianic era it will become clear just how that great tragedy in Jewish life led to ultimate redemption. If the destruction of the Temple is the work of divine providence, then, for Maimonides it must have had some ultimately beneficent purpose. Revealing that concealed purpose would dramatically reverse the experience of tragedy, transforming its commemoration from mourning to celebration. This reading sharpens the parallel between Purim and the messianic era. Both observances bespeak a brilliant vision of the mysteries of providence behind the shadows of tragedy. The messianic era projects a much longer and more powerful beam than Purim. But I would argue that both are of the same ilk, and thus both are called days of joy. Not so with the Three Festivals generally, nor with Sukkot in particular. The element of divine providence is there, as Maimonides explains in the Guide; and that is a factor in the joy that Maimonides sees as prescribed for these holidays. It was God, he says, who made the harvest possible, who redeemed Israel from Egypt and cared for them in the desert. Yet there is no dramatic reversal or stunning illumination like that of Purim, or that of the messianic age that will transform fast days into joy. Sukkot, I have argued, is proto-messianic. Purim, I would sugest, is micro-messianic, for two reasons. First, it captures for a brief moment the lightning flash of insight into divine providence. Second, the victory over enemies and resultant physical ease again presage the ease and comfort of the messianic era. Why then the unique obligation on Purim to bring all to rejoicing, and why only for Purim does Maimonides use the phrase “compared to the Divine Presence”? The answers may lie in the final paragraph of the Guide, which delineates what has been called a post-theoretic morality. The moral virtues are only the third tier in Maimonides’ hierarchy of virtues, the fourth and

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highest being intellectual virtue. Still, in describing the life of one who has achieved intellectual perfection and understands God’s governance of the world, Maimonides says that such a person “will always have in view lovingkindness, righteousness and judgment, through assimilation to His actions . . .” At this stage, moral virtue is not a cultivated habit but a consequence of understanding God’s governance of the world. God acts with compassion toward His creatures, and so will the individual who has achieved full knowledge of God’s compassionate governance. As Plato understood, to know goodness, or compassion, is to live it. This is the deeper meaning of imitatio Dei, the highest, post-theoretic level of morality.24 For Maimonides, Purim’s micro-messianic illumination of the mysteries of divine providence may foster just that kind of moral sensibility. The events described in the Scroll of Esther, reveal God’s miraculous and compassionate care for Israel, despite all appearances to the contrary, and indeed, paradoxically, precisely through those seemingly ugly appearances. By illuminating the providential mysteries concealed behind Jewish suffering, God brought his people new insight and joy, which the newly insightful who experience this joy should share with others. For ‘God’ we can, of course, substitute ‘Divine Presence.’ This would explain why Maimonides uses the phrase divine presence only in the context of Purim. The two distinctive features of Maimonides’ description of Purim’s joy, then, are linked: the obligation to bring others to rejoice, and the use of the phrase “compared to the divine presence.” The joy of the three festivals, and even Sukkot, is of a different order. Only Purim can provide the stunning insight into providence, which can, if only for a moment, penetrate the veils of mystery and yield the sort of knowledge that approximates the post-theoretic knowledge of the closing chapter of the Guide. The kindnesses of the Three Festivals, I argued earlier, are ensconced in a tikkun ha-guf morality, a morality of habit, at the level of the third perfection. There the obligation is simply to feed the poor, but not wholly to imitate what God has achieved, rendering others so joyous, that in their joy, like God, they must make others joyous as well. All moral acts, including feeding the poor, are imitatio Dei, as Maimonides makes clear in Hilkhot De‘ot 1. But they are imitatio Dei of a completely different order. Perhaps the best conclusion to the substantive portion of this paper is Maimonides’ own conclusion to the substantive portion of his discussion of the laws of Purim, Hilkhot Megillah 2.18: All prophetic Books and the Sacred Writings will cease [to be recited in public] during the messianic era except the Book of Esther. It will continue to exist just as the Five Books of the Torah and the laws of the Oral Torah that will never cease. Although ancient troubles will be remembered no longer, as it is written: “The troubles of the past are forgotten and hidden from my eyes” (Isaiah 65:16), the days of Purim will not be abolished, as it written: “These days of Purim shall never be repealed among the Jews, and the memory of them shall never cease from their descendants.” (Esther 9:28)25


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Maimonides draws this paragraph from J. Megillah 1.5. But the source need hardly be cited, especially in a halakhic work. This teaching explicitly links Purim to the messianic era, one of the essential claims of the “micro-messianic” theory of Purim proposed here. Purim is the quintessential festival of the messianic era. For it reveals the meaning behind the suffering its story relates, the ways in which tragedy providentially gives way to salvation. So too the messianic era will reveal that same providence hidden behind exile. Therefore, Maimonides says, all Jewish suffering will be forgotten in the messianic era—not merely because all is now well, for that is hardly a sufficient reason to forget. Tragedy will be forgotten because it will be revealed as the very means by which the bliss of redemption and the messianic era were won. In that important sense Jewish tragedy is only apparent tragedy. So only Megillat Esther, which teaches that lesson in the most vivid way, will survive into the messianic era.

I would like to conclude this chapter with a caveat. I have sought to analyze Maimonides’ halakhic teachings regarding joy, raising a series of problems with the texts and seeking their solution in Maimonides’ philosophical writings. If I am right, this chapter is yet one more argument for the unity of Maimonides work as a halakhist and a philosopher. It shows how Maimonides’ halakhic and philosophical works illuminate one another. Yet we cannot be entirely certain that our approach is sound. For Maimonides’ halakhic works do not explicitly advance any of the philosophical ideas I have cited here in my effort to illuminate his halakhic writings. Nor do his philosophical writings make explicit any of the halakhic implications I have suggested flow from those ideas. Students of Maimonides are all too familiar with the allusiveness of the master’s writings. His methods leave us inevitably to suffer our lack of perfect certainty. But if my analysis is correct, come the messianic era, that suffering will end. Perhaps it too will be revealed to have been only an appearance and not real suffering at all. And then, of course, we can rejoice. NOTES 1. Hava Tirosh Samuelson, Happiness in Pre-Modern Judaism. 2. There is a considerable philosophical literature on happiness. For a fuller discussion of some of these issues, see, for example, Deal W. Hudson, Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction, especially chapter 4, and the bibliography included at the end of the book. For a survey of the extensive empirical literature on subjective well-being from which my comments were drawn, including a comprehensive bibliography, see Diener, Suh, Lucas, and Smith, “Subjective Well-Being.” 3. Gerald Blidstein, “Ha-Simḥa be-Mishnato ha-Musarit shel ha-Rambam,” 145– 163. David Blumenthal offers a brief linguistic analysis of the term simḥa, as Maimonides uses it, in his essay “Maimonides: Prayer, Worship and Mysticism.” The role

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of the emotions in religious life according to Maimonides has been examined by Menachem Kellner in “Is Maimonides’ Ideal Person Austerely Rationalist?,” although he does not discuss joy there. 4. Some of these texts have been analyzed by Isadore Twersky in “On Law and Ethics in the Mishneh Torah: A Case Study of Hilkhot Megillah 2:17,” and in a brief follow-up essay by Lawrence Kaplan, “Hilkhot Megillah Revisited: A Halakhic Analysis.” My approach in this essay is broader and provides a different perspective on the texts in question, and on others. 5. MT Repose on Festivals 6.18, trans. Gandz and Klein (YJS), 303. 6. Guide III 43 (Pines, 570). 7. MT Repose on Festivals 6.19–20, trans. Gandz and Klein (YJS), 303–304. 8. Guide III 43 (Pines, 571). 9. See Guide III 43 (Pines, 572–574). 10. For example, MT Yesodei ha-Torah 2.2 and Hilkhot T’shuva 10.6. And see Menachem Kellner’s chapter above. 11. For a study of Maimonides’ citations of Aristotle’s Ethics in the Guide see Shmuel Harvey, “Mekoran shel ha-Muvaot min ha-Etica le-Aristo be-Moreh u-be-Moreh le-Moreh.” 12. MT Hilkhot Melakhim, 12.4–5, tr. A.M. Hershman, (YJS), 245. 13. Mishnah im Perush Ha-Rambam, trans. D. Kafih, 3.139. 14. For a general overview of Maimonides on the Land of Israel, see Isadore Twersky, “Maimonides and Eretz Yisrael, Halakhic.” There is a voluminous literature on messianism in Maimonides’ writings. For a good overview, which touches upon some of the sources cited here, see Joel Kraemer’s “On Maimonides’ Messianic Posture.” 15. Note the concluding paragraph of the Guide, and the various interpretations to which it gave rise, as well as the far-reaching role of practical mitzvot in Jewish life. See note 24 below. 16. MT Hilkhot Megilla: Hanukkah, 2.17, tr. S. Gandz and H. Klein (YJS), 462. 17. See note 4 above for different approaches to these differences. 18. MT Hilkhot Ta‘aniyyot 5.19, trans. S. Gandz and H. Klein (YJS), 452. 19. Tosefta, ed. Zuckerman and Lieberman, 221. Maimonides may, of course, have had a different version of the Tosefta, but the messianic allusion remains. 20. ed. Kafih, 254. 21. Guide III 51 (Pines, 623). 22. Guide III 51 (Pines, 620). 23. Guide, Introduction (Pines, 7). 24. For a review and analysis of the extensive literature on the concluding section of the Guide, see M. Kellner, Maimonides on Human Perfection, and Hava Tirosh Samuleson (n. 1). My own approach favors a Platonic reading of Maimonides. 25. Translation by Philip Birnbaum from Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, 110.

FOUR

Maimonides’ Psychology Alfred L. Ivry

Maimonides was strongly drawn to philosophy, we all know, even as we know that he was content, by and large, to work within the philosophical theories current in his day. Much research has been devoted to identifying the particular philosophers with whom Maimonides agrees, and to clarifying the specific points at which he disagrees with his predecessors.1 As Maimonides makes clear, he is not offering his readers a full, let alone original, exposition of any one area of philosophical discourse. He assumes that the reader knows the material, and can follow him in his adoption or rejection of it. Of course, he does not fully subscribe to either of the two dominant philosophical paradigms current in his time, the Aristotelian or the Neoplatonic. But he does not critique them wholesale either. In this claim, I differ with the view advanced with much acumen by the late Shlomo Pines, and more recently, and more qualifiedly, by Josef Stern, that Maimonides was a radical critic of philosophy’s claims to knowledge: that he was either a philosophical agnostic (Pines’ position)2 or a skeptic (Stern’s view).3 This is not the place to rehearse the arguments for and against these claims, which do have the virtue, among others, of drawing attention to much that is problematical in Maimonides’ philosophy. He certainly is not simply an epigone of the Muslim falāsifa, whom he admired, nor is he engaged in merely combinatorial optimization of the views of his predecessors. Yet Maimonides’ critique of the Aristotelian cosmology of his day, and his reservations about the extent of human knowledge, do not place him outside the mainstream of medieval philosophy, committed as he too was to knowing the truth, and believing that truth—or much of it—could be known by natural means, with the use of one’s intellect. If Maimonides is a philosopher, then, he should be treated as such and held accountable for his handling of philosophical issues. He tells us in the introduction to the Guide that 51

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all his remarks are carefully made, that the whole work is subtly designed, with deliberately misleading statements meant to challenge the reader.4 We are thus entitled to demand consistency from him and to ferret out his actual commitments, distinguishing them from the deliberate inconsistencies and aporias that he offers the unsuspecting.5 The philosophically interested reader will be challenged, therefore, to make sense of Maimonides’ comparative reticence in the Guide in an area that much engaged the philosophers of his day, as it has in every age, including our own: epistemology. Maimonides refers to some of its aspects and not to others, in various parts of the Guide. His reserved approach contributed to the view of professors Pines and Stern that Maimonides did not believe in philosophy’s ability to make sound truth claims. Alexander Altmann has explored this area, as has Herbert Davidson.6 They have shown that Maimonides does subscribe to a traditional epistemological scheme, one that entitles him to make valid, if limited, truth claims. While I concur with this view,7 I should like to point to certain issues that remain puzzling, and that may still be unappreciated today. To speak of medieval epistemology is to refer to medieval notions of the soul, its nature, actions and destiny. It is here that Maimonides is relatively unforthcoming, both in the Guide and elsewhere. Not that he does not speak openly and often enough of his belief in the immortality of the soul, primarily in his rabbinic writings, in such places as his Introduction to Ḥeleq in his Commentary on the Mishna,8 in the Laws of Repentance in the Mishneh Torah,9 and in his Essay on Resurrection.10 Nor is an affirmation of immortality absent from the Guide, as Altmann has shown.11 However, both in this ostensibly more philosophical work and in his more obviously rabbinic writings, Maimonides’ affirmations are proffered dogmatically, without philosophical argument. He simply identifies the entire soul as a thing that endures forever, when deserving, since it is the essential nature of the individual. As Amira Eran has shown, al-Ghazālī is the source for some of Maimonides’ specific formulations in his Mishna Commentary and Code on the nature of the world to come and the bliss the soul may know there.12 Maimonides may well be adopting Ghazālī’s theological perspective and language in writings intended primarily for a nonphilosophical readership. For his own rabbinic tradition obliged him to affirm not only the survival of the souls of the righteous but also the physical resurrection of the dead. Yet such affirmations are not Maimonides’ only words on the subject. He begins his Eight Chapters, the introduction to Tractate Avot of his Mishna Commentary, his most theoretical discussion of ethics, with a description of the faculties of the soul. They are five, Maimonides says, following a tradition that began with Aristotle’s De anima but that reached Maimonides, as Davidson has shown, through al-Fārābī.13 The five are the nutritive, sensitive, imaginative, appetitive, and rational faculties. Fārābī has substituted imagination for Aristotle’s faculty of motion,14 and Maimonides follows him, subsuming locomotion under the appetitive.

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Maimonides follows Fārābī practically verbatim in declaring the imagination to be “the faculty that preserves the impressions of sensibly perceived objects (rusūm al-maḥsūsāt) after they vanish from the immediacy of the senses (mubāsharatu l-ḥawās) that perceived them.”15 The imagination works with these impressions, combining and separating them. Fārābī goes on to state that some imaginative acts are true and others false, that is, they represent reality truly or falsely. But Maimonides here mentions only the false actions of this faculty. It creates, he says, fantastic impressions that the senses never perceived and could not possibly perceive, presumably because of logical and physical constraints. Maimonides charges the mutakallimūn, the Muslim theologians, with legitimizing this function of the imagination, in which “everything that can be imagined is possible” (kullu mā yatakhayyalu mumkin). This is a central tenet of kalām, which Maimonides would address fully in the Guide years later.16 Here though, early in his career, he is already engaged with the challenge of a radically voluntaristic theology, and the subversive possibilities of the imagination. Missing in Maimonides’ expanded description of the imagination is any appreciation of its central cognitive role, in retaining and remembering sense impressions accurately, and providing the rational faculty with the intelligible forms latent in them. Following Fārābī, Maimonides again makes no mention of the imaginative faculty’s contribution to the operation of the rational faculty in his subsequent description here of that faculty’s activities. Some of these activities, the practical ones, fairly cry out for imaginative, representational constructions. Indeed, as we know even the theoretical, scientific formulations of the intellect may require specific illustrations to underwrite their abstract formulations. In short, Maimonides does not present a full and systematic description of the soul and cognition in the Eight Chapters, the one place in his writings where he seems to have entertained the thought of doing so. He is content to follow al-Fārābī mostly, and differs with him primarily in his stress on God’s granting man free will.17 This will is placed within the domain of the appetitive, as is apparent in chapter 1 of the Eight Chapters. The rational faculty, particularly in its reflective or discursive function (al-fikr), is seen there as deliberating about volitions. So, although moral traits are found only in the appetitive faculty, as Maimonides says,18 cultivating and disciplining them is the task of the rational faculty. Of course, the ultimate task of the rational faculty, as Maimonides says in the fifth chapter, is “to subordinate all his soul’s faculties to thought (al-ray’) . . . and set before his eyes a single goal, the apprehension of God.”19 Again we see a foreshadowing of Maimonides’ teachings in the Guide (III 51). Yet again, we are given no full picture of the means by which cognition works, operations for which there were standard accounts in Maimonides’ time. Fārābī’s Aphorisms of the Statesman, Maimonides’ source here, is itself very sketchy on this subject. But even that source has more to say about the rational faculty and truth. It makes statements that Maimonides chooses to omit.

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Maimonides acknowledges the minimalism of his presentation on the soul in the Eight Chapters. In the concluding paragraph of chapter 1, he writes, “This is not the place for a discourse about form, matter, or how many intellects there are and how they are attained. It is not needed for the discourse we wish (to present) about ethics, but is more appropriate for the Book of Prophecy which we have mentioned.” Maimonides’ once-planned “Book of Prophecy” was folded into the work that would become the Guide to the Perplexed, as Maimonides explains in the introduction to that work. Yet no more than in the former treatise does Maimonides, in this philosophically most ambitious work, engage this subject systematically. Indeed, he is even less thorough in his treatment of the soul in the Guide than he was in Eight Chapters. The Guide favors us with no detailed discussions of the external or internal senses and their interrelationships, nor with an exposition of the stages of intellection. Yet the Guide is deeply dependent on epistemological views. It relies on Maimonides’ ideas about psychological processes and structures that are only partially disclosed. His procedure is likely that identified in the introduction to the Guide as the fifth cause of the contrary or contradictory statements that might be found “in any book or compilation”: the technique of approaching “obscure” matters gingerly, simplifying and thus at first distorting them.20 By and by, however, we learn that Maimonides subscribed to the dominant epistemological paradigm of his period, as laid out by al-Fārābī and Avicenna before him, and by Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century. It was Alexander who took the active aspect of a person’s intelligence as described by Aristotle and situated it in the heavens.21 There it functioned as a universal, nonphysical principle, still called the Agent (or Active) Intellect, still responsible for bringing our individual intellects from potentiality to actuality. In addition, however, this now universal Agent Intellect was seen as endowing individual intellects with their thoughts, either some or all. AlFārābī believed that the Agent Intellect was responsible for endowing a person with the first principles of thought only. But Avicenna saw it as the source of all a person’s universal ideas. It could do this through its role in emanation as wāhib al-ṣuwar, the “Giver of Forms,” all sub-lunar forms.22 The Agent Intellect for Avicenna, accordingly, is a repository of universal ideas, a repository to which only human beings have the key, through their intellects. Maimonides subscribed to this Avicennan view, declaring in Guide II 4 that, the tenth intellect is the Active Intellect, whose existence is indicated by the facts that our intellects pass from potentiality to actuality and that the forms of the existents that are subject to generation and corruption are actualized after they have been in their matter only in potentia. Now everything that passes from potentiality to actuality must have necessarily something that causes it to pass and that is outside it. And this cause must belong to the species of that which it causes to pass from potentiality to actuality . . .


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In this way the giver of a form is indubitably a separate form, and that which brings intellect into existence is an intellect, namely, the Active Intellect.23

Maimonides, then, believes that the Agent Intellect is the formal principle of all sub-lunar forms. As such, it ought to be responsible for the soul in its entirety; for, following Aristotle, the soul was considered the form of the body. While Maimonides so labels the soul in the Book of Knowledge (Sefer haMadda‘) of his Mishneh Torah,24 he proceeds there, as well as in the Guide, to identify the soul with the rational faculty, treating that faculty alone as constituting the form of man.25 Thus the Agent Intellect is responsible directly only for the intellect in human beings. The other faculties of the soul would owe their generation to a number of factors.26 These faculties are corporeal, hence generated and corruptible, whereas the intellect, deriving from a nonphysical and eternal source extrinsic to the body, is eternal. Here Maimonides parts company with Avicenna. He does not adopt that philosopher’s Platonic notion of separate eternal souls that cohabit with bodies but survive their demise intact.27 For Maimonides, even the incipient stage of the intellect, let alone the other faculties of the soul, does not endure. That first stage is the well-known hylic or material intellect, called so ostensibly for its status as a potential intellect, but also for its dependence on the physical impressions preserved by the imagination. This potential intellect is that which Maimonides calls “the soul that comes into being at the time a man is generated.”28 As such, it is embedded in the body,29 even though its nature is a “mere preparedness” (al-‘isti‘dād faqaṭ)30 to receive immaterial forms. This soul/intellect perishes with the body, unlike the “thing” (al-shay’), presumably soul but really intellect, which has become actual, and is now wholly separate from matter. The realized, perfected intellect is commonly referred to by al-Fārābī and Avicenna as the “acquired intellect,” (al-‘aql al-mustafāḍ) a term Maimonides uses very sparingly, and somewhat ambiguously.31 He prefers to speak of the developed intellect simply as the “intellect in act” (al-‘aql bil-fi‘l), having in Guide I 68 elaborated on the complete merging of subject and object in the dynamic act of cognition: “For the intellect in actu is nothing but that which has been intellectually cognized (laysa al-‘aql bi-l-fi‘l shay’an ghayra mā‘uqila) . . . the act (of each intellect) is identical with its essence” (fi‘luhu huwwa dhātuhu).32 In Guide I 72, Maimonides does refer by name to the acquired intellect, saying that it “is not a faculty in the body but is truly separate from the organic body and overflows toward it.”33 This reference to emanation would seem to indicate that Maimonides has identified the acquired intellect with the Agent Intellect.34 This is not surprising, in that the knowledge possessed by the acquired intellect, which is also and always an intellect in act, has been acquired ultimately from the Agent Intellect. It is that supernal intelligence that informs all sublunar objects and renders them intelligible, enabling us to comprehend them. Our knowledge of the essential nature of the world is

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thus knowledge of the Agent Intellect. As we have seen, the act of cognition is regarded as a joining of subject and object, and thus the acquired, active intellect may be said to be with the Agent Intellect, and to be it. That is, the entire acquired, active intellect of a person is also (part of) the Agent Intellect, although the entire Agent Intellect is not identical with a person’s intellect, normally. Still, a person of exceptional intelligence and character is able, on this view, to think of the Agent Intellect directly, to apprehend it without any intermediary physical instantiations of the universal truth that is thought. The term “conjunction,” ittiṣāl, is traditionally reserved for this exclusive relation to the Agent Intellect. Thus, Maimonides writes in Guide III 8 that those who seek that which is “most noble” (al-ashrāf) and immortality,35 “only reflect on the mental representation of an intelligible (tasawwur ma‘qūl), on grasping a true opinion regarding every thing, and on conjunction (ittiṣāl) with the divine intellect that emanates upon them (al-fā’iḍ ‘alayha) that through which that form exists.”36 Conjunction is thus treated here as the culmination of an extraordinary intellectual process, although it is actually, if less dramatically, at work in every true cognition. Maimonides expresses this quotidian usage of conjunction in the first chapter of the Guide, when he writes that it is “because of the divine intellect [for which, read Agent Intellect] conjoined with man”37 that he is said to be in the image and likeness of God. The pleasure to be had from this identification with eternal and therefore divine being is such as to absorb a person’s entire life, rendering all other activities and relationships perfunctory.38 But the type of person who can reach such a state is rare. Such a one is Maimonides’ ideal philosopher, whose life rises above all ills and whose immortality is assured. Although Maimonides offers this general account of intellection and conjunction, he cannot offer many examples of persons who attained this exalted state: Moses and the Patriarchs, and possibly Aaron and Miriam, are his sole examples.39 Maimonides knew that the degree of intellectual and moral perfection required to reach such heights would appear remote, if not impossible, for most of his readers, and he offered it only as an ideal towards which to strive. Maimonides again follows al-Fārābī in conditioning immortality on knowledge of all there is to know.40 But the Muslim philosopher qualified his position,41 as in effect did Maimonides, by requiring less than total knowledge for conjunction to occur. Indeed, as Maimonides intimated, each act of true intellectual cognition is a partial conjunction with the Agent Intellect. As the contents of that being are necessary and hence eternal universal truths, the intellect conjoined to them attains a degree of immortality. The survival of the soul does not, therefore, become a quixotic quest, an impossible dream, for Maimonides, however much he may seem to see it as such. Indeed, as Maimonides writes, echoing the Mishna in his Commentary, “all Israel, [and, all


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mankind, too] has a portion in the world to come.”42 That is, to the degree that a person has any true cognitions whatever. Yet what Maimonides gives—or intimates—with one hand, he takes back with the other. His philosophy renders immortality both easier and harder for his readers to accept. Twice he mentions unequivocally that there is but one separate, that is, nonmaterial intellect.43 So, the intelligibles that comprise a person’s acquired intellect do not remain individuated in that person after death. They lack a material principle of individuation. The intelligibles conjoined with the Agent Intellect during the person’s life have already received their eternal reward, when they were recognized as such while the person who grasped them was alive. That person can no longer appreciate the achievement. The intelligibles are no longer “his” or “hers,” being universal ideas. After the death of the individual, they have no soul in or around which to group, as if to preserve the pretense of individuation. This is a hard doctrine to advance in the name of Maimonides, given his eloquent affirmations of the survival of the soul for those worthy of it.44 Personal immortality, however nonphysical in nature, is a belief that he regards as necessary for upholding the law and faith of Judaism. Yet when he comes to expound the idea philosophically, he has nothing to offer but the doctrine of intellection and conjunction. His soul, which cries out for attention, remains mute. There is, however, a psychic force in Maimonides’ writings that has not received due attention as yet. It is that part of the rational faculty that is said to deliberate, cogitate, discern, and make choices. That faculty, as described in the Eight Chapters, is associated with the practical side of the rational faculty. For presumably the theoretical part acts on the truth (i.e., affirms it) without hesitation. Put differently, the rational faculty, as long as it is associated with the imaginative representations of the senses and corresponding practical problems, expresses a person’s desires and fears, and forces the individual to make choices. Once elevated to the realm of theoretical universal issues, the rational faculty leaves the world of contingency and accident that describe a person’s life. There is no choice for the theoretical intellect. It must embrace the truth once it meets it. It naturally desires the good, which is eternal being. At the level of the acquired intellect, there is no person choosing to know, there is no ghost or spirit in the machine, no personality. And yet, we know that even scholars do not maintain their perfected state always. Not only do they choose, for example, to go to the movies on occasion, they even entertain wrong ideas. For Maimonides, this would be prima facie evidence that such persons are potential scholars only, still absorbed in the world of material objects and delights, beguiled with false imaginative representations. Yet in leaving that world one takes leave of oneself, abandoning the particular for the universal. As long as one wishes to know the truth, he or she is a recognizable individual. Once a person attains the truth, all or most of it, that individuality is lost.

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Admittedly, this seems counter-intuitive, but that is because even geniuses have personal lives and idiosyncrasies. They are not always and only intellects. Maimonides’ theory, like that of Averroes and Ibn Bājja, would turn the person with a perfected intellect into a robot of sorts, all intellect, no will. Such a person would be like God, in whom wisdom and will are the same. Maimonides, we know, tried to insist on a meaningful element of divine volition, lest the world become utterly deterministic. Human freedom and individuation require a soul with a volitional principle as well. Yet, for all that, Maimonides’ theory of cognition subordinates will to intellect, and ultimately leaves volition behind altogether. The consequences of Maimonides’ theory of intellection and conjunction are many, and the radical content of his teachings did not escape the eye of many of his critics. Some, like Gersonides, took the Avicennan route of positing immortal independent souls, to which given sets of universal intelligibles remained attached.45 Others, like Ḥasdai Crescas, took issue with Maimonides’ submersion of individuality and privileging of intellectual attainment.46 Still others defended Maimonides in varying degrees of comprehension of his teachings. All agreed that ultimate happiness was to be found in immortality of the soul, although opinions differed over just what that should be understood to mean. For Maimonides and loyal Maimonideans like Narboni, the submerging of the self in the whole of being, in life as well as in death,47 is no less desirable than the retention of an individual immortal personality—particularly since the latter is not possible. NOTES 1. A prime example of this is the translator’s introduction, “The Philosophic sources of The Guide of the Perplexed,” in The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Pines, lvii–cxxxiv. 2. Shlomo Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge.” 3. Josef Stern, “Logical Syntax as a Key to a Secret of the Guide of the Perplexed.” 4. Guide Introduction (Pines, 15–20). 5. This view has been disputed vigorously in Herbert Davidson, Moses Maimonides, 387–402. Davidson considers it possible that the search for intentional inconsistencies in the Guide is a “wild goose chase.” Davidson builds his case with characteristic thoroughness but ignores for the most part the philosophical problems that ensue. 6. Cf. Alexander Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect and the Scope of Metaphysics”; Herbert Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge.” 7. Alfred L. Ivry, “The Logical and Scientific Premises of Maimonides’ Thought.” 8. Mishna Sanhedrin chapter 10. Cf. Amira Eran, “Al-Ghazali and Maimonides on the World to Come and Spiritual Pleasures,” Jewish Studies Quarterly (2001, 8:2),139, n. 9.


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9. MT Hilkhot T’shuvah 8.8, 9.1–2. Eran, “Al-Ghazali and Maimonides,” 157. 10. Translated by Abraham Halkin in Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides, 211–233. 11. Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect,” 85–87. Cf. Guide III 51 (Pines, 628); II 27 (Pines, 333). 12. Amira Eran, “Al-Ghazali and Maimonides,” 143–166. 13. Herbert Davidson, “Maimonides’ Shemonah Peraqim,” particularly 41. AlFārābī’s influence on Maimonides’ work has been noted by others as well. Cf. The Eight Chapters of Maimonides on Ethics, trans. Gorfinkle, 39, n. 1. 14. De anima II 3 (414a29); al-Fārābī, Fuṣūl al-Madanī, ed. Dunlop, parag. 6. 15. Following the translation of Butterworth and Weiss, Ethical Writings, 63. Arabic edition, Wolff, Mūsā Maimūnī’s Acht Kapitel, 3 (Judeo-Arabic text). 16. Guide I 73, Tenth Premise (Pines, 206). 17. This is the burden of chapter 8. Cf. Ethical Writings, 85. 18. Ethical Writings, 65; al-Fārābī, Fuṣūl al-Madanī, ed. Dunlop, parag. 7. 19. Cf. al-Fārābī, Fuṣūl, ed. Dunlop, parag. 89. 20. Guide, Introduction (Pines, 17). 21. Compare Aristotle, De Anima III 5 (430a 10 ff.) with Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima, 119, and Alexander’s supposed De Intellectu, idem., 141. See Herbert A. Davidson, Al-Fārābī, Avicenna and Averroes, on Intellect, 20–24. Aristotle anticipates Alexander, in identifying God or “the divine element in us” as the ultimate cause of the soul’s movement in thought, at Eudemian Ethics VII 14 (1248a17–28). The brief and general passage, however, had little impact on later discussions of De Anima. 22. Averroes, on the other hand, rejected emanation ultimately in favor of a more natural, hylomorphic view of formal causation. Cf. Davidson, Al-Fārābī, Avicenna and Averroes, 245–57. 23. Guide II 4 (Pines, 257). 24. MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 4:8. 25. Guide I 41 (Pines, 91). 26. These factors would be the natural powers inherent in the procreative process, as well as the influences of the heavenly bodies, particularly the sun and moon, in creating the climatic conditions necessary for an organism’s growth. The Agent Intellect is the culminating, defining agent in this picture, the formal cause responsible for the essential nature of the object. Davidson, in Al-Fārābī, Avicenna and Averroes, appears to omit these factors in saying that, “a human soul, like every other natural sublunar form, is crystallized out of the emanation of the active intellect whenever sublunar matter is ready to receive one” (200). 27. Cf. Davidson’s discussion, Al-Fārābī, Avicenna and Averroes, 83, 106. 28. Guide I 70 (Pines, 173). 29. Guide I 72 (Pines, 192). 30. Cf. the Judaeo-Arabic edition of the Guide, Dalālat al-Ḥā’irīn, I. Joel, 119 l. 28.

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31. Eight Chapters, chapter 2, speaks of the acquired intellect as an advanced stage of the theoretical intellect. 32. Guide I 68 (Pines, 165): “its act is identical in essence.” Munk, 113:6, 8. 33. Guide I 72 (Pines, 193). The “organic body” is Pines’ translation of al-jasad, which might be more literally, if redundantly, translated as “corporeal” (body); cf. Munk, 134:5. Pines chooses also to translate “overflow toward it,” for the more technical “emanates upon it,” fā’iḍ ‘alayhi. 34. Cf. Guide III 8 (Pines, 432). Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect,” 80, understands Guide I 72 as not referring to conjunction with the Agent Intellect, a thesis he denies in general for Maimonides. He interprets the emanation employed here as a metaphor for the physical actions, which are influenced by intellection, and claims that Maimonides is asserting the establishment in the acquired intellect of a set of intelligible ideas that now “possess an ontological status of their own.” On pp. 89 and 90, Altmann presents the view that these intelligibles constitute, in their particular set, that which survives of an individual soul, given that they are eternal and not conjoined with the Agent Intellect. He does not explain what there is in the soul that is equally eternal, with which the intelligibles join, and around which they form a personal identity. Nor does Altmann explain how his view does not conflict with Maimonides’ statements affirming the survival of but a single immaterial intellect, in Guide I 70 (Pines, 174) and I 74 (Pines, 221), mentioned by Altmann on p. 87. 35. Guide III 8. Al-baqā’ al-dā’im (Munk, 310:27), rendered by Pines as “perpetual permanence” (432). 36. Modifying Pines’ translation; he prefers “union” for “conjunction,” although the Arabic is unambiguous. 37. Guide I 1 (Pines, 23). Munk 15.18: min ajli ’l-‘aqli al-ilāhī al-muttaṣil bihi. 38. Guide III 51 (Pines, 623). 39. Guide III 51 (Pines, 623, 627). 40. Guide III 27 (Pines, 511); III 28 (Pines, 512, 513); and elsewhere in the MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 2.2 and 8.1. 41. See Fārābī’s The Letter on the Intellect; cf. Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect,” 77. 42. Sanhedrin, 10. The translator of this chapter, Joshua Abelson, was led by Maimonides’ impassioned commentary on this passage, and the reaction of Ḥasdai Crescas and others to it, to believe that Maimonides was restricting immortality to the intellectual elite only. Cf. Abelson’s “Maimonides on the Jewish Creed.” 43. Guide I 70 (Pines, 174); I 74 (Pines, 221). 44. Cf. notes 8–10. 45. Gersonides, The Wars of the Lord, 1:212–225. 46. Or ha-Shem, Ferrara, 1556, II, vi, p. 40, and see Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect,” 88. 47. Cf. Alfred L. Ivry, “Moses of Narbonne’s ‘Treatise on the Perfection of the Soul.’”

FIVE

Baḥyā and Maimonides on the Worth of Medicine Lenn E. Goodman


The Torah calls God a healer (Exodus 15:26), and the Talmud often mentions medical materials and procedures, including amputation (J. Nazir 9.5), prostheses (M. Shabbat 6.8), caesarian section (M. Bekhorot 8.2), and surgical anesthesia (B. Bava Metzia 83b).* In Muslim lands, Jews were among the heirs to the Greek heritage of scientific medicine pioneered by Hippocrates (ca. 460–ca. 370 b.c.e.) and systematized by such later thinkers as Galen (ca. 130–ca. 200 c.e.), the Greek physician and medical writer who served at the court of the Roman philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius. Muslim physicians including the philosophers Rāzī (d. 925 or 935) and Avicenna (980–1037) took advantage of the translations into Arabic of whole libraries of Greek medical writings, including some 129 works of Galen, to establish the theory and practice of scientific medicine in all the lands where Arabic was read and spoken. They enlarged the base of medical knowledge, drawing on their own clinical observations. So, in medicine, as in the allied fields of philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, and engineering, the early years of the Middle Ages were anything but dark for those who were literate in Arabic. There was a wealth of creative and productive work going on, and the learning and teaching often crossed cultural and confessional boundaries.1 Jews were active and prominent among medical practitioners. Yet thoughtful medical workers could always ask themselves whether what they

* My warm appreciation to Samuel Kottek, Moshe Sokol, and Gerrit Bos for their careful reading and thoughtful suggestions for the improvement of this essay, which is dedicated to my daughter, Paula Goodman Fraenkel, M.D.

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were doing was right. Didn’t the Torah affirm clearly that it is God who metes out life and death, who wounds and heals—and none can deliver from His hand (Deuteronomy 32:39)? Doesn’t the same verse imply that to place one’s trust elsewhere is disloyal to God? For Moses hears God saying: “I, I am He, and there is no god beside Me. I give death and life. It is I who have wounded, and I who heal.” Does the naturalism implicit in medical science make God’s work irrelevant? If nature operates on its own, if natural scientists can predict and practitioners can control the workings of natural causes, what need is there of God? Surely every theatergoer knows that the doubter of God and denier of providence is typecast as a physician. This essay considers the valuation put on medicine by two great Jewish thinkers, Baḥyā Ibn Pāqūda and Moses Maimonides. Baḥyā was a pietist philosopher of the late eleventh century. We know very little of his life, but his remark that a patient who lies to his doctor cheats only himself suggests at least warm sympathy for a physician’s outlook.2 Baḥyā’s celebrated and still widely studied Book of Guidance to the Duties of the Heart sought to enliven his fellow Jews to the spiritual meanings and intellectual commitments underlying the distinctive practices of Judaism. The duties of “the limbs,” as Baḥyā called external observances, are incomplete at best, he argued, unless embedded in an inner life of reverence that is rooted in turn in spiritual understanding. Baḥyā’s defense of medicine is striking in this context. He rejects the notion held by many in his time and still held by some today, that recourse to medical art and science betokens insufficient faith in God. His spirited response lays out a floor of acceptance on which later thinkers can build. Active among those successors is Moses Maimonides. The Rambam was not only the author of the philosophical classic Guide to the Perplexed.3 He also wrote one of the most authoritative and enduring works of Jewish law, the comprehensive halakhic code the Mishneh Torah.4 His frequent allusions to medical practice and policy in that work illuminate the humanistic values that he recognized in the norms of Jewish law. But Maimonides went far beyond appreciation of medical values. He was a practicing physician, a teacher of medicine to others5 and the author of ten medical works: 1. The Compendium of Galen’s Works—A survey and summary account of Galen’s writings, with the views organized systematically in much the manner of Maimonides’ great legal code. 2. Medical Aphorisms—Guidelines drawn from Galen, Hippocrates, Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, al-Fārābī, Avicenna, Rāzī, and Ibn Zuhr. The items, practical and theoretical, are organized by topic and often accompanied by original observations. Suessman Muntner and Fred Rosner compare the work to Maimonides’ catalog of the biblical mitzvot, the Book of the Commandments, in view of its desire to cull prescriptive data from the Galenic corpus;

ON T H E WORT H OF M E DIC I N E

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

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but its medical counterpart, as Bos explains, is the big clinical notebook compiled by Muḥammad ibn Zakariyā’ al-Rāzī, whose medical achievements Maimonides knew and admired, although he broadly deplored Rāzī’s philosophical outlook.6 Aiming to cut through the thicket of the traditional pharmacopeia,7 Maimonides includes here a list of 265 drugs to be taken internally, and 20 readily accessible drugs to be applied externally—a list he urges every physician to memorize.8 Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates—Muntner and Rosner find that its structure echoes that of Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishnah, the ancient code of Jewish law. On Hemorrhoids—Drawing heavily on Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine, the work may well have relied on Rāzī’s lost treatise on hemorrhoids, as Bos notes. On Sexual Intercourse—Written for Saladin’s nephew, the Sultan ‘Umar b. Nūr al-Dīn. While sometimes warning against sexual excess, Maimonides’ writings will also speak of the physical and emotional benefits of sexual activity for those who are in good health. On Asthma—A general guide to health, written in the Galenic tradition for a Muslim patron who suffered from asthma. With ecumenic openness, Maimonides remarks that his reader/dedicatee need not be warned of the dangers that alcohol can bring, since “God has already safeguarded you against it.”9 Elsewhere, he speaks of the benefits of wine, taken, of course, in moderation. Poisons and their Antidotes Regimen Sanitatis—A work on wellness and the discipline by which it is sustained, written in 1198 for Saladin’s son, the monarch al-Malik al-Afḍal, who was prone to poor digestion and depression. Responsa Medica—answers to specific medical queries. Explication of the Names of Drugs—This glossary of materia medica seeks clarity about the names of drugs and herbs and the variants and counterparts available in diverse locales. Remarks scattered in his writings reveal that Maimonides did not hesitate to compound medical preparations for his patients’ use.10

All ten works shine with Maimonides’ characteristic demand for lucidity and order and his drive to clarify language, as he did in his early work on the language of logic, and in his striking expositions of the Torah’s anthropomorphic imagery in the opening chapters of the Guide to the Perplexed. The Medical Aphorisms, Muntner and Rosner write, is “based almost entirely on rational medicine, independent observation and the scientific method. Rule of thumb, guesswork, and superstition have no place in this work, or in Maimonides’ thinking.”11

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Medicine for Maimonides is not just an acceptable recourse in combating disease. It is a source of knowledge and of the practical means we need to preserve and enhance our vitality and thus to pursue those higher goals that depend on vitality and health. Medicine is also a model of the methods the Torah uses to regulate and enhance our lives, when it mandates actions meant to mold our strengths of character and help us toward perfection of our humanity. For human felicity, in Maimonides’ view, is won through the realization of our inner affinity to God, the affinity intended when Genesis declares (1:27) that humanity—male and female—were created in God’s image and likeness; and the ultimate purpose of God’s revealed law is to aid us in pursuing this open-ended goal. Before exploring Maimonides’ vision of the role of medicine, I want to examine how Baḥyā helped pave the way for Maimonides’ wide ranging claims, by obviating the notion that medicine is problematic for the radical monotheist. B A Ḥ YĀ’ S D E F E N S E O F M E D I C I N E

Like others in their era, both Baḥyā and Maimonides held that the highest monotheism sees God in all things. An important moral corollary translates the grasp of God’s absoluteness into a perfect trust and acceptance of God’s decree. The idea is rooted in the philosophy of the ancient Stoics, whose thoughts helped frame the contours of monotheistic thinking about providence, revelation, and responsibility in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Stoic piety aspired to monism, and the Stoic virtues of fortitude and acceptance expressed that monistic outlook and were reflected in it in turn. For Christian thinkers, Stoic resignation was tinged with the aura of martyrdom. Muslim pietists and mystics carried to a high pitch a comparable commitment to trust and patience, which they found modeled in the Qur’anic stories of the fortitude of Job12 and other prophetic figures—patience to be rewarded with the triumph of victorious armies. The Muslim theologian al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) canonized the dicta of earlier pietists who saw the practical import of mystical experience in a complete surrender to God’s will, relying on God as a babe at its mother’s breast, or higher still, lying in God’s hands “like a corpse in the hands of the washer.”13 Total Trust Baḥyā followed in the same pietist tradition as Ghazālī. His Book of Guidance to the Duties of the Heart devotes the fourth of its ten sections or portals to “Reliance on God alone.” The Arabic term he uses is tawakkul, the Muslim pietists’ word for total trust. Baḥyā opens this topic after discussing the obligation to cleave faithfully to God and earlier sections on perfecting one’s monotheism and intellectually appreciating the wonders and bounties


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of creation. Quoting from the Psalms, he chides those who rely on their own grace or charm, wit or craft, strength or gumption. Such people, he says, are left by God to their own devices, which falter and fail. They become victims of chance, their desires, inevitably frustrate: They have forsaken the Fount of living waters to hew out cisterns for themselves–cisterns that will not hold water. (Jeremiah 2:13)14

Self-reliance will self-destruct. God “trappeth the wise in their own wiles and causeth the designs of the crafty to go awry” (Job 5:13). It is in these terms that Baḥyā understands the words of Kohelet: The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor yet bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to the knowing, but time and chance come to all. (Ecclesiastes 9:11)15

The wise, in the verse from Job, are only crafty, clever in their own estimation but tripped up by self-conceit. Their pride is reduced to folly by the irony of a laughing God, who sees the weakness in every merely human strength and the vice latent in every virtue. God subjects schemers and dreamers to the play of chance in exact and exacting fit to the reach of their dreams. Life is a gamble, and those who play against the House are certain losers in the end. Baḥyā caps the tragic reading of human fortunes, summed up in his almost superstitious warnings against complacency, with a stunning gloss of a verse that observant Jews repeat in every Grace after Meals: Young lions will want and raven, but those who seek the Lord will lack for nothing good. (Psalms 34:11)16

Trusting in God alone, Baḥyā urges, frees us from the fear of loss and the corrupting effects of wealth and conceit. It frees us too from slavish dependence on others and turns us to our proper, spiritual quest. Worldly souls exhaust themselves in search of ever greater control over externals. But the pious see that God provides all that we truly need. So theirs is a tranquil heart, a soul free of worldly cares, lusts, and anxieties; a body, freed from toil, travel, and travail in the mad scramble for worldly goods.17 We should not pay mere lip service to the ideal of trust in God, Baḥyā urges, but should live in the understanding that God controls every facet of our fate.18 We should link no human helper with God’s work. The biblical king Asa, afflicted by a foot disease, turned to physicians and was blamed for it, “despite his merit,” Baḥyā writes, because “he sought not the Lord” (2 Chronicles 16:12). Reliance on another along with God, is worse than setting too many cooks to stir the broth. For no one can improve God’s work. Seeking to augment God’s help, associating another with that task, violates the very idea of trust.19 Accordingly, Baḥyā reinforces his warning with the words of Jeremiah:

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So saith the Lord: ‘Cursed is the man who trusteth in human help and maketh his arm mere flesh.’ (Jeremiah 17:5) 20

Does this mean that recourse to a physician is biblically frowned on or forbidden? Some Karaites thought so. The eighth-century founder of the sect, Anan ben David, forbade his followers to practice medicine and condemned as lack of faith any resort to medical treatment.21 The rabbinic tradition, which Karaites rejected but which Baḥyā upheld, disagreed. For the Talmud holds medicine to be no more an interference with God’s plan than is a farmer’s use of fertilizer. “The Holy One, blessed be He,” the Mishnah urges, “does not afflict Israel unless He has first prepared the remedy” (Shabbat 6.10). Anan, with sectarian zeal, opposed rabbinic rulings and precedents, appealing to a presumptive biblicism. But the Torah takes medicine for granted. Jeremiah himself (8:22) caps his famous words of comfort, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” with the parallel hemistich: “Can no physician be found?”22 Medical help is assumed to be the normal recourse of the ill. Thus Job assumes that medicine is efficacious when he calls his would-be comforters false healers, quack doctors (Job 13:4). The parallel hemistich is again instructive: Job calls his friends ṭoflei shaqer, often taken rather blandly to mean “framers of lies.” Read more closely, the words come to life in a more concrete image: “plasterers of lies,” or, as Tur-Sinai proposes, of red paint. That is, Job’s friends are false physicians, who daub on a coat of rouge to mask a diseased complexion in the false colors of rosy good health. Again there is the presumption of sound medical treatments that contrast with such crude chicanery.23 So Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus), echoing the Torah’s words about God’s inspiration of artists (Exodus 35:30–35), advises: Honor the physician, for he is vital to you. He too was grounded by God in his art.24 For his wisdom comes from God; his gifts, from the king. His skill wins him his distinction and esteem among the great. God brings forth healing herbs from the earth. The wise do not neglect them. . . . He endows mankind with knowledge, to the glory of His mighty acts. With these the doctor eases pain, and the druggist prepares his medicines. Thus does God continue his creative work and spread wellbeing over the face of the earth. (Ben Sira 38:1–8)25

Human Effort Counterbalancing the pietist assumptions that he shared with his Karaite contemporaries, Baḥyā mounts a remarkable defense of human effort in general and medical efforts in particular. True, all outcomes lie in God’s hands. But we must distinguish proximate as well as remote causes. The waterwheel does raise water from a canal. But the worker who harnesses his ox to turn the waterwheel stands higher in the chain of causes. It is he who irrigates his fields. God too acts by intermediaries:


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Without its full complement of causes, no natural event can complete its emergence across the threshold of existence.26

So Baḥyā’s strictures against trying to supplement God’s act aim not at human arts and endeavors but at paganism and superstition. What is condemned is any assigning to God of junior partners, drawn, perhaps, from the ranks of exiled and diminished deities, now relegated to the realm of spirits. Also rejected, however, is the occasionalism that so often accompanied tawakkul in Islamic theology, the belief that all occurrences result directly from God’s present volition, dismissal of natural causes as the mere occasions or concomitants rather than actual springs of their effects. So Baḥyā continues in the path marked out by Ben Sira: Medicine is God’s gift to be accepted gratefully as an expression of God’s loving care and commitment, not rejected as if it were a rebellion against providence. The contrast with the views of some other radical monotheists is striking. The Muslim pietist al-Makkī (d. 909), for example, warmly approved a predecessor’s charge: Whoever uses the expression ‘Had it not been for so-and-so, I would have perished,’ or ‘Had this not been so, that would not have happened,’ has already proved guilty of polytheism. For he attributes power to another besides God and places trust, hope and fear, in that other.27

Baḥyā uses the same Qur’anic term as Makkī for polytheism, shirk, that is, assigning an associate to God. Ghazālī follows Makkī in branding reliance on natural causes as tantamount to polytheism.28 But Baḥyā carefully distinguishes shirk from reliance on natural causes, which he insists is inevitable: This is obvious if we consider how one must exert himself and rely on causes to secure any of his human needs. For if one needs nourishment, and the right food is set before him, his hunger will not be met if he does not take the trouble to raise the food to his mouth and chew it.29

Is it mere rhetoric to profess reliance on God while still trusting our human powers? On the contrary, Baḥyā argues, mere rhetoric is the pretense that we do not rely on those powers. We use our minds, as we are mandated to do by our God-given natures and the God-given law.30 By the same authority we use our bodies, skills, tools, and arts to win food, shelter, clothing, a mate, sustenance for our households—all in keeping with God’s plan.31 So the image of human trust is not the lifeless corpse in the hands of the washer but the child who has calmed and quieted itself, reassured by its mother’s comforting presence but no longer nursing at the breast (Psalms 131:2).32 We do depend on God for our very lives, Baḥyā argues. But we are forbidden to test God’s grace by casting ourselves into danger (Deuteronomy 6:16). So we may not passively await divine support when our own actions are the means by which that support will come. We must plow and harrow, sow and

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irrigate, just as the Talmud teaches. God does His part by causing our crops to grow, letting nature pursue its course and yield its familiar bounties.33 Our gratitude should respond to that. Our powers are God’s gift, but they are still ours. There would be no gift if what was given was also held back. What, then, is the point of saying that our gifts and powers come from God, if they are indeed our own? Baḥyā sees a moral point.34 We need to take responsibility for our actions, but also credit God for His gifts, and school ourselves in the recognition that the universe does not revolve around us. That is not just a matter of theory. It needs to become a part of our characters, allowing us to accept good and ill fortune with equanimity. Selfishness, self-seeking, and self-glorification are the fruits of arrogance. Trust gives us the power to overcome such vices and attain peace of mind. But there is no special éclat in self-neglect. Baḥyā pointedly applies his general thesis to the practice of medicine: In the matter of sickness and health, the same principle holds: The human obligation is to rely on God and strive to preserve one’s health, using the causes whose natures are conducive thereto, and to fend off illness with the customary treatments, as God commanded: ‘He shall surely heal him’ (Exodus 21:19).35

The context of that biblical commandment is the law exempting an assailant from charges of homicide if one he injured recovers well enough to walk supported on his staff: Even so, the assailant must take responsibility for his victim’s healing: rapo yerapeh, “He shall surely heal him.” The Rabbis take that to mean providing for his medical care. The generic phrasing, as Baḥyā reasons, would include all customary and appropriate treatments. So the Torah allows for developing standards of care. But it does not command the impossible, so it assumes that cures are within human compass, and that an appropriate standard of care is afforded by the state of the medical art. Far from rejecting medical attention, then, the Torah commands it. It does not say “God will heal him” but demands that the assailant see to it, just as he must compensate his victim for the time lost to injury. No cause or cure will work without God’s permission.36 But to expect God to work a cure without the use of natural causes is just the opposite of trust in God. That is the testing that the Torah forbids. Baḥyā is following the Talmud here, as Rosner notes. For the Rabbis (B. Bava Kamma 85a) take the emphatic rapo yerapeh as an explicit authorization of medical interventions and a riposte against the notion that “recourse to medical aid shows lack of trust and confidence in divine assistance.”37 Baḥyā’s stance is striking against the backdrop of the pietist idea of trust, in which he shares. The writings of the Muslim administrator, poet, and man of letters Ibn Hindu (d. ca. 1019) show how powerful the current of antinaturalism had grown. People object to medicine, he reports, because they fear impugning God’s control of destiny. But that, he argues, is to deny mankind


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the yield of a beneficial profession. And it flies in the face of the clear evidence of the senses—just as if one were to deny that fire burns or snow chills, or that the sun lights up the sky at dawn.38 If quietists really mean to leave everything to God, he argues (much as Baḥyā does), why don’t they stop eating when hungry or drinking when thirsty and simply leave everything to God, rather than try to substitute their wishes for His? For medical treatments only adjust the natural balance of our physiology, the same as eating or drinking do. Physicians differ from laypersons only in their more systematic knowledge of natural causes and effects.39 Ibn ‘Abd al-Malik, a younger contemporary of Maimonides, reports, Countless times, I have heard people say, to general approval, ‘Do not put yourself in the hands of a physician, and do not take to your bed’–as though the two were equally abhorrent.

Fear and denial are natural, but Ibn ‘Abd al-Malik finds them buttressed with religious rationales that few physicians know how to answer. For few can adequately explain the character or purpose of medicine, let alone its moral or spiritual legitimacy.40 That leaves an opening for charlatans who play upon the scruples of the pious. Ibn Hindū tells of one Sufi who died because he was so sure that his Qur’ān reading would protect him from the bite of a snake-charmer’s most vicious and venomous serpent. A theologian, al-Iskāfī (d. ca. 855), similarly died when he substituted pietist hubris for naturalistic humility and demanded just the opposite of the drugs indicated for his violent diarrhea. Ibn Hindū’s teacher, the Christian philosopher and physician Ibn al-Khammār (d. after 1017) told him that he was so provoked by one anti–naturalist’s demands for a headache remedy that he told the man to go lay his head on the book where he had denied the efficacy of natural causes and wait for God to send a cure.41 Fear and pietism took their toll. S.D. Goitein, mining the documents of the Cairo Geniza, found that every town and village in Yemen from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries could boast at least one Jewish doctor. Throughout the Islamic lands, people consulted doctors readily, even for minor ailments. Often they paid their last penny to treat grave illnesses. Physicians were honored leaders, much as Ben Sira suggests. Thus Goitein notes: Almost any doctor of distinction was also a member of the entourage of a king, a sultan, a vizier, or a governor. He shared the glory of the great of this world without being involved in their crimes and their hateful ways of oppression. . . .42 When, in the course of the thirteenth century, the orthodox reaction killed philosophy in Islamic countries, all the sciences, and in the course of time medicine also, fell into disrepute, until it reached a total eclipse, which was not overcome until modern times.43

By the early twentieth century not one physician remained in Yemen, beyond a few European doctors living temporarily in Sanaa.

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Baḥyā combated the antirationalism and antinaturalism that would lead to this outcome. No natural cause, he reasoned, works unsupported by God’s constant act. But none violates the natures God decreed: “That is what the sage meant when he said, ‘To all things there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1).” Baḥyā concludes: For a soul to be engrossed in trying to hasten what God has delayed or delay what God has hastened, to make abundant what He has made rare or make rare what He has made abundant by way of worldly gratifications (rather than engaging in the commandments in obedience to Him and cleaving to His Law) is undiscerning—a failure genuinely to recognize God, and culpable ignorance of His providential care for us.44

Situating himself in a carefully constructed middle ground, Baḥyā contrasts the proper pursuit of our own interests with two radical extremes: the passivity of the quietist and the frantic excesses of the alchemist. The quietist spurns God’s work in nature, neglecting the very means that providence affords for our survival and well-being. The alchemist scorns creation in a different way, not by ignoring its laws but by seeking to twist them to his will. Human cloning and genetic enhancement come to mind, where the highest flown of the ancient alchemist’s dreams—the dream of artificial human life—has begun to loom as a possibility, and we confront the need to steer a course between precious therapies and dangerous and destructive hubris. The alchemist’s fault is lack of trust. But the intellectual root of that moral failing is a misconstrual remarkably like that of the quietist. For both the alchemist and the quietist harbor a magical view of creation. The one passively awaits its service of his needs. The other hopes vainly to coerce it into service, in violation of its settled order. Proper piety accepts the gifts of nature and respects its laws while actively pursuing human well being and not scorning God’s gifts. The Ikhwān al-Safā’ or Sincere Brethren of Basra, a cosmopolitan group of Muslim thinkers who popularized philosophical and scientific ideas in the 960s and 970s, paved the way for Baḥyā’s naturalistic middle ground. They do castigate those who turn to God as a last resort, only after all medical treatments have failed. But in their fable, The Case of the Animals vs Man, the nightingale ascribes animal health to trusting reliance on the natural nutriments provided by God.45 Food does do its work. Here, in the nightingale’s speech, the Platonic suggestion that medicine is obviated by a wholesome life46 joins with the pietist theme of reliance upon God. But Bahya is not content to leave the matter there, especially since the food that nourishes us is no less a natural cause than the medicines that treat and can cure our illnesses and no less dependent on our own active initiative. Baḥyā’s idea that no cause acts alone welds pietism to naturalism, much as monism welds naturalism to Stoic piety. All the consilient causes that bring an event to the brink of existence, as Baḥyā puts it, are intermediate agencies


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of God’s governance. Even events that we ascribe to chance or fortune are congeries of proximate causes, acting, like all causes, in fulfillment of God’s will. But acceptance of God’s will does not demand ignoring our own interest. That too would be a rejection of God’s plan. Piety does not command or commend our failing to use the arts, including the art of medicine, that culture and civilization bequeath us. M A I M O N I D E S A N D M E D I C A L VA L U E S

Reliance on medicine demands an acceptance of science and naturalism and a dedication to activism in behalf of human interests. That in turn demands a belief in human freedom and the efficacy of human action, a conviction that human efforts make a difference to human welfare and a rejection of the notion that it is somehow impious to pursue (or even judge) our own interests. Beyond these commitments and convictions, the physician needs knowledge of both means and ends—technical understanding of how to diagnose, cure and treat illnesses, and clarity about human well-being, that is, an adequate conception of health and of its place in the larger constellation of human ends or goals. In comparing Maimonides with his predecessors, what is perhaps most striking is the power of his commitment to naturalism and activism. But when we compare his thoughts on health with much of the thinking common in our own day, what stands out is his integration of health in general and medicine in particular into his conception of the good life, an approach that fuses his Galenic with his Mosaic humanism. I want to reflect for a moment on the three themes that underlie Maimonides’ approach to medicine: naturalism, activism, and holism. Beyond his technical competence, Maimonides is committed to naturalism. Medicine for him is not just a craft to be acquired by observation and experience. It demands theory, instruction, conceptual understanding of nature’s workings and regularities.47 Beyond his faith in science, Maimonides (with good biblical precedent) is a vigorous defender of the idea that we humans are competent but not infallible judges of our own interests. So he is an ardent activist and a vigorous defender of free will and the open future, the idea that human choices make a difference in the outcomes of events.48 He brings the keen mind of a scientist and the activism of a humanist to medicine, as he does to philosophy and law. Maimonides’ work as a jurist absorbs and thematizes the biblical and rabbinic notions of the preciousness of human life and health. But, like the Torah itself when it urges that human life is not just a matter of physical sustenance, that we do not live by bread alone (Deuteronomy 8:3), Maimonides does not consider health, or even survival, the be-all and end-all of our existence. Rather, health must be situated in a larger scheme of values.49 Human life has a purpose. We live and flourish and may find even our

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sufferings tolerable in the light of that purpose.50 It is this idea of a higher purpose that guides the Rambam’s synthesis of moral, material, and spiritual values and allows him to position medicine at the heart of his value system. Health is an instrumental end, in the service of our highest goal. But its maintenance is a positive duty. Its neglect will stymie our supreme obligation, to imitate God’s ways. So we are mitzvah-bound to sustain our health by all the means of diet and exercise and other hygienic counsels that sound medical practice recommends.51 Because medicine is not just a means of staying alive and pursuing whatever we may fancy but is critical to our higher destiny, Maimonides will not simply presume its worth and leave it to compete with a welter of other wants and needs. He must situate it in relation to our higher purpose, consummated in knowledge of and assimilation to the Divine.52 That gives health and the means by which it is pursued derivative rather than presumptive value. Health will at times take second place to other interests. But it will not become an arbitrary posit to be cast aside in favor of, say, economic concerns. Knowing the purpose of human life will enable Maimonides not only to distinguish health from illness but also to discern its purposes and to assay the proper role and value of medicine as a profession. Naturalism Some scholars have doubted Maimonides’ medical training, but his own account shows that he was schooled in medicine. He studied under several senior practitioners (shuyūkh) including at least one mentor even before he left the Maghreb. He read medical works indefatigably throughout his life53 and constantly sought out experts who might enlarge his medical knowledge.54 A great believer in consultation among physicians, he followed and sought to surpass Rāzī in critiquing the works of previous medical writers, including Galen, whom he calls the Master (imām), noting points at which the ancient doctor’s remarks disagreed with one another or, more materially, with his own clinical experience.55 So he applied the same critical intelligence in medicine that he commended in matters of religion.56 Maimonides’ commitment to theory in medicine is tested by the pressures of experience, authority, and tradition, upon the rather frail framework of medical theory that the Galenic tradition could muster. Ghazālī sums up the problem nicely: In theory opium puts one to sleep by its coldness—yet earth and water are the cold elements, and pounds of these have no such effect as a tiny dose of opium. Maimonides faces similar difficulties with a variety of remedies prescribed in the medical literature that would look to us like magical preparations: various sorts of urine, dung, blood, animal parts, and gemstones. Ghazālī’s opium example is meant to turn one away from the rationalism of the Aristotelian philosophers and toward an empiricism that will license his own valuation of mystical experience. But the Rambam’s


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response is different. He is deeply suspicious of mere medical empirics. They seem to him to rely on trial and error, gambling with their patients’ health. Without theory it is impossible to tell when a treatment was efficacious and when it was unhelpful or just irrelevant.57 Still, Maimonides must acknowledge the limits of familiar medical theory, with its four elements, four qualities, four humours, and four temperaments. Galen among the ancients and Ibn Zuhr among the moderns are too experienced, too astute as clinicians, for their prescriptions to be ignored, even when they jostle physiological theory. Maimonides accommodates the strange remedies in two ways: First, he follows Galen by punting in the direction of “specific forms,” and the putative holistic properties of the recommended animal parts, minerals, and the like. These, he is prepared to say, act “through the whole of their substance,” and not the mere elementary qualities of their matter, hot or cold, wet or dry. Experience can warrant what established theory does not allow for.58 Maimonides’ response here is, in effect, a kind of place holder. True, the reputed remedies are of far less pertinence than he assumes. But he does not reject them out of sheer deference to canonical theory. The idea of “specific forms” allows him to accommodate the presumed effects and make room for experience without giving it its head, and without appeal to magical interventions.59 His second, more welcome expedient takes shape in his expressions of a becoming modesty about the knowledge available to any given practitioner, and particularly about the state of medical knowledge in his time.60 That sits well with his general openness to experience, clinical and otherwise, and with his attitude of critical appropriation of the medical literature and tradition—the same attitude that he brings to his encounter with the biblical and rabbinic canon. Activism Naturalism, for Maimonides, is not a rival but a complement to theism. Nature is not just God’s work but His expression. Its character manifests His attributes. We learn about God from nature, much as we learn about an artist’s ideas, skills, and personality from his work. God, of course, does not have the sort of quirks and idiosyncrasies that arise from human finitude. Being perfect, He is transcendent. But that makes the indirect knowledge that we have critical for us. We might know an artist socially, but God, being unique and incomparable, is known only through His work.61 Transcendence here does not mean inscrutability.62 Since we know that God is perfect, we know that God is good. But even that knowledge can be misleading, since our human ideas of goodness are skewed by our interests and desires.63 God’s goodness does not imply service of our every caprice. Nor does it mean that God has strengths or virtues. God does not have weaknesses to overcome or trials to face. What we can know of God we know through our

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(limited) ideas of perfection. That is why we assign will and intellect to God, reflecting what we know of human generosity and wisdom. The investigator into nature discovers the wisdom and generosity of God’s governance and design. Moses, as the Rambam understands the Torah, was granted just such an understanding in a single overwhelming intuition.64 For the naturalist, discovery typically takes longer and covers less ground— although the grasp of detail may be finer. For the naturalist must advance step by step to apprehension of how a process works.65 But the aim of Moses’ quest was not speculative but practical. He needed to govern and sought a model in God’s governance. So God fittingly revealed Himself by way of mercy and justice. Mercy is a human attribute, all too readily confused with the emotion of pity.66 But the higher value conveyed by the idea of mercy and thus more properly ascribed to God is grace, generosity beyond what is deserved.67 To human beings, the act of creation is the clearest manifestation of divine grace.68 For there was no claim at all to be made upon God in the condition that the Torah invites us to contemplate, when heaven and earth did not yet exist. In the idea of creation Genesis suggests the absolute power needed to create where there was nothing. That idea argues the absoluteness of what deserves to be called Divine and the emptiness of all deities that are less than absolute. But it also teaches that creation is a good, that existence is a gift, and that beings have deserts that rise pari passu with their claims. God alone imparts being, and God alone affords the bounties answering to the claims of his creations. Justice in God, then, is generosity once again, but now proportioned to desert,69 allowing every creature what is suited to its nature, providing for the sustenance of all. In human life, justice becomes a system of norms— laws and ethical precepts—by which we can pursue divine perfection by seeking what is most perfect in ourselves. So an adequate understanding of human nature is the prime prerequisite of any law, human or divine.70 Human laws must reflect human needs. But divine laws are oriented by the reach of human capability.71 In a very practical sense, Maimonides claims, knowledge of that capability is more critical for the legislator and jurist than knowledge of God itself. For to know that God is absolute tells us nothing concretely of what divine perfection would ask of us. And if God legislates, as the Rambam believes He does in the Torah, God Himself must attune His laws to human needs and capabilities. A smith would have no way of making a needle if he knew nothing about sewing.72 So whether our aim is the reform of human character or the more basic aim of sustaining human life and physical well-being, an understanding of human anatomy, physiology, and psychology is critical in the quest for the good life. Maimonides’ conception of the biblical view of things is drawn very much in the image of what Baḥyā proposes, even down to the conceptualization of the role of chance.73 The idea that nature is the vehicle of God’s bounties, an


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idea expressed in the Talmud and clearly voiced in favorite pietist texts like the Sermon on the Mount,74 is taken over by Maimonides, when he merges pietist trust with Plato’s thesis that health depends chiefly on a wholesome diet, since God has provided for all the basic needs of living beings.75 But, like Baḥyā and in keeping with the Talmudic view, Maimonides assimilates medicines and medical arts to those natural bounties. Reliance on God does not preclude use of the remedies God affords for our natural ills. As in Stoic philosophy, a wholesome life entails respect for nature’s laws, which make our world a livable and indeed hospitable home for human beings.76 A dogged defense of medicine was no longer necessary. Maimonides will argue forthrightly that those who deem God the only cause and thus deny the efficacy of natural causes have, in effect, negated the very notion of creation. If God uses no natural causes, if food were not necessary to nourish us, then all the components of nature that seem to support human life were created in vain.77 Accordingly, in his commentary on the Mishnah,78 the Rambam dismisses the notion that Hezekiah hid away a book containing the cure for all diseases and was praised for it by the Rabbis because resort to medical treatments would weaken human faith in God. The Rabbis’ praise, Maimonides writes, would have been for “concealing” a book of illicit, talismanic procedures, suppressing not medical knowledge but superstitious practices and rituals of pagan theurgy. If there was a medical book that the good king kept under wraps, that would have been because it contained dangerous procedures that should not be in common circulation, perhaps a book of poisons.79 Like Baḥyā, Maimonides argues that reliance on medicine is no more a failure of trust in God than reliance on food, which cures the dreadful illness known as hunger. Those who think otherwise have, in effect, removed the grounds on which we thank God for our daily bread, when, in the Grace after Meals, we fulfill the biblical commandment of blessing God once we have eaten and our meal has satiated our hunger. The passage that prompts Maimonides to this lecture, he remarks, seems to be a Baraita, interpolated into the Mishnaic text. So it would not normally warrant any comment by him. But he is moved to comment at length, he explains, only because of the specious notion that the Mishnah imputes some lack of piety to the study and practice of medicine, or some want of trust to those who resort to it. The fact is, Maimonides insists, that medical treatments do not render God superfluous. On the contrary, just as we thank God for our food, so must we thank Him for the medical materials and procedures by which our illnesses are healed. Thus the special supplications and blessings that the Rabbis prescribe for such routine therapies as bloodletting or steam baths.80 Blessings, Maimonides reminds his readers, are not magical incantations that coerce the Creator, any more than mezuzot are amulets. Our words of prayer in such a case, are meant, as they are so often, to call to mind God’s sovereignty, acknowledge His bounties, and confess our frailty and dependence.81 The core meaning of all such prayers, whether they regard medicine or food, is the recognition that

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nature, with its panoply of wonders, gifts and risks, rhythms and delights, functions at God’s command. Its order and wisdom, and the inexorable laws of its creation, are expressions of God’s constancy and grace. Situating Medicine—and Health With worries about the legitimacy of medicine set aside, Maimonides can press on to seek the positive basis of the value of medicine. He starts from the rabbinic thematization82 of the biblical obligation to preserve human life: Sabbath rest must be broken to preserve a human life or even to avoid risks to life. No juridical ruling is needed to exercise such mandates, and when medical opinions differ about the severity of danger or the efficacy of intervention, the benefit of the doubt goes to the sustenance of life.83 Indeed, to save a life, any commandment may be broken, except the prohibitions on idolatry, incest, and murder.84 The ill may be bathed on Yom Kippur, even if their illness is not life threatening; 85 and a pregnant woman’s cravings must be heeded.86 In all these cases the rabbinic ruling is that Israel is meant to live by the Law (Leviticus 18:5)—not die by it. Such rulings and priorities map an ethos aimed at human flourishing.87 That ethos orients Maimonides’ vision of the role of medicine. Halakha, as he explains, mandates food for the dangerously ill if they ask for it, even on Yom Kippur. If they say they do not need it but the doctor says they do, food is given; likewise, if one doctor says they do and one that they do not. The majority or the most expert may rule, if the consulting physicians differ—but only if the patient says no food is needed. Once it is requested, one must defer to the patient’s wishes.88 The biblical commandment, “Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor” (Leviticus 19:16) is taken rabbinically to command intervention to protect persons in grave danger—paradigmatically, persons at risk of drowning in the sea. One who fails to save a life when he could have done so is not to be punished, since the failure involved no overt destructive action. Yet he is deemed as guilty, the Rambam argues, as if he had destroyed the world.89 If one has a duty to preserve another’s life, Maimonides reasons, all the more is one obliged to save another from disease, which may afflict only one part of the body. Failure to do so by those who have the capacity breaches the commandment against standing idly by at the blood of one’s fellow.90 Complementing this negative commandment is a positive one, specifically for physicians, a biblical obligation to heal the sick. Following Talmudic precedent, the Rambam derives this duty from the Torah’s general command regarding lost property: “Thou shalt surely restore it to him” (Deuteronomy 22:2).91 There is a powerful ethical message here. One might have imagined that without some prior undertaking the physician has no positive obligation to treat and heal. But the rabbinic appeal to the laws of lost property refutes that


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presumption. For the finder’s obligation to return lost property presumes no prior relation to the loser. One could press the point further. For if physicians have a positive obligation to heal, then society at large would have a positive obligation to provide for healing of the sick. Here the Maimonidean principle that charitable gifts, like offerings for the Temple, must be of the highest quality comes into play—balanced, as is only proper, by the further Maimonidean consideration that the highest charity is to enable another to stand on his own feet; and, by another Maimonidean dictum, against parasitism. For the obligation to heal is not meant to be abused or unrequited, and Maimonides writes that it is better to strip animal hides than to depend on others for sustenance and survival.92 Maimonides extends medical obligations to “an extreme type of humanism in a thoroughly Judaized form,” as Elinor Lieber puts it.93 For when he comments on the Hippocratic maxim “Life is short; the Art is long,” he treats in detail the “externals” that can affect a patient’s health, assigning physicians responsibility for providing foods as well as medicines, and anything else requisite in the restoration of health. Lieber knows of no precedent for this proviso in the Hippocratic commentaries. But she does cite a similar thought in the work of Said b. al-Ḥasan in the eleventh century, and Rāzī, whose work in medicine and philosophy Maimonides knew well, did take on such responsibilities in the Persian hospital he directed. Hygiene—Public and Private Working thematically and thus avoiding any narrow or literalist construction, Maimonides develops halakhic standards of private hygiene and public health. A community of 120 souls should have both a law court and a surgeon. So much for Plato’s dismissal of law and medicine! No wise and prudent person, moreover, should settle in a community without a physician and a surgeon.94 Maintenance of one’s health and avoidance of medical risks is a religious obligation.95 That demands a moderate diet, regular bathing, avoidance of tainted or dangerous substances—we should think of tobacco.96 Even putting a coin in one’s mouth is a dangerous act. For the money may carry dried saliva or perspiration from a dangerously ill individual. Maimonides knows nothing, of course, of the germ theory. But he does have a sense of the dangers of infection.97 Further, when the Torah commands us not to disgust ourselves, al-teshaqtzu et-nafshoteikhem (Leviticus 11:43), Maimonides sees a clear commandment of broad scope: Eating anything that people normally find disgusting is rabbinically forbidden. So are eating with dirty hands, using a dirty tablecloth, or applying to culinary use utensils from the surgery or the bathroom.98 Patient and physician, Maimonides argues, must collaborate, not merely in the treatment of diseases but in the pursuit of health for the whole person.99 Health, as he sees it, is not just a matter of freedom from disease but of well-being in a dynamic sense, the flourishing of the body and the attendant

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capability for moral and mental flourishing as well. For, in the Rambam’s view, physical, moral, and mental flourishing are interdependent. The same holism means that health concerns are not confined within the body of the individual. As in the Galenic and Hippocratic tradition, they are social and environmental as well. For no one lives in isolation. Fresh air, clean water, and a healthy diet are critical. Maimonides characteristically connects the dots.100 Building on the halakhic obligation to keep tanneries downwind of homes and the halakhic right of a neighbor to sue to put a stop to environmental nuisances and pollutants like foul odors, fumes, dust, and smoke, he will sketch a regimen of environmental health.101 The biblical command to set a railing on one’s roof (Deuteronomy 22:8) is taken to forbid negligence about any environmental hazard. Wells or pits must be fenced or covered. Those who rationalize their negligence by professing a willingness to assume the attendant risks are liable to punishment.102 Activism here moves ahead from the reactive to the proactive, in keeping with the underlying premise, that human choices make a difference in human welfare.103 Moral Therapy Maimonides’ method as a jurist is to build conceptually on the legislative base offered by the canonical texts. Just as he elaborates the Torah’s hygienic concerns in keeping with the science he brings to it and the themes he discerns in it, he frames a wide-ranging virtue ethics anchored in the biblical commandments to love one’s neighbor, show consideration to one’s enemy, control one’s anger, tactfully reprove wrongdoing, and quell resentment.104 These ethical obligations in turn support a distinctive approach to mental health.105 Maimonides claims no originality for the idea that moral vices are illnesses of the soul: The philosophers’ view is well known: that the soul, like the body, has health and sickness. The illnesses and health of the soul to which they allude are seen in human ideas and moral traits. These clearly are distinctive to man. So, despite their diverse kinds, I call unsound views and character flaws species of human disease.106

Moral vices are at least as dangerous to us as physical illnesses, Maimonides reasons. They can harm our bodily health and will impede our spiritual development. But even apart from these effects they are unhealthy. Just as physical illness can make sweet taste sour and sour taste sweet, character disorders can distort our discernment, setting too dark or bitter a construction on things.107 Moral weaknesses are psychic disabilities. The cure lies in the prescriptions of the rabbinic Sages, whose deep insight into the moral balance sought by the Law makes them “healers of the soul.” But the Torah sets out goals beyond mere prudence—staying alive, or even well adjusted. Moving from the cure of psychic weaknesses to the


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nurturance of moral and intellectual strengths, the Rambam fuses what we call psychotherapy with the Socratic “tendance of the soul.” Like some recent psychologists and like his ancient and Islamic predecessors, he balances his concerns for mental and emotional health with an interest in moral refinement and spiritual growth. The Torah, Maimonides holds, is meant not just to help us overcome our weaknesses but to guide us toward fulfillment. Thus he reads the pivotal verse of the nineteenth psalm: “The Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul” (Psalm 19:9) to mean that the Torah, perfect because its prescriptions guide us to the ethical mean, teaches an art of living designed to cultivate perfection in the soul.108 Maimonidean character improvement is not a therapy of flattery, meant simply to enhance our self-esteem. Empowerment here means something else, and guilt is not to be confounded with guilt feelings. Maimonides will not ignore the reality of sin and the need for moral purgation—repentance and atonement.109 Self-control for him is a virtue, not a weakness, as romantics might imagine. But guilt is not a virtue, and self-loathing is not a form of courage but a form of excess, and thus a vice. Obsequiousness, hypocrisy, and frivolity are more commonplace vices that the Rambam cites. He urges humility in place of Aristotle’s “proper pride”; hauteur has no proper middle ground. Rather, with the modesty of Moses in mind (see Numbers 12:3), Maimonides counsels one to seek an extreme of humility. Citing the canon (Deuteronomy 8:14, B. Soṭah 4a-5a), he brands arrogance as tantamount to idolatry, and uncontrolled anger along with it.110 But unlike Muslim pietists, he does not set up gravity as the ideal. Our moral tone should be one of cheerfulness, a biblical virtue singled out by the Rabbis as the most appropriate in relating to our fellow human beings. Why Health Matters The world exists, Maimonides reasons, not for God’s sake, since God lacks nothing, but for the sake of His creatures. That, the Rambam argues, is what the Torah must mean in saying that God created all things for His glory: God’s glory is seen in His creating beings that exist for their own sake.111 With living beings, this means their opportunity to flourish—to be fruitful and multiply, fulfilling their own natures. But flourishing is not confined to reproduction and is not the same as sensory gratification.112 Pleasure and pain are mere signals of satiety or danger.113 What all beings aim for, in their own ways, is perfection. In the human case, that means realization of our intellectual perfection. When thought fulfills its potential, we awaken to the divine spark within us. This is human immortality.114 Visionaries may dream of a beatific vision, and philosophers, more chastely, may write of felicity. But what all the talk of the world to come points to is realization of our inner, intellectual affinity to God. That is the summum bonum, the human good that orients all the rest.

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Eternity, as Maimonides understands it, is not a mere continuation of life, enjoyed only in or after death. Rather, immortality is an ever-present possibility. For the story of Adam and Eve is no mere history, and still less a myth of some irreparable fall and fatal flaw—since “men are not by their innate nature virtuous or vicious.”115 Rather what Genesis reveals is the core of the human condition: Our appetites and passions do put us in a way on all fours with the beasts.116 Yet we may reach out at any moment and take fruit from the tree of life “and eat and live forever.” That is the real power imparted by the divine spirit infused into us at the creation.117 Not everyone, however, will realize the human potential for immortality. Only with discipline and good fortune do we fulfill our inner likeness to the Divine. Our goal is mandated in the commandment to emulate God’s transcendence, by perfecting what is transcendent in ourselves: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord thy God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). All the mitzvot aim toward fulfillment of this one, and it is around this ultimate goal that we should organize and prioritize all our pursuits.118 Human beings have three legitimate sorts of goals: physical sustenance, moral growth, and perfection of the understanding. The three aims and all that supports them form a hierarchy. Our most basic physical ends are the most exigent, preconditions for moral or spiritual fulfillment.119 Moral development, in turn, anchors our intellectual quest in pursuit of our highest goal, to know and thereby become like God. But our higher goals also serve the lower, even as the lower serve the higher, a reciprocity signaled in the image of the angels going up and down the ladder in Jacob’s dream:120 Moral virtues support our physical well-being—our health and security, which are in large measure made possible by the adequate working of a social order that allows us to enhance and humanize our lives. Intellectual virtues, including the wisdom that is their capstone, serve the moral, in part by guiding us individually and communally to the proper mean, which is never mechanically calibrated but always, as in Aristotle, discerned by practical wisdom.121 Spiritual perfection brings insight needed in the enhancement of the human condition morally and materially.122 And the improvement of our character fosters the emergence of a society that will materially advance the human condition. That possibility, in the Rambam’s view, underwrites the prophets’ vision of a Messianic Age. When Isaiah foretells that the lion will lie down with the lamb, he means that prosperity will transform the once predatory nations of the world into pacific neighbors. The little child who leads them is Israel. For when Israel lives by her laws, characters will be transformed. The resultant prosperity and peace will be so palpable a blessing that other nations, which seemed predatory by nature, will lay down their arms and emulate the ways of civility and justice that have won such ends. As a result, spiritual fulfillment will be accessible to all.123 A hungry, sick, or desperate man, Maimonides argues, does not pursue the intellectual contemplation that leads to spiritual fulfillment.124 That presupposes a certain kind of life.125 Neither can the morally impure gain the


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highest insight. Even normal human passions interfere.126 For an intellectual quest demands patience and insight, as well as intellectual honesty, curiosity, and rigor. Emotions like anger, or the appetitive and concupiscent passions, distract the mind and engross the body, rippling the calm in which contemplation may glimpse its goal. Besides, our intellectual quest—the quest for God—is a quest for value. Base passions distort and deflect our very idea of the good, but sound values guide it.127 God is the highest good, Maimonides claims, and we orient ourselves in the pursuit of God by our grasp of the facets of value in which God’s absolute perfection is reflected. This might mean seeing God’s wisdom in nature, through study of astronomy or biology. It might mean discerning God’s handwriting in laws and institutions, customs and moral practices. Rather than seeking to derive the authority of such precepts from the divine legislator, Maimonides argues, we can recognize which laws are divine in inspiration by studying the aims that a system of laws pursues. For all sound laws point toward some good, and divine laws point ultimately toward the highest human good.128 The Torah offers us the wisdom that can guide us toward that good. It is not just a book to be read and put down but a guide to life in every generation,129 its pertinence increasing as our experience grows. But the Torah is not the sole source of wisdom. Mathematics, anthropology, and history are among the studies that Maimonides commends for broadening our experience and enhancing the understanding needed to pursue our highest goal.130 But these studies have moral values at their heart. None of them is perfected without moral as well as intellectual virtues. Indeed, all the values that direct us toward the idea of God, whether social, intellectual, aesthetic, or spiritual, rest ultimately on the good tuning of our character and purity of our minds. Pace the romantics, who perversely seek genius in some crack in the human porcelain, it is not by madness but by discipline and creativity that an Einstein makes his discoveries; not through unhappiness but despite it, by finding joy and freedom, that a Beethoven creates his music; not by quirkiness or surliness or despondency but by a skill and insight that overcome such barriers and reach beyond them, that a Picasso, Rembrandt, or Van Gogh creates and discovers beauty.131 For Maimonides, then, the role of medicine is ancillary, but critical. Just as one earns a living so as to spend one’s money “worthily and well, to sustain the body and preserve one’s life until one is able to learn what is possible for man to know of God,”132 so medicine affords us the means, the years for pursuing our inner likeness to God. The goal is not salvation. We are not seeking escape from this world but holiness within it—not through self-mortification,133 but by perfection of our minds and character, and thus reaching beyond ourselves to realize, within this human life, some measure of the divine perfection that lies within us. But beyond its service to survival, security, and comfort, medicine serves in the purification of body and soul needed in the fulfillment of our vocation.

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For ours is not just any animal body but a very special sort, whose refinement underlies the moral perfection that will, in turn, afford the substrate or raw material of spiritual fulfillment. As Maimonides argues: The art of medicine, considered in these terms, has a major role to play regarding the virtues and knowledge of God, and thus in the attainment of true fulfillment. The study of medicine, therefore, and the development of medical knowledge are tasks of the greatest moment, not at all on a par with weaving and carpentry. For through medicine, our actions may be refined and made human and conducive to the acquisition of true virtue.134

Physical health is an intrinsic good, as is pleasure, for that matter. Maimonides, like Sa‘adiah, condemns the ascetic extremes of those who see pleasure as an evil or take mortification of the flesh or social isolation as goods in themselves.135 But he cannot make pleasure the ultimate good, or pain the ultimate evil. He faults Sa‘adiah for falling into the trap of the Epicurean dilemma, by accepting its underlying premise, judging the worth and fairness of life itself by the standards of pleasure and pain.136 So he can hardly accept valetudinarianism, the pursuit of physical health and longevity alone, as the basis of the good life: It is possible that all a person’s activity might be directed to the good, as we have stated, but that he would have made bodily health and freedom from illness his sole objectives. Such a person is not a truly virtuous person. He has simply chosen the pleasure of good health where another might have chosen eating or coupling. None of these is the true goal. But it is valid to make our bodily health and continued well-being a goal so that the instruments of our soul’s faculties, that is the bodily organs, may remain unimpaired and that the soul, unhampered, may concern itself with the moral and intellectual virtues.137

It is our higher goals that give warrant and measure to our pleasures, comforts, and diversions.138 But it is the possibility of spiritual fulfillment that justifies even our vulnerability. For vulnerability comes with the body, and the body gives us the life that will open to us the possibility of knowing God.139 Health is a part of the provision for our spiritual quest. A body that is not merely sound but pure and in optimal condition is the matter for the perfection of the soul. But the body is also the arena in which the elemental moral virtues of self-discipline are first exercised. And it is the seat of the imagination, where higher ideas first alight in the mind. A healthy soul, strengthened by exercise of the moral virtues and guided by a wholesome imagination and a robust appetite for knowledge, is the seedbed for the pure mind that will grow toward the Divine. The moral virtues, as in Aristotle, are means between extremes. The optima are found through the lessons that reason gleans from experience and from the guidance of the Torah. Its laws discipline our character, so that

ON T H E WORT H OF M EDIC I N E

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thoughtful and appropriate choices become matters of habit, “second nature,” as Aristotle put it. The Law humanizes us. It enhances our interactions, not just by reducing the threat of force and fraud or improving our social and economic conditions but by quelling the passions and allowing us to build the intellectual freedom, power, and insight that will open us to the epiphanies that consummate our lives. An irascible temper blocks knowledge of God. So the Torah teaches patience and generosity, paradigmatically, in its command to help our enemy when his ass lies sprawled by the roadside (Deuteronomy 22:4; cf. Exodus 23:5). We help him reload, not just because courtesy smooths social relations, reduces crime rates, or enhances productivity (the material benefits). Nor is it just because consideration and the calmer, friendlier personality that helping will instill in us and in others make us better persons and promote a better social environment (the moral benefits). It is also because the divine spark in us will not grow to a limpid flame until we have overcome irascibility, and all such vices.140 Vision failed even the ancient prophets when they were blinded by anger.141 Misguided and over-eager seekers may imagine that the road to fulfillment allows or even encourages excess. Or they may suppose that ascetic or antinomian extremes lead toward the spiritual. The error in both cases, according to Maimonides, is a misapprehension of the role of the body, which is neither the enemy nor the master, but the tool and servant in our quest. Those who imagine that they must combat the body and bludgeon it into submission with ascetic excesses, Maimonides explains, are like the ignorant patient who fails to understand the rules of medical dosage. Seeing that a tiny drop of medicine can restore health, they suppose a larger dose would do even more good. So they seize upon the disciplines of the Law, designed to bring the passions and appetites under control,142 and make them ends in themselves. Sinning against the self, as the Rabbis put it, and quite possibly harming the very soul they seek to free, they fall victim to a foolish confusion and forget that due measure is the basis of all medical treatments and all rational governance and control.143 Those who imagine that the appetites and passions are simply (or not so simply) to be served, have similarly lost sight of the critical role of measure in all things natural. They fail to grasp that without reference to the needs and nature of the human body, there are no limits to our appetites, which will grow insatiable as their service is made an end rather than a means to meeting higher ends.144 Life, as Maimonides pointedly remarks, is not for the sake of gratifying our hedonic urges, as if it were somehow grossly unfair that one is “deprived of money enough to keep him always drunk and enough girls decked out in gold and precious stones to keep him sexually excited beyond his capacities.”145 One who lives for carnal goals will inevitably meet frustration. For an ungoverned appetite ceaselessly enlarges its demands—as Epicurus and Rāzī, and Plato before them, warned.146 No mere cormorant, to use Plato’s image, will achieve a spiritual goal, or any other great and difficult thing.

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But the body is not just a sinkhole of appetites. It is also the seat of the imagination and thus the locus of poetry and rhetoric, by which the insights of philosophy are brought within range of more earthbound minds, through images, symbols, words, laws, rituals, and institutions. Matter is the married harlot of Proverbs 7, ever changing lovers, as Maimonides glosses the passage.147 But matter is also the good woman of Proverbs 31, faithful and productive, worthy of credit for her efforts and enterprises: When Solomon says “A good woman is a rare find” (Proverbs 31:10) and the whole conceit that follows, the sense is clear. For if one is fortunate enough to have good, manageable matter that neither dominates him nor undermines his constitution, that is a precious gift from God.148

The body is the basis of our vulnerability and privation. But it is also the base from which we reach out for self-fulfillment. For all of our powers, mental as well as physical, depend on our bodily attunement.149 The discipline that the Law pursues will foster the emergence of a well-centered human soul, as the realization of our bodily potential; and the development of a well-focused mind, as the realization of our moral strivings. Such a mind, for the Rambam, is most fully and genuinely human. It mirrors the countenance of God in precisely this sense, that is, in rising in some measure above our normal human limitations. NOTES 1. See L.E. Goodman, Jewish and Islamic Philosophy, for case studies and references. For Avicenna’s medical work, see L.E. Goodman, Avicenna, 32–36. 2. Baḥyā ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot: in Arabic, Kitāb al-Hidāya ila Farā’iḍ alQulūb, ed. A.S. Yahuda; English trans. Menahem Mansoor as The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, cited below by its short Hebrew title, chapter and section; thus here, Ḥovot 3.5. 3. The Guide to the Perplexed, known in Hebrew as the Moreh Nevukhim, was written in Arabic between 1185 and 1190. It is cited here as, Guide. The translations are my own. 4. Traditionally called the Yad Ḥazakah or “Strong Hand,” an allusion to its fourteen volumes, since the Hebrew word yad, “hand,” has a numerical value of fourteen, the Mishneh Torah is abbreviated below as MT and cited by treatise, section and article. Most of the fourteen volumes are available in translation in the Yale Judaica Series. 5. Maimonides taught medicine to his sister’s son, and a letter preserved in the Cairo Genizah urges him to take on the letter writer’s son as his student in medicine. See Gerrit Bos, “Maimonides’ Medical Works and their Contributions to his Medical Biography.” 6. For Rāzī, see L.E. Goodman, Encyclopedia of Islam, 8.474–477; and Goodman, Jewish and Islamic Philosophy, 35–67. For Maimonides’ attitude toward Rāzī’s thought, 94–96.


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7. See Bos, “Maimonides’ Medical Works.” 8. As Bos observes, Maimonides will give Berber and Romance as well as Arabic names in his glossary. There was, of course, no international standard of nomenclature in his time. 9. Maimonides, On Asthma, 7.1 (ed. Bos, 32). 10. See Bos, “Maimonides’ Medical Works,” notes 46, 51, 55, citing Maimonides, On Asthma, 11.3, 12.5; and On Hemorrhoids 4.3. 11. Fred Rosner and Suessman Muntner, in their translators’ introduction to The Medical Aphorisms of Moses Maimonides, 10. 12. For Muslim readings of Job’s story, see my introduction to Sa‘adiah’s commentary on the Book of Job, The Book of Theodicy, 33–50. 13. Ghazālī, Iḥyā’ ‘ Ulūm al-Dīn (Reviving the Religious Sciences) XXXV, Tawakkul; trans. David Burrell as Faith in Divine Unity and Trust in Divine Providence. But Ghazālī does not reject medicine. See Ghazālī’s Al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl; trans. by W.M. Watt in The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazali, 36. 14. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 175; trans. Mansoor, 221. 15. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 175; trans. Mansoor, 221. 16. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 175; trans. Mansoor, 221. 17. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 176–272. 18. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 188. 19. Baḥyā understands Asa’s sin as one of linking others with God’s help. Alexander Di Lella is perhaps more consistent with Baḥyā’s larger theme: “when one is sick, one should pray as well as seek the help of physicians.” Asa’s sin, then, lay in turning only to physicians; ad Ben Sira 38, Anchor Bible, 442. 20. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 188–189. 21. For Anan’s ban, see Jacob al-Qirqisānī, Kitāb al-Anwār, disc. VI, chapter 12. Qirqisānī himself, however, vigorously rebuts Anan’s position. 22. Gilead was noted for its healing balm, as Di Lella notes, Anchor Bible, 441, citing Jeremiah 46:11. 23. See N.H. Tur-Sinai, The Book of Job, 221–222; for a concurring opinion, see Pope, Anchor Bible: Job, 97–98. 24. Ben Sira’s “too” alludes to God’s gift of art to Betzalel, and his assistants (Exodus 31:2–6). Ecclesiasticus argues that the medical art is no less a gift of God. 25. Cf. the Anchor Bible translation by Patrick Skehan. Alexander Di Lella comments, ad loc.: “Ben Sira singles out the practice of medicine for that high place in religious and civic affairs alike which doctors came to occupy among both Jews and Christians in the Near East in the centuries that were to follow: Sergius of Reshaina, the Bokhtishos, Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, Maimonides, Bar-Hebraeus. . . . Ben Sira probably had in mind those who on religious grounds refused or were reluctant to consult a physician.” Anchor Bible: The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 439, 441. 26. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 190. 27. Makkī, Qūt al-Qulūb, 2.4.

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28. For Ghazālī’s cautious accommodation of causality, see L.E. Goodman, “AlGhazālī on Causality.” 29. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 190. 30. See especially Ḥovot 2. 31. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 190–191, 201. 32. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 182. Note the maternal role assigned to God in the image. 33. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 198–199. 34. See L.E. Goodman, Jewish and Islamic Philosophy, chapter 3: “Baḥyā and Kant.” 35. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 200; trans. Mansoor, 247. 36. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 200; trans. Mansoor, 247. 37. Fred Rosner, Medicine in the Mishneh Torah, 62. 38. The examples are drawn from the repertoire of classic responses to the Skeptical elenchus. See Sextus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1.13; and L.E. Goodman, In Defense of Truth, 44–48, 59–62. 39. Ibn Hindū, Miftāḥ al-Ṭibb, “The Key to Medicine,” Bursa MS Haraççi 1120, folios 49a–52b and Istanbul MS Köprülü I, 981; Franz Rosenthal, “Defense of Medicine.” 40. ‘Abd al-Waddūd b. ‘Abd al-Malik, Fi Dhamm al-Takassub bi-Sinā‘at al-Ṭibb (On Why Not to Make a Living as a Doctor) Istanbul MS Hekimoglu Ali Pasha 691, folios 128b–133b; Rosenthal, “Defense of Medicine,” 520. The work is framed as a “Devil’s Advocate’s critique” of the profession of medicine. 41. Rosenthal, “Defense of Medicine,” 524. Ibn al-Khammār was the friend and intellectual associate of Avicenna and of the learned al-Nadīm. 42. S.D. Goitein, “The Medical Profession,” 177. 43. Goitein, “The Medical Profession,” 178. 44. Ḥovot, ed. Yahuda, 187; trans. Mansoor, 234. 45. See Ikhwān āl-Safā’, The Case of the Animals vs. Man, Chapter 29. Richard McGregor and I are preparing a new critical edition and updated translation of the work, under the aegis of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London and to be published by O.U.P. 46. In Republic III 405a, Plato has Socrates argue that physicians (and lawyers) thrive in a decadent society but are little needed where there is virtue. 47. Maimonides, Treatise on Asthma, ed. Muntner, 88–89 (chapter 13: section 30). 48. See L.E. Goodman, Jewish and Islamic Philosophy, chapter 6; God of Abraham, 24–25. 90–98, 109, 247–254; Judaism, Human Rights and Human Values, 68–71. 49. See Maimonides, Eight Chapters, ed. Gorfinkle, 5; MT Hilkhot De‘ot (Ethical Laws) 3.3. 50. See Guide III 22–23. 51. MT Hilkhot De‘ot 4.1: “Keeping the body in health and vigor is part of what it means to walk in God’s ways. For it is impossible to know or understand insofar as one is ill. So one must keep oneself at a remove from anything hurtful to the body and must cultivate healthful habits. Specifically: One must never eat unless hungry,


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or drink unless thirsty, or put off evacuating when necessary, not even for a moment.” Cf. 4.15: “Anyone who simply takes it easy and does not exercise or who neglects the calls of nature or is constipated, even if he eats well and looks after himself medically all his life, will still be subject to aches and pains and lacking in vigor. Overeating is like a deadly poison to any human body and a chief cause of all sorts of illnesses.” Maimonides’ Medical Aphorisms quotes Galen and Hippocrates on the importance of exercise and the avoidance of overeating. Hippocrates’ Epidemics sums up the basic guidelines of good health as “eating not too much and exercising not too little”(Hippocrates, Oeuvres complèts, ed. E. Littré, 5.312). At Guide III 25, Maimonides lists physical exercise, including ball games, wrestling and boxing, along with the intellectual’s chores of cutting reed pens and making paper, among the activities that ignorant people may see as frivolous, since they fail to understand their value. 52. See Guide III 12. 53. Maimonides, Letters, ed. J. Kafiḥ, 134–135. As Bos remarks, only a scholar intimately familiar with the voluminous corpus would have been able to collate the contradictions among Galen’s works as Maimonides did—let alone to detect an apocryphal Galenic title, as Maimonides also did. 54. Maimonides, On Asthma, 13.38; ed. Bos, 102–104. 55. In medicine experience is critical. Commenting on the Hippocratic “Life is short; the Art is long,” Maimonides stresses the need for extensive experience with sick and well individuals of all sorts, quite apart from what can be learned from books. 56. For Maimonides’ medical education and critiques of Galen, see Bos, “Maimonides’ Medical Works,” notes 4–8, 19–24, and Medical Aphorisms, 25ff; for consultation, notes 12, 44; for his commendation of critical thinking in religious matters, Guide I 63. Maimonides scores Galen’s sarcastic rejection of the Mosaic canon and notes his confessed failure in addressing an abstruse metaphysical question like the nature of time (Guide I 73.3) but echoes his explanation of the human body’s inability to last forever (Guide III 12.1, citing De Usu Partium III 10). 57. See On Asthma, 11.3; ed. Bos, 62–63. Cf. Galen, On Medical Experience. 58. Guide III 37; and see On Poisons, 15, 19; and Bos’s discussion in “Maimonides’ Medical Works,” at notes 49, 56–60, 62–65, citing Medical Aphorisms, 13.50, 22.1, 22.27, 22.37, and Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, I 14–19. 59. While rejecting any doctrinaire empiricism, Maimonides respects and values experience as a source of knowledge, in medicine and in general. He praises Ibn Zuhr as an empiricist, telling how the great physician’s son had told him of his extensive testing of the seemingly anomalous remedies he recommends; see Medical Aphorisms 22.35. Maimonides reports on his own experiments and experience at Medical Aphorisms 3.81, ed. Bos, 1.53; On Asthma 6.4, 9.15, 10.4, ed. Bos, 31, 49, 52. The debate on medical empiricism is represented in Galen’s dialogue on medical experience, which was preserved in Arabic but lost in Greek, except for brief passages quoted by Galen himself, which confirm the authenticity of the Arabic text. A unique surviving ms. of the Arabic was discovered by Helmut Ritter in 1931 in the Aya Sofia library in Istanbul. It was edited and translated by my teacher Richard Walzer, for his doctoral dissertation, under the direction of Werner Jaeger in 1932. Publication was delayed until 1942, as a result of the rise of the Nazis. Walzer’s translation was reissued by Michael Frede, who included English renderings of the Greek passages

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Walzer had omitted, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science. Galen’s dialogue is sympathetic to medical empiricism. Maimonides here takes exception only to a starkly empiricist approach. 60. On Asthma, 13.20. Maimonides is prepared to admit that medicine may well have declined from its glory days in antiquity. But he finds the subject too vast for any individual to master perfectly. He also acknowledges that some of the problems he finds texts of in Galen may be the fault of the translator, or of his own weakness of understanding, Medical Aphorisms 25.1. 61. Guide I 54. 62. See Goodman, “God and the Good Life.” 63. See Guide I 2. 64. Guide I 54. 65. Guide III 19, 21. 66. See Guide III 35.4. 67. The word grace, for some, may be redolent of Christian associations, in part because of the historic conflict between works and faith (which is attained by grace) in Catholic and Protestant theology. But the idea is authentically Jewish and runs back historically at least to the Genesis narrative and conceptually to the idea that God imparts far more than any prior entitlement could call for. Terminologically, the idea of grace resides historically in the nexus of ḥen, ḥesed, and raḥamim. For one effort at parsing the relations of these with one another and with justice, see L.E. Goodman, On Justice, 120–133. 68. Guide III 12. 69. For the idea of desert and its Mosaic roots, see Goodman, On Justice, esp. chapters 1–3. 70. Hence Maimonides’ opens his Eight Chapters with a biologically grounded psychology. 71. Guide 1 46. 72. Guide III 19. 73. See Guide II 48, ed. Munk 2.102a. 74. See Matthew 6:26; homilies from the Sermon on the Mount are paraphrased by Makkī—but not by Maimonides. 75. MT Hilkhot De‘ot 5; Guide III 12. 76. Guide III 12. 77. Guide III 13, 17. Ibn al-Quff, a Christian medical writer (1233–1286), applies the same reasoning specifically to medical treatments: To deny or ignore their workings is just as impractical and impugns God’s creative act just as much as denying that food and drink sustain us. Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, Istanbul MS Yeni Çami 919, fol. 2, discussed in Rosenthal, “Defense of Medicine,” 525 and in his essay in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine 40 (1966) 241 ff. Any monotheist must agree with the Qur’anic view (23:115) that creation is not a vain or frivolous act. Ibn al-Quff mobilizes the anti-naturalists’ premises and scriptures against them, charging them with ta‘ṭīl, denial of God’s act and character. His Arabic word for a


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vain or futile action here is ‘abath, the same that Sa‘adiah uses in denying that creation is a sham, a bad joke or absurdity; ad Job 34:6, see Sa‘adiah, Book of Theodicy, 357 and 362 n. 3. 78. As Yehudah Gellman remarks, Maimonides rejects as hidhyān, (literally, ravings, as I would translate the term), the legend we know from Rashi and Ramban, that what Hezekiah suppressed was King Solomon’s panacea book. As Gellman shows, the very idea of such a book is inconsistent with Maimonides’ conception of medicine: Medicine must treat the individual, and some bodies will fail to respond even to the most appropriate treatment. For, as Maimonides explains, medicine alone does not effect a cure but “medicine and nature together.” The soil may fail a farmer. The sea may wreck a ship, even one that is built and sailed without error. And a doctor may lose a patient even when following the dicta of medical science perfectly; Treatise on Asthma (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1965) 107. In his Commentary on the Mishnah (ad Pesaḥim 4.10), Maimonides rejects as delusory the notion of some mythical book of panaceas. The very notion is incoherent, since it both assumes and ignores the debilities the flesh is heir to. See Guide III 12; Gellman, “Maimonides and the Cure-all Book.” 79. Maimonides’ reasoning: Such a book might contain procedures for compounding all sorts of dangerous materials. Its study would be legitimate for responsible professionals, although much in it would be barred from practice. A doctor might well need to know, for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, how these poisons are compounded, so as to be able to judge what poison a patient has ingested and how its effects might be countered, although only the cure, not the use of such a substance would be legitimate. Compare today’s restriction of access to information about the preparation of various biological agents, explosives, and nuclear materials that might be used in warfare or terrorism. Hezekiah, Maimonides infers, might have suppressed such a book if he judged that public morals had declined so far that general access to it was dangerous. But it is absurd, he insists, to praise Hezekiah’s righteousness while fantasizing that he withheld valid medical knowledge from those whom it might benefit. 80. MT B’rakhot (Blessings) 10:12—numbered 10:20 in Moses Hyamson’s text, 159. 81. MT B’rakhot 1.3; Mezuzah 6:13. The apocryphal Testament of Job captures the biblical idea that God acts through nature (rather than despite it) when it voices the acknowledgment: “My cure comes from God, the maker of physicians.” 82. For the rabbinic practice of thematizing the value principles of the Torah, see Max Kaddushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 35–58, and A Conceptual Approach to the Mekilta, 6–30; Ephraim Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs. 83. MT Shabbat 11:4. 84. MT Hilkhot Y’sodei ha-Torah (Foundations of the Torah) 5:6. 85. MT Hilkhot Yom ha-Kippurim (Laws of the Day of Atonement) 3:2. 86. MT Hilkhot Yom ha-Kippurim 2:9. 87. Cf. e.g., Deuteronomy 5:30, 8:1, 16:20, 30:6, 30:16–20. 88. MT Hilkhot Yom ha-Kippurim 2:8; cf. Yoma 83a and the Yiddish saying, “Ask the patient, not the doctor.”

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89. MT Hilkhot Rotzeaḥ ve-Sh’mirat ha-Nefesh (Murder and Preservation of Life) 1:16. 90. MT Hilkhot Rotzeaḥ ve-Sh’mirat ha-Nefesh 1:14. 91. MT Hilkhot G’zelah ve-Avedah (Robbery and Lost Property) 1:1 and Commentary on the Mishnah N’darim 4.4, following Sanhedrin 73a. 92. MT Hilkhot Issurei Mizbeaḥ (Things Prohibited for the Altar) 7:11: “The same principle applies to everything done for the sake of God: It must be of the finest and the best. If one build a house of prayer, it should be finer than a private dwelling. If he feed the hungry, he should give them the best and sweetest of his table. If he clothe the naked, he should give him of the finest of his garments.” And for self-sufficiency, MT Hilkhot Mattenot ‘Aniyyim (Gifts to the Poor) 10:7; 10:18. The standard bears interesting comparison to Aristotle’s ideas about magnificence, which are applied to public buildings, temples and the like, but not notably to charity. See Nicomachaean Ethics IV 2. The ethical constraints on free riders arise in part from recognition of the fact that the expectation that others will always have the means and the will to provide one’s care is destructive of both those means and that will. For the fallacy of the ever normal pot and the complementary fallacies of the invisible hand and stone soup, see Goodman, Judaism, Human Rights and Human Values, 152–154. 93. See her essay in Rosner and Kottek. 94. MT Sanhedrin 1:10; Hilkhot De‘ot 4:23. 95. MT Hilkhot De‘ot 4:1. Cf. Galen, Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequuntur, 4.789–808. Galen argues, in Hippocrates’ footsteps, that our mental and moral capabilities flourish or fade with the quality of our nourishment and other external physiological effects. See Owsei Temkin, chapter 5; and Gerrit Bos, “Maimonides on the Preservation of Health,” 216. 96. MT Hilkhot Rotzeaḥ ve-Sh’mirat ha-Nefesh 11:6–7. 97. MT Hilkhot Rotzeaḥ ve-Sh’mirat ha-Nefesh 12:4; Rosner, 120–121. In Medical Aphorisms 20.10, Maimonides explains that food left out overnight must not be eaten, since putrefaction has already, insensibly, begun. Spoiled foods, he warns, are as dangerous as poisons. See Bos, “Maimonides on the Preservation of Health,” 233. The biblical interest in purity ranges from the hygienic to the spiritual, by way of the symbolic. The demystification constitutive in the Torah’s campaign against magical thinking is complemented by a semiotic concern with purity that does not await the discovery of visible pathogens before it will regard specific kinds of contact as dangerous or distasteful enough to warrant a ban. For the Torah’s multi-storeyed conception of purity see Goodman, God of Abraham, chapter 7. 98. MT Hilkhot Ma’akhalot Assurot (Forbidden Foods) 17:29–30. Fastidiousness, as 17:32 goes on to argue, is one way of fulfilling the commandment (Leviticus 19:2) to emulate God’s holiness. 99. On Asthma, Chapter 13.19–22. 100. See On Asthma, Chapter 13.1–4; ed. Bos, 80–82. 101. MT Hilkhot Sh’khinim (Neighbors) 10:3–4. With Galen and Hippocrates, Maimonides implicates bad air and polluted water as chief causes of disease. Fusṭāṭ, old Cairo, where the Rambam lived, was notorious for its air pollution and its water fouled with sewage and discarded animal carcases. See Ibn Riḍwān (d. 1068), On the


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Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt, 105–106; see Bos, “Maimonides on the Preservation of Health,” 225–227. In medieval Damascus, which, like Fusṭāṭ, lay in a basin, the pollution was at least as bad. 102. MT Hilkhot Rotzeaḥ ve-Sh’mirat ha-Nefesh 11:4–5. 103. As Bos points out, Maimonides (like most doctors) saw that treatment was far more problematic once a patient had fallen ill, so he stressed the value of preventive care and “wellness,” as we like to call it today. Maimonides’ activism is clear in his concern, for example, with fumigating places where vermin might find cover. Like Baḥyā, he stresses that ultimately our fate is in God’s hands. But he sees no reason why we should fail to use the powers and the knowledge God affords us to take appropriate preventive measures to preserve our health and vigor. 104. See the discussion in Goodman, God of Abraham, 152–165. 105. Kottek cites “The often-quoted poem written by Al-Said Almulk and mentioned in Ibn Abī Usaibi‘a’s appraisal of Maimonides,” which “states that ‘Galen’s medicine is only for the body, that of Abu Imran (Maimonides’) is for both body and soul’.” As Kottek explains, “this does not mean that Galen had nothing to say about diseases of the soul. . . . He was also aware of psychosomatic influences on health. Humoral physiology and pathology included imbalance due to the ‘motions of the soul’ (i.e., emotions). As a consequence, the therapeutic value of music, a pleasant and refreshing environment, games and exercise, on psychic affections, was mentioned by Galen, who was Maimonides’ source for similar therapies.” So the encomium “does not mean that Galen was only prepared to treat physical or somatic diseases. Rather it stresses the fact that Maimonides considered each patient in toto, body and soul, whereas Galen only treated the soul when it was diseased.” Kottek 27. The broad, holistic approach in medicine, integrating the psychical with the physical, the external with the internal, and prevention and enhancement with therapy and healing, as Bos underscores, was pioneered by Hippocrates. It is thus as old as Western scientific medicine itself. 106. Maimonides, Medical Aphorisms 25.59; cf. Eight Chapters 3. I translate the former passage from the Arabic text, edited by Joseph Schacht and Max Meyerhof. The volume includes an English translation of the passage and an explanation of how the section was edited by Maimonides’ nephew soon after the Rambam’s death. The text is also translated in Fred Rosner, The Medical Aphorisms, 431, where it opens the 59th aphorism (numbered 40 by Schacht and Meyerhof). The passage leads to Maimonides’ criticism of Galen for overestimating his own expertise in logic and for underestimating the importance of hypothetical (as opposed to categorical) syllogisms. These, the Rambam argues, citing al-Fārābī’s logical work in support, are what the physician uses almost exclusively. Avicenna operates to similar effect; see Goodman, Avicenna, 33, 196–208. Maimonides moves on to a critique of Galen’s (rather otiose) disparagement of the Mosaic idea of creation in De Usu Partium. See Richard Walzer’s discussion in Galen on Jews and Christians. 107. MT Hilkhot De‘ot 2:1, citing Isaiah 5:20, Proverbs 1:7 and 2:13. Sa‘adiah had developed the point in his critique of ascetic excess, ED X. 108. Eight Chapters, 4; cf. On Asthma 8.2–3, ed. Bos, 37–38. 109. See MT Hilkhot T’shuvah.

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110. Maimonides’ rabbinic authority is probably Nedarim 22a, as Rosner notes (Medical Aphorisms, p. 100, no. 23), attested at Zohar Bereshit 2:16 and in Shlomo ben Shimon Duran, She’elot u-T’shuvot, ed. Moshe Sobel, no. 370. For Maimonides’ departure from the Aristotelian appraisal, see Daniel Frank, “Humility as a Virtue”; cf. his, “Anger as a Vice.” 111. Guide III 13, glossing Exodus 33:18 and Proverbs 16:4; and III 25, glossing Psalm 135:6, Job 23:13, Ecclesiastes 3:11 and Midrash Kohelet, ad loc. 112. Eight Chapters, 5. 113. Compare Rāzī’s account of pain and pleasure; see Goodman, Jewish and Islamic Philosophy, 36–40. 114. See Goodman, On Justice, chapter 6. 115. Eight Chapters, 4. The reasoning is clear. If moral traits are those that may be praised, punished, or encouraged, they are not innate. 116. Guide I 2. 117. Eight Chapters, 8. 118. Eight Chapters, 5; Goodman, God of Abraham, chapter 5. 119. See Guide III 54. 120. See Guide I 15, glossing Genesis 28:13. 121. Eight Chapters, 2–4. 122. See Goodman, In Defense of Truth, chapter 9. 123. MT Hilkhot M’lakhim (Laws of Kings) 12:1; cf. Guide I 11; Goodman, On Justice, chapter 5. 124. Guide III 27. 125. It does not demand ownership of slaves, as Aristotle assumes. For all Israel, and the strangers who dwell in their midst, have the Sabbath for contemplation and the recreation of their souls. 126. Eight Chapters 7; Guide II 36. 127. For Maimonides’ views on the interactions of mental and emotional with physical health and well-being, see Mordecai Reich, “Some Insights into Maimonides’ Approach to Mental Health Issues”; Harvey Kranzler, “Maimonides’ Concept of Mental Health.” Maimonides, like others in the Greek and Arabic tradition, was well aware of the impact of depression. Indeed, he had undergone serious depression himself on the death of his brother. He explains the halakhic prohibition against self-incrimination in capital and corporal cases as a recognition that “those who are in misery or bitter of soul” may long for death. For the impact of character on spiritual attainment, see Shaftsbury, Essays (1711), “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm.” 128. Guide II 40. 129. See Guide I 2. 130. Guide III 29. 131. See Goodman, In Defense of Truth, 229–281. 132. Eight Chapters, 5. 133. Eight Chapters, 3.


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134. Eight Chapters, 5., Guide I 7. 135. Very much in the tradition of Aristotle and Sa‘adiah, Maimonides argues (Guide III 54, Munk 134a) that the moral virtues would be worthless to an isolated individual, since they would have no theater of action or field of application. 136. Guide III 12–13. Rāzī is named, rightly, as the philosopher who held that evils outweigh goods in the world. But Sa‘adiah adopted the same view and is obliquely blamed for falling into Rāzī’s Epicurean assumption, which was, in fact, inconsistent with his own more considered thoughts about the object of existence. See Sa‘adiah, The Book of Theodicy, 138 n. 28; and Goodman, God of Abraham, 141. 137. Eight Chapters, 5. 138. Eight Chapters, 5. 139. Guide III 22, on the Book of Job. 140. Eight Chapters, 4, 7. 141. Eight Chapters, 4 and 7, reflecting on Numbers 20:10. 142. Guide III 33. 143. Eight Chapters, 4, citing Nazir 19a on Numbers 6:11 and J. Nedarim 9:1. 144. Guide III 12. 145. Guide III 12. 146. For Rāzī’s argument, see Goodman, Jewish and Islamic Philosophy, 38–58. 147. Guide I, Introduction. 148. Guide III 8; Maimonides is careful to rule out self-serving apologetics that might be built on his reference to chance and one’s God-given lot: He goes on to stipulate that manageable matter is easily governed, but even unmanageable matter can be controlled with adequate discipline. We are not exempted from moral responsibility by our varying physical constitutions or temperamental tendencies. Cf. Eight Chapters 8. 149. See Maimonides, Medical Aphorisms III 26, ed. Bos, 1.39; On Asthma 8.2–3, ed. Bos, 38.


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The Ambiguity of the Imagination and the Ambivalence of Language in Maimonides and Spinoza Idit Dobbs-Weinstein

You should not consider as blameworthy the fact that this profound subject, which is remote from our apprehension, should be subject to many different interpretations. For this does no harm with respect to that toward which we direct ourselves. And you are free to choose whatever belief you wish. (Guide I, 21. My emphasis) . . . the name of such an individual might make the passage offensive to someone without experience and make him think it has an evil inner meaning of which he is not aware. Consequently, I saw ﬁt to omit the author’s name. (Eight Chapters, Introduction) For I see that no demonstration, however solid it may be according to the laws of demonstration, has weight with you unless it agrees with that explanation which you, or theologians known to you, attribute to sacred Scripture. But, if you believe that God speaks more clearly and effectively through sacred Scripture than through the light of the natural intellect . . . then you have powerful reasons for bending your intellect to the opinions you attribute to sacred Scripture. I myself could hardly do otherwise. (Letter 21 to Willem van Blijenbergh. My emphasis)

With the exception of the contentious and the ignoramuses, with whom neither Maimonides nor Spinoza engage in philosophical discussions but who are, nonetheless, among their major concerns, there is no denying that Maimonides’ works can be read in many, at times contradictory ways. The reason for this polyphony, however, is a matter of endless debate and gives rise 95

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to two strategies: the hermeneutic uncovering of the esoteric or true meanings, the Straussian strategy, and the reconciliation of all contradictions as merely apparent, a strategy that I used to strongly endorse. I now consider both strategies to be superficial and ill-conceived. Rather than address the failures of these, however, in the following paper I wish to show that Spinoza’s equivocal language nominalism, his distrust of language’s efficacy to communicate truth, is not only similar to Maimonides’ critique of language but also, at times reproduces Maimonides’ arguments almost verbatim. It will become evident that both thinkers undertake the critique of language for the same reasons, namely, to exhibit, on the one hand, the intimate relation between language and the imagination and, on the other, their reciprocal role in generating both knowledge and the errors consequent upon doxastic and exdoxastic opinions, which opinions constitute prejudices and superstitions as powerful forces of attraction and repulsion. It will become evident that to understand Maimonides’ influence upon Spinoza dialectically means to allow the latter to illumine occluded philosophical possibilities in the former and vice versa. Moreover, to understand their dialectical relation historically is to uncover the occluded and repressed in Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s texts, of which the most important are the specifically concrete endoxa and doxa to which their respective works respond. These historical differences notwithstanding, in both cases the occlusions and repressions are occasioned by two, dialectically contradictory, expressions of prejudices; namely, the prejudices seeking to destroy contrary opinions and those seeking to defend them. Ironically, I am inclined to believe that the latter prejudices are philosophically more difficult to eradicate. For even when they are garbed in philosophical language, the former are strictly theologico-political and are occasioned by considerations that are extrinsic to the texts and may be eradicated by historical transformations (e.g., of the proper place of religion). However, insofar as the latter prejudices seek to defend what they take to be the philosophical truth of the texts, they passionately resist alternative interpretations. And, both forms of prejudice are manifestations of the desire for certainty and hence a desire for the end of philosophical inquiry. I

In a manner similar to Maimonides’ relation to Plato, Spinoza’s relation to Maimonides is essentially paradoxical. That is, what characterizes both relations is that the locus of the most vehement criticism is also, and precisely, the locus of greatest debt. And, in both instances, the critique and the debt often concern the appropriate language of teaching and interpretation. In a letter to Ibn Tibbon Maimonides dismisses Plato’s parabolic language as obscure and, hence, as useless to the study of philosophy, only to proceed in the Guide of the Perplexed1 to show that parabolic language is less obscure than the philosophical and, hence, more fitting to the investigation of the

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aporiae that constitute “divine science.” (al-‘ilm al-’illāhī).2 Likewise, despite Spinoza’s devastating and radical critique of Maimonides’ approach to biblical interpretation (as the reconciliation of philosophy and religion) in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,3 he adopts and transforms Maimonidean ‘hermeneutics’ in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione and the Ethics by first severing the domains of interpretation, philosophical as well as biblical, from religion, thereby making manifest the political determination of theology. Viewed in this light, Spinoza’s critique of the theologians and metaphysicians is no different in kind from Maimonides’ critique of the Rabbis and Mutakallimūn. What separates the two philosophers is place and time, and hence, the idiom in which and against which they philosophize. Both Maimonides and Spinoza undertake the critique of language for the same reasons, namely, to eradicate the “ignorance” consequent upon concrete opinions or endoxa, whose dual origins are language and imagination. Moreover, both philosophers agree that this type of ignorance is manifest predominantly as a prejudice that afflicts not only the many vulgar but also, and more dangerously, the so-called learned: Maimonides’ Rabbis and Mutakallimūn, Spinoza’s theologians and metaphysicians. In fact, I want to suggest that the vulgar who are the concern of both Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s work are the metaphysicians and theologians, since it is their authority that both founds and confirms as true knowledge the prejudices of the many. And, it is this authority that their works seek to undermine. For, precisely insofar as endoxa are esteemed opinions, precisely insofar as they are authoritative and constitute a single “Truth,” that they cover over or render invisible the irreducible diversity and hence aporiae that constitute experience and that not only admits of but, in fact, demands “many different interpretations.” Authority, in fact, renders multiplicity repulsive. Both the Mutakallimūn and the Cartesians sought a single “method” to be universally applicable or adequate to all orders of discourse, an extrinsic standard to which concrete, sensible experiences have to conform or else literally become unreal, whereas the real for Maimonides and Spinoza is the concrete sensible. The refusal of the Mutakallimūn to admit any relation between sensibility/experience and intelligibility, their inversion of the relation between actual existence on the one hand, demonstration and method on the other, like Descartes’ desire for a mathesis universalis are not merely manifestations of ‘bad’ methods to be replaced by better ones, but also exemplary of the failure to recognize the limits of demonstration, method and language to disclose truths. For, as Spinoza clearly states, “truth makes herself manifest.”4 Conversely, method is nothing other than the self-manifestation of truth. For both thinkers, the belief in the unlimited extension of demonstration exhibits a failure to appreciate the radical distinction between the immediacy of truth/ actual existence, in other words, true methodos, and the intermediacy of language, that is, demonstration as mos, whose source, for both Maimonides and Spinoza, is the imagination rather than reason, let alone intellect.

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The paradoxical relation with those authoritative predecessors to whom both Maimonides and Spinoza are most indebted is an exemplary instance of the role of language in generating both knowledge and errancy.5 It is not surprising, therefore, that their respective critiques would choose as one of their main foci the question of language. And, insofar as the writings of their respective predecessors have been mimetically appropriated as pronouncements of truths, insofar as Maimonides’ Plato and Spinoza’s Maimonides have become the purveyors of endoxa or commonly held, esteemed opinions, any serious philosophical questioning of “their” premises is paradoxa, both in the sense that it is other than endoxa and in the sense that it is derived from, or is concurrent with endoxa.6 For, as Aristotle states at the beginning of the Posterior Analytics “all teaching and all learning through dianoia proceed from previous knowledge,”7 a previous knowledge that is distinct from understanding and is thus held as endoxa. And in the Topics, where he seeks a method of investigating endoxa, and concludes that dialectics is most fitting for such inquires, Aristotle defines a dialectical thesis as a paradox, that is, as contrary to commonly held opinion. Ironically, the modern reader’s inability to appreciate the essentially paradoxical nature of philosophical inquiry, the failure to understand philosophy as a critique of endoxa manifests the inherent tendency to, or desire for endoxa, evident in the imaginative desire for the certainty promised by mathesis universalis. It is not surprising, therefore, that many modern readers of premodern philosophy charge their predecessors with a lack of philosophical rigor.8 Nor is it surprising that concomitant with the loss of the philosophical significance of paradoxes and contradictions is the loss of equivocal language nominalism. Whereas the homonym occupied an important position in Aristotelian logic and in Spinoza’s discussions of language, it is now dismissed as incoherence. Unlike their modern readers, being acutely aware of the power of dogmatic certainty, in their attempts to discover modes of inquiry that may ‘emend the intellect’ or remove those perplexities consequent upon authoritative instruction both Maimonides and Spinoza warn their readers against the hasty rejection of contradictions or paradoxes. In Guide I 32, Maimonides enumerates the following conditions for attaining intellectual perfection: For, if you stay your progress because of a dubious point; if you do not deceive yourself into believing that there is a demonstration with regard to matters that have not been demonstrated; if you do not hasten to reject and categorically pronounce as false any assertions whose contradictories have not been demonstrated; if, finally, you do not aspire to apprehend that which you are unable to apprehend—you will have achieved human perfection.

At the end of the same chapter, Maimonides identifies corrupt imagining as the origin of the desire to reject as false the dubious, the indemonstrable and the apparently contradictory.


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In a similar manner Spinoza warns the reader of the TdIE: If, by chance, someone should ask why, before all else I immediately exhibited the truth of Nature in that order, for does truth not manifest herself? I respond and simultaneously warn him not to wish to reject as false, on account of paradoxes, these things which may occur here and there: but, first, he should deign to consider the order in which we prove them, (quo ea probemus) and then he will become certain that we have reached truth; and this was the reason (causa) why I have put these things first.9

And later on in the TdIE Spinoza too identifies the imagination as the origin of the adherence to endoxa as prejudice and, together with desire, as the source of resistance to its contrary. The proper order of teaching and investigation to which Spinoza refers in the above passage and which is meant to redress adherence to error necessarily appears to be paradoxical since it is contradictory to the endoxic order. It also embodies contradictions since, in order to exhibit the ‘false’ as false, it must begin from it. Error, or the belief that the ‘false’ is true, occurs either because imaginative ideas (for Spinoza), representations (for Maimonides), are taken to be real and to represent actual existence, or because beings of reason (for Spinoza), demonstrative proof (for Maimonides), are believed to be true of real existence and to manifest the perfection of understanding.10 In turn, undertaking a critique of these beliefs appears to be paradoxical, contradictory or, worse still, contentious. In relation to authority it is also and always seditious or heretical.11 In addition, for both thinkers, improper instruction, especially authoritative instruction that is presented in a manner that inhibits further questioning, or claims to provide a complete and unified explanation, that is, instruction that fails to underline the disjunction between language and truth, imaginative and real, in other words, concrete existence, results in the hearers’ inability to recognize the limits of language as well as the need for continuous and varied interpretations or modes of inquiry. As a consequence, reason and especially the imagination become the measure of actual and, hence, possible existence. Paradoxical as this may/must sound, it is my claim that for both Maimonides and Spinoza it is the method said to be “adequate” to all ideas, let alone things, that is a pure, but dangerous fiction. Conversely, I wish to suggest that in view of their shared distrust of language’s ability to communciate truth, and provided that, on the one hand, we do not restrict parables to biblical ones and, on the other, do not confuse methodos with mos, Maimonides’ parables and Spinoza’s definitions are strikingly similar and are the many ways of affirming the indefinite and diverse modes of experience and the continuous need for multiple discourses/inquiries. Two considerations should suffice to justify this suggestion. (1) The fact that Maimonides dismisses Plato’s writings as parables clearly indicates that by parable he did not intend biblical parables alone. It is also worth noting

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here that the reason for dismissing Plato’s parables is that they are hard to understand. But this would be consistent with the claim in the introduction to the Guide that it is impossible for the “perfect” to communicate clearly and coherently what they understand. “For this reason, all the Sages . . . , knowers of the truth, when they aimed at teaching something of this subject matter, spoke of it only in parables and riddles. They even multiplied the parables and made them different in species and even in genus.”12 (2) For Spinoza (a) all definitions are descriptions and extrinsic denominations, (b) truth and falsity “are not attributed to things except metaphorically,”13 and (c) the geometric convention is distinct from “the dictates of reason,” experience, as well as understanding.

A profound irony marks both Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s thought. The intellect (for Maimonides) or the idea that constitutes mind (for Spinoza), that is the condition of any demonstration, cannot be demonstrated as true. Whereas any idea, inadequate as well as adequate, is an unmediated actuality, of the imagination, reason, or intellect and can neither be demonstrated nor doubted, language is the mediator par excellence,14 and language is the only vehicle of communication, let alone instruction. It follows, then, that habituation to understanding, Maimonides’ intermediary orders of discourse and Spinoza’s propaeduetic emendation and geometric convention (mos), must be communicated by a guide who already possesses understanding, and must begin from the orders of experience (sensible “knowledge,” affection or experientia vaga) and of esteemed opinions (endoxa, or “knowledge” ex auditis et signis), lest the student be confirmed in error/prejudice, confusing imagination as well as reason with understanding. More precisely, proper intermediary sciences follow, in some manner, perhaps only inversely and even circuitously, the necessary entailment of an idea; for “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things”15 and follows with the same necessity.16 But, in addition, the claim that what is taken to be true or certain cannot be adequately communicated in language when coupled with the claims that the proper order of instruction may eradicate error, or replace an inadequate perplexity with an aporia, (i.e., an adequate perplexity) and hence, some (although neither all nor always) prejudices and that understanding is possible indicate that proper discursive knowledge can displace itself or display its own inadequacy. More precisely, to the extent that such a self-displacement is possible, especially if it is complete, its power and success is limited to individuals whose desire for understanding has not been entirely destroyed by authoritative prejudice and superstition or, more important, has not become a desire for authority. That is, Maimonides’ discursive sciences and Spinoza’s mos geometricus must also lead to a genuine perplexity or aporia. Before proceeding, it is important to emphasize again that the understanding (intellectus) is the understood, the mind is the idea and that, at least for


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Spinoza, the imagination is the image/inadequate idea, and hence cannot intrinsically contain the causes of its own destruction. Rather the destruction can only come about by a more powerful affect whose origin is either ab experientia vaga or ex auditis et signis. Nor can it be overemphasized that the former can only become prejudice/superstition by the mediation of the latter. And, it is only the latter “knowledge” acquired ex auditis et signis, that is, through language, that can become the pathology evident as the desire for authority and forceful repudiation of any contrary opinion, which repudiation undermines the very possibility of freedom. That is why Maimonides devoted the entire first book of the Guide to exhibiting the equivocity of language and emphasizes repeatedly that the Torah speaks “in accordance with human language, I mean the imagination of the multitude”17 and Spinoza warns the reader of the TdIE that she should be very wary of words: since words are part of the imagination, i.e., since we feign many concepts indefinitely according as (prout vagé) they are composed in memory from some disposition of the body, it is not to be doubted that words as much as the imagination, can be the cause of many and great errors, unless we are very wary of them. [For] they are established according to the pleasure and power of the vulgar.18

The urgent but, nonetheless, implicit questions underlying both Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s inquiries is (1) whether or not there is a mode of teaching and writing that is less susceptible to “vulgar” mimetic appropriation or less pleasing to the vulgar and, is able, thereby, to resist dogmatic appropriation, and (2) whether or not their writings constitute attempts to formulate such a discourse. Viewed in this light, to the extent that Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s writings are ignored by subsequent academic philosophy, insofar as they are excluded from the canon, or to the extent that they have not become endoxa, they are indeed successful, and vice versa. Perhaps, a mark of their success is that, where their influence remains critical of canonization, their specific linguistic formulations are neither imitated nor readily evident, and vice versa. For both Maimonides and Spinoza, the foremost cause of error, far greater and more “dangerous” than that arising from vagrant experience, the cause constituting superstitions and prejudices as the greatest hindrance to understanding and manifesting their greatest repulsive force, originates from mimetic adherence to authority. But, since instruction presupposes some type of mimesis, that is, some authoritative power, especially in habituation to many preliminary sciences (Maimonides) and geometry (Spinoza), proper instruction will have to proceed in such a manner as to undermine itself or, at the very least, render most forms of mimesis impossible. In some sense all forms of proper instruction, both the preliminary instruction intended to undermine endoxa and the subsequent habituation to ordered inquiry, will have to exhibit their own limitations if they are to lead to, let alone disclose truth and thereby question their own authority.

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A paradox or dialectical tension constitutes any concrete mode of proper instruction: on the one hand, the less attractive the instruction is or the less it is concerned with attraction, the more successful it may be in undermining its own authority; on the other, instruction has to be attractive, in other words, powerful enough to disable/destroy the force of doxastic attraction and repulsion. The difficulty faced by both Maimonides and Spinoza is how to overcome a powerful repulsion with a more powerful attractive force and simultaneously resist becoming merely attractive. In addition, the more the endoxa pertain to philosophical aporiai that have been occluded by the authoritative “certainty” of religious doxa, the more repulsive their contrary becomes. A poignant example of this difficulty and one that can simultaneously dispel or at least suspend obvious objections to my claims about Spinoza’s kinship with Maimonides concerns what appear to be two fundamental and irreducible disagreements between the two thinkers, namely their respective understanding of the deity and of teleology. For, it indeed seems to be the case that Spinoza’s identification of God with Nature and his vehement rejection of teleology as a prejudice that has become a deeply rooted superstition, would have been repulsive to Maimonides. Irrespective, Maimonides’ discussions of the purpose of divine actions, of which the most important is the purpose of the law, make manifest a peculiar proximity between them and render possible a reading of Maimonides’ Guide through the lens of Spinoza. An all-too-brief “diversion” is necessary here in order to make manifest the extent of their shared concern with the psychology of endoxa, especially in relation to teleology. In the discussion of classifications of actions into futile, frivolous, vain, and good, preceding the discussion of the laws, a discussion that concerns the purpose of divine actions, Maimonides states: “Know that the majority of the false imaginings that call forth perplexity in the quest for the end of the existence of the world as a whole or the end of every part of it have as their root an error of man about himself and his imagining that all that exists exists because of himself alone, as well as ignorance of the nature of inferior matter and ignorance of what is primarily intended—namely, the bringing into being of everything whose existence is possible, existence being indubitably a good.”19 This formulation of teleology as an imaginative projection is analyzed in more explicit, detailed and perhaps less prudent terms in Spinoza’s appendix to Ethics 1, where it is identified as the fundamental superstition underlying all normative categories. According to Maimonides, it is the imaginatively based belief in teleology that accounts for the resistance to the explanation of revealed laws as responses to concrete, historically understood, psychological need. Thus, Maimonides explains the commandments concerning sacrifices as a retained form of premonotheistic religious practices, in response to the natural inability to forego all practices to which humans are accustomed. Following the psychological explanation of the commandments, which simultaneously historicizes the Law, and presents the Law as a divine ruse “invented for our


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benefit,” Maimonides explicitly expresses his recognition that his reader would find a nonteleological explanation of Mosaic Law, one whose normative categories were not ontologically grounded, repulsive. “I know that on thinking about this at first your soul will necessarily have a feeling of repugnance toward this notion and will feel aggrieved because of it. . . .”20 Before proceeding, and in order to lend greater force to the above claim, it is important to note that, the sentence opening this chapter of the Guide identifies divine actions as natural actions and as manifestations of the “deity’s wily graciousness and wisdom” (Talaṭṭuf al-’illāhī wa-ḥikmatuhu). This is also one of the few chapters in which the distinctions between the divine and the natural, at least quoad nos, are most explicitly blurred. Guide 1, 68 is another. Like the Guide, Spinoza’s TdIE is intended to redress skepticism, or that kind of perplexity that originates from the simultaneous desire for knowledge and the inadequate instruction arising from the confusion between the discourses of the sciences and genuine understanding. More explicitly, it is impossible to fail to recognize that the endoxa with which the TdIE is concerned are Cartesian. That is why most of the text discusses the impossibility and self-contradictory nature of doubting a true idea and the radical difference between the true and an imaginative (inadequate) idea, a claim repeated in Ethics 2P43, after Spinoza draws a distinction between knowledge of the first kind and those of the second and third kinds. It is important to note, however, that neither for Maimonides nor for Spinoza does the major problem arise from the imagination per se; rather, it arises from the confusion between a true and an imaginative idea. It is this confusion that instruction can either enhance, fail to recognize, or redress, depending upon whether or not the teacher/guide is herself not repelled by the priority of actual existence or affection to any possible knowledge, or is willing to admit the authority of experience over her knowledge. And here, in order to begin to indicate what error is, I should like you to note that the imaginations of the Mind, considered in themselves contain no error, or that the Mind does not err from the fact that it imagines, but only insofar as it is considered to lack an idea that excludes the existence of those things that it imagines to be present to it.21

That is, although the imagination can be said to be one of the sources of error, properly speaking, it is the mind that is the cause of error. Or, as Maimonides claims, no praise or blame can be placed on the imagination; rather it flows properly or improperly, which “flow” or motion makes manifest its relation to appetition, in other words, desires.22 For Spinoza, the mind errs insofar as, when lacking a true idea, it forms judgments on the basis of the idiosyncratic order in which an individual body is affected. But judgment concerning truth or falsity does not pertain to the individual configurations of forces that come to form bodies, let alone to universal and transcendental abstractions derived from them, since affirmation and denial are not extrinsic determinations, nor

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are truth and falsity properties of independently existing things. (Thus understood, Spinoza’s affirmations are like Maimonides’ ḥaqīqah.) Rather, affirmations and denials are active expressions of intrinsic entailments of the single order of Nature or God, which order is expressed in in[de]finitely many modes. Conversely, an errant tendency becomes a firmly established habit when ideas are further confused with “the words by which we signify them,”23 a transition made possible only through the imagination. The imagination thus plays a double, but necessary role both in the acquisition of knowledge and in its communication. And, as I wish to claim, it is precisely at the point of communication that the dangerous confusion occurs and errancy is confirmed as error or prejudice. I use the term “dangerous confusion” judiciously here, to designate the confusion that arises ex auditis et signis, in contrast to the necessary confusion that arises ab experientia vaga. The latter confusion arises when the mind derives the order and connection of things from the specific successive order in which the body is affected or is formed, and judges that specific order as necessary, or when the mind derives its notions of causality by abstraction from individual affections and attributes real existence to such abstractions. Nevertheless, however confused knowledge ab experientia vaga may be, and whatever specific bodies may have been involved in forming that single experience, this type of knowledge, even though inadequate, is both necessary and reflects the common order of nature as affection. Nor, in itself, is any falsity involved in the experience; rather, the inadequacy of the knowledge derived from it refers to the passive and indefinite nature of reception or its strictly external determination.24 But when passive external determination is confused further with truth, which occurs primarily through improper instruction; that is, when authority confers on it the status of truth, an additional passive determination mediates between the mind as the inadequate ideas that constitute imagination and the mind as adequate ideas. And this further mediation takes place in language, when language is taken to represent, correspond to, or adequate an idea. It is the latter, dangerous confusion that both the TdIE and the Ethics, following the Guide, seek to redress.25 Spinoza is fully aware of the irony involved in the attempt to redress passivity with further passivity, one mimesis with another, a process that necessarily requires language. I want to propose that the paradoxes to which he refers or the contradictions found in the Ethics are deliberate and are caused by the same necessities as those articulated by Maimonides in the introduction to the Guide, namely pedagogical necessity and aporetic necessity. The former necessity is external to the inquiry and reflects the need to adopt a language appropriate to different specific endoxa; the latter is internal and results from the aporetic or indefinite nature of experience/affection or what Maimonides names the obscurity of the subject matter.26 Moreover, for both Maimonides and Spinoza pedagogic necessity, a concretely historical one, requires that the orders or mores of exposition violate the ‘best,’ immediately disclosive order,


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although even the best order of exposition will always fall short of disclosing truth, owing to the irreconcilable tension between discursivity and immediacy. Consider the following passages from Maimonides’ Guide. For there may be a certain obscure matter that is difficult to conceive. One has to mention it or to take it as a premise in explaining something that is easy to conceive and that by right ought to be taught before the former, since one always begins with what is easier. The teacher, accordingly, will have to be lax and using any means that occur to him or gross speculation, will try to make that matter somehow understood. . . . Afterwards, in the appropriate place, that obscure matter is stated in exact terms and explained as it truly is.27

And, [h]ence you should not ask of me here anything beyond chapter headings.28

And compare to Spinoza: The things I have taught in this part concerning the right way of living have not been so arranged that they could be seen at a glance. Instead, I have demonstrated them at one place or another, as I could more easily deduce one from another. So I have undertaken to collect them here and bring them under main headings.29

The consequences of pedagogic necessity and the ethicopolitical manner in which it affects the discursive order of explanation are indicated with striking clarity in the following passage: With these few words I have explained the causes of man’s lack of power . . . Now it remains for me to show what reason prescribes to us . . . But, before I begin to demonstrate these things in our cumbersome Geometric order, (prolixo Geometrico ordine) I should like first to show briefly here the dictates of reason themselves, so that everyone may more easily percieve what I think.30

Spinoza’s juxtaposition between the explanation of the causes of the affects, the geometric demonstration of the prescriptions of reason, and the brief exhibition (ostendere) of the dictates of reason themselves (ipsa dictamina) is especially striking in light of his insistent claims that real understanding necessarily involves the causes, and that the causes of the passions, properly understood, are the same as the causes of actions.31 In addition, it is clear that, for Spinoza, the demonstrations of the dictates of reason, dictates that are more easily perceived or are common, are different from their immediate understanding. In a similar manner, and despite the fact that Spinoza repeatedly criticizes Maimonides’ biblical interpretation in the TTP, not only does he concur with Maimonides that the Torah “speaks in human language” and parables and adopts his equivocal language nominalism, but also, as a consequence,

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like Maimonides, he seeks definitions that begin from common usage in order to disrupt it.32 Thus, when Spinoza defines the affects, he states: I know that in their common usage these words mean something else. But my purpose is to explain the nature of things, not the meaning of words. I intend to indicate these things by words whose usual meaning is not entirely opposed to the meaning with which I wish to use them. One warning of this should suffice. As for the cause of these affects, see P27C1 and P22S.33

What is immediately striking upon reading this statement is, first, that ‘proper’ definitions, unlike common terms, can only be given in an indicative manner, so that even if the words used are the same words as “the common terms,” they do not reflect common usage but rather interrupt it. Second, by distinguishing between the words used and the explanation of “the nature of things,” Spinoza not only posits an unbridgeable gulf between the concretely real and the abstractly nominal, but also robs names/words of their explanatory, indicative power or authority. Third, and most important, Spinoza indicates that there exists a problematic relation between words and the causes of the affects. More precisely, it is clear that, for Spinoza, words and common terms are causes of affects.34 How, then, do Spinoza’s definitions serve to explain in a manner such that by indication they can displace themselves? How do these definitions undermine not only their linguistic significance, but also their authority? That is, how do Spinoza’s definitions resist a strictly mimetic appropriation? Since Spinoza’s discussion of language occurs in the context of his analyses of the affects, and since he states explicitly that he is not concerned with the meanings of words,35 but rather with the nature of things, which “things” here are the affects, it is clear that the discussion of the affects seeks to expose the intimate relation between language and the imagination, which relation his redefinitions attempt to disrupt. The two propositions toward which Spinoza directs the reader in the above passage immediately identify images with the affections that arise from a mimetic appropriation of the affections undergone by an other whom we imagine to be similar to ourselves. These entirely external, doubly mediated determinations, in turn, become our affects. And “[t]his imitation of the affects, when it is related to Sadness, is called Pity; but related to Desire it is called Emulation, which, therefore, is nothing but the Desire (Cupiditatem) for a thing which is generated in us from the fact that we imagine others like us to have the same Desire.”36 Understood in relation to imitation, Spinoza’s concern with the relation between language and imagination is simultaneously, and in my view primarily, a concern with the relation between desire and imitation, where imitation is understood precisely as the cause of sociability, both amicable and hostile. Insofar as “joy,” sadness,” and “desire” are the only primary affects recognized by Spinoza, insofar as desire is “appetite together with the consciousness of the appetite,37 and insofar as these are manifest as love and hate,


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attraction and repulsion, the naming of the affects is a directing of desire. What is at issue here is not so much the fact that the naming of an extrinsic, doubly mediated, determination introduces a distinction that is unrelated to the nature of the single affect, for even proper definitions do that, but that the naming occurs in the absence of the actual primary affect or desire. Thus understood, names, like the imagination, ignore actual existence or necessity and introduce as present what, in principle cannot be brought to presence, and as possible what has no basis in concrete experience, except as the experience of joy and sadness, love and hate. But, whereas the imagination considered without its role in naming, is not only necessary for knowledge, but also is not per se the cause of error, let alone prejudice, the imagination considered as the origin of names is the source of ‘error’ and a repulsive force against knowledge. Under the former aspect, under the attribute of thought, error or inadequate ideas arise when the mind regards the images arising from concrete bodily affects as present or actually existing. But, insofar as this is the case, the mind, even qua imagination,38 is an active principle and hence may be ‘emended’ by another affective experience/image that undermines or overpowers the former one. Under the latter aspect, under the attribute of extension, images are affects of the affects of another and hence, in principle, can never become adequate ideas. That is why ‘knowledge’ ex auditis et signis neither is knowledge nor can serve as the basis for proper emendation; for, by means of language it authoritatively establishes as an imaginative but nonetheless actual presence of the affect undergone by another as well as the desire generated/directed by it. In contrast, ‘knowledge’ ab experientia vaga is gained through an actual experience undergone directly by a body and hence can serve as the basis for proper emendation. The problem that arises out of the manifold possibility of naming a single affect when the affect has not been actually undergone does not consist in the multiplicity itself, for that pertains to proper definitions as well, but rather from the fact that these abstract names form the basis of common notions (or universals, transcendentals, further abstractions), which, in turn, serve as the mind’s images. The most significant consequence of the absent affect undergone by another, then, is that the mind could not, in principle, “exclude[s] the existence of those things which it imagines to be present to it.”39 In fact, no concrete material affect can exclude such an existence, except that of a more powerful affect of another authority that transforms a former joy into sadness, love into hate, attraction into repulsion, replacing the former, ‘past’ existence with another ‘present’ existence, the former desire with another desire. Spinoza’s kinship to Maimonides is nowhere more evident than in their respective psychologies of the affects, in general, and love and hate, attraction and repulsion, in particular. Knowledge ex auditis et signis or opinions gained by habit and upbringing, according to Maimonides, are the greatest hindrance to instruction for these opinions are affects of such powerful attractions and repulsions that they render impossible the real power of actual understanding.

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For man has in his nature a love of, and an inclination for, that to which he is habituated. . . . Man has love for, and a wish to defend, opinions to which he is habituated and in which he has been brought up and has a feeling of repulsion for opinions other than those. For this reason also man is blind to the apprehension of the true realities.40

Insofar as the question of prejudice is a question of the psychology of the affects and the “physics” of the mimetic appropriation of authoritative endoxa, what remains to be analyzed is how Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s writings attempt to replace a strictly passive habituation of the affects with an active habituation. That is, insofar as, for both Maimonides and Spinoza, the compelling problems are not so much the overcoming of perplexities and imaginative errancy as their “replacement” by ‘proper’ aporiae, the problem of habituation must be addressed in response to the following questions: How can an authoritative guide (1) overcome the prejudices or repulsion occasioned by endoxa, (2) arouse love or desire for understanding, (3) undermine her own authority and the authority of her words, and thereby, perhaps, (4) overcome the passive determination of both mimetic orders? For, the love occasioned by the present teacher is not different in kind from the hatred occasioned by the former, ‘absent’ teacher(s), whose ‘absence’ is ‘present’ as affective repulsion or prejudice. Most succinctly stated, it can occur only by means of language and imagination. More precisely and paradoxically, the transformation can take place only in virtue of the dual aspect and ambivalence of imagination as respectively related to language and to mind/intellect, since, as already stated, it is the mind qua imagination that is errant. It is not surprising, therefore, that Maimonides begins every discussion of the multivalence, at times equivocity, of language with the common understanding of terms and that Spinoza begins from definitions that do not “depart from the common meaning” and states, at the beginning of the TdIE that the first rule of good living should be [t]o speak according to the capacity of the vulgar (ad captum vulgi) . . . For we can gain a considerable advantage, if we yield as much to their capacity as we can. In this way they will give an amicable hearing to truth.41

Whether truth is accorded an amicable or hostile hearing is the central concern of the psychology of imitation/ habituation. The difference between forms of imitation then depends upon the form of the affect to which they give rise, passive or active. As should be amply clear by now, the difference between “emulation” and “pity” is a difference not between distinct desires but rather between active and passive expression of a single desire. Distinguishing between equal causes of desire Spinoza states, “Given an equal cause of Love, Love toward a thing will be greater if we imagine the thing to be free than if we imagine it to be necessary.”42 In this light, I wish to suggest that, for both Maimonides and Spinoza, the more the guide strives to undermine authoritative belief, including her own, the less she seeks to establish endoxa, the more


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likely she may be to generate a desire for free inquiry, that is, an inquiry that admits multiple interpretations as avenues to freedom As Maimonides’ exemplary propadeutic text makes amply evident, the critical de- and rehabituation of the affects, that is the habituation to an active ethics/politics as a counterforce to the authority of religious endoxa, must be simultaneously cognizant of and resistant to the temptation of attraction and repulsion, including the teacher’s own. Or, as Maimonides states in the “Eight Chapters” when, as a physician, he considers human flourishing materially and concretely, the redirection of the affects must overlook (to some extent) the affective primacy of pleasure and pain (joy and sadness) necessary for the self-preservation of the human animal. The one seeking health, . . . would not aim at pleasure alone, choosing the most pleasant food and drink, and similarly with the rest of his conduct. Rather he would aim at what is most useful. If it happens to be pleasant, so be it; and if it happens to be repugnant, so be it.43

The ethicopolitical habituation of the human animal, then, is an habituation of desire and its reorientation toward what is truly useful or advantageous to the human animal, what is most beneficial to its self-preservation and flourishing, its freedom from passive mimesis, rather than what is useful for those who seek to keep it in bondage. NOTES 1. Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, henceforth, cited as Guide. All English references will be to the Pines translation. 2. For an extended discussion of the status of Maimonides’ pronounced judgments on his predecessors and contemporaries see Dobbs-Weinstein, “Maimonides’ reticence Toward Ibn Sina.” 3. TTP, passim. All Latin reference will be to Spinoza Opera, Gebhardt, ed. Unless otherwise noted, English references will be to The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1, Edwin Curley, ed. and trans. English references to the TTP and the TP will be to Shirley’s, translations and editions. The following abbreviations of titles will be used: Cogitata Metaphysica: CM; Ethica: E; Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione: TdIE; Tractatus Theologico-Politicus: TTP; Tractatus Politicus: TP; Epistola: Ep. 4. “ . . . veritas se ipsam patefacit.” TdIE, 21. 5. Henceforth, I shall use the term “errancy” to indicate the prejudices or endoxa that give rise to errors. That is, by “errancy” I attempt to indicate a general inherent tendency or inclination rather than particular instances of error. 6. For the multivalence of para see Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford University Press. 7. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics and Topica, 71a1–2. 8. See Herbert Davidson, “Maimonides’ Secret Position on Creation;” and Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics.


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9. TdIE, 21–2, modified since I agree with Gebhardt and Eisenberg that the text does not require emendation. Cf. Curley 21, n. 35. 10. It should be noted, however, and as will become evident, names and common notions indicating truth and falsity, too, are errant and inappropriate for disclosure or, as Spinoza states, in relation to things and events they are “metaphorical.” CM, 1, 5, 312. 11. For a discussion of the imminent theologico-political danger of philosophical critique see, Dobbs-Weinstein, “The Power of Prejudice and the Force of Law.” In particular see pp. 59–60. 12. Guide I Introduction. 13. CM, 1, 5, 312. 14. It cannot be overemphasized that, in order that the claim concerning the true idea not reinstantiate the human knower as the measure of existence or be open to the charge of circularity, it must be understood ontologically rather than epistemologically. That is, the actual idea is the being of the intellect. 15. E5P1. 16. E2P7. 17. Guide I 27, 56. 18. “ . . . ad libitum et captum vulgi.” Curley, 38. Translation modified. 19. Guide III 26, 505–506. 20. Guide III 32, 527. 21. E2P17, 465. 22. Maimonides, Perush ha-Mishnah: Nezikin. English references will be to “The Eight Chapters,” Ethical Writings of Maimonides, Weiss and Butterworth, trans. 23. E2P49, 485. 24. Note Spinoza’s distinction between the mind’s numerous determinations of the ideas of things and the intellect’s formation of ideas in TdIE, 44. 25. In the light of Spinoza’s claims that (1) truth requires no sign and (2) language is established ad libitum et captum vulgi, I do not think that it is possible to entertain seriously the possibility that Spinoza ever advocated a correspondence theory of language. Cf. Don Garrett, “Truth and Ideas of Imagination in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione” and Marcelo Dascal, “Leibniz and Spinoza.” 26. Spinoza’s letter 6 (April, 1662) to Henry Oldenberg is worthy of note in this respect: “And if by chance I have put something obscurely (as I often do for lack of words), I ask you to be so good as to indicate it to me. I shall do my best to explain it more clearly” (Curley, 188). 27. Guide Introduction, 17–18. Emphasis added. 28. Guide I 6. Emphasis added. 29. E4, Appendix, 588. Emphases added. 30. E4P18S, 555. Emphases added. I agree with Curley’s ambivalent translation of prolixus by “cumbersome” rather than the more neutral “full” or “detailed.” For Curley’s justification, p. 555, n. 14. 31. See E3D3, 493.


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32. Cf. Letter 21 to Willem Van Blijenberg where Spinoza states that he has never met “a theologian so dense (crassus) that he did not perceive that Sacred Scripture very often speaks of God in a human way and expresses its meaning in Parables” (Curley, 381). 33. E3A Def.20Exp., 535. It is worth noting that Spinoza’s formulation here recalls the conclusion to many of the Guide’s chapters: “understand this well,” “remember this,” etc. It also recalls numerous repetitions in Ibn Ezra’s biblical commentaries of the statement “and let the one who understands, understand.” 34. For an extended discussion of the intimate relation between language and the affects see, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, “Whose History?” 35. “By what name we should call the Joy that arises from another’s good I do not know.” E3P22. Insofar as the good in question here is the good of another by whom we are not immediately affected with love or hate, this “good,” for Spinoza, has no affective force, imaginatively or linguistically taken. 36. E3P27Dem. First 4 emphases are added. 37. E3P9Dem. 38. “And when the mind regards bodies in this way, we shall say that it imagines.” E2P17S 39. E2P17S. 40. Guide I 31, 67. 41. TdIE, Curley, 12. 42. E3P49, 521. I must point out the profoundly paradoxical nature of this claim, although I cannot discuss it in this paper. Suffice it to point out that it indicates “our” inability to affectively accept the concurrence of necessity and freedom, the highest and most complete form of which is expressed as God/Nature. And, as the language of the passage quoted clearly indicates, the “we” in question are not merely the “vulgar” but also and equally the “elite.” 43. Eight Chapters, 5, 75. My emphasis.


SEVEN

The Philosophical Mysticism of Maimonides and Maimon Gideon Freudenthal


In the parable of the castle1 Maimonides describes the degrees of proximity to God. The greatest proximity, an immediate bond, is achieved by the Patriarchs and Moses. This immediate bond is accompanied by love in its most intense form, desire (ḥesheq, ʷʹʧ), and by the highest joy or bliss (ʭʲʰ).2 Maimonides repeatedly speaks in this chapter of the bond (ʷʥʡʣ) and twice even of the union (ʺʥʣʧʠʺʤ) of the Patriarchs and Moses with God.3 This is clearly a mystical text culminating in expressions of unio mystica. Salomon Maimon, and a few modern scholars, suggested that this text testifies to Maimonides’ mysticism. The evidence is simple and convincing: the plain meaning of the text (ʡʥʺʫʤ ʨʹʴ).4 The idea of a bond or union with the divine spoken of here can be understood in two ways: as the peak of religious experience, but also as the epitome of knowledge. In the Aristotelian tradition knowledge is understood as the unification of the knowing subject with the object known. In knowing God, then, union with God is achieved. The closest bond between a human and the divine is the knowledge of God. The cognitive-religious experience becomes the highest form of worship, the “worship peculiar to those who have apprehended the true realities.”5 In a philosophy that takes this tack, cognition of the divine, worship, and religious experience coincide. Rational philosophy and mysticism are not opposed to each other, nor do they merely coexist; they are two aspects of the same contemplative activity. Philosophy is also a mode of worship leading toward mystical union. My purpose in this essay is to make sense of the congruence of rationalism, worship, and peak religious experience in Maimonides and to examine its reception and modification by Salomon Maimon (1753–1800) in his own philosophy. 113

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Maimonides’ mysticism, as presented in Guide III 51, is not generally acknowledged. But the objections to reading the Rambam as we have are based not on a refutation of what we have said but on the tacit assumption that Maimonides, as a rational philosopher, cannot be a thinker whose philosophy culminates in mysticism, the supposed opposite of rationality. Philosophy, it is assumed, is a discursive linguistic praxis, working from assumptions, through arguments, to conclusions. A philosophical argument is intersubjective and open to criticism, confirmation, and refutation. Mysticism, by contrast, is a quest for immediate contact or unification with the Absolute—Being, or God, or whatever is thought to be the ultimate reality. The insight based on such an experience, so we are told, is not discursive, not intersubjective. Those who have experienced its ecstasies have no language adequate to express it. Moreover, on this account, mysticism confers a supreme sense of certainty as to its object, and perhaps a feeling of elation, or rapture. How, we are asked, can rational thought reach its culmination in its opposite? Since the oeuvre of Maimonides is exemplary for its rationality, and rationality cannot be reconciled with mysticism, Maimonides cannot have been a mystic, or so the argument goes. The tension between the plain meaning of Maimonides’ text and his wellknown rationalism found a classic appreciation in the writings of Hermann Cohen, himself a rationalist. Cohen did not close his eyes to the “magnificent climactic chapters of the Guide.” He even maintained that the entire book serves “only as a preparatory exposition for” them.6 Conceding that “Several prominent passages in his writings reveal his appreciation of the poetic vein in the mystical love of God,” he nevertheless wrote of “Maimonides’ principal aversion not only to asceticism but to mysticism.” For Maimonides, as for his predecessors and Judaism in general, the religious ideal is “drawing close to God,” not “union with God.”7 However, Ibn Tibbon twice used the term for “union” (ʺʥʣʧʠʺʤ) in his Hebrew translation of Guide III 51. My present concern is not whether Maimonides could have been both a rational philosopher and a mystic but whether a specific philosophy can be both rational and mystical. Persons are not always consistent; indeed they rarely are. But philosophy should be. So I would not like to sidestep the problem by saying that Maimonides’ was a rational philosopher when he was not praying and a mystic when he was not philosophizing. I believe that Maimonides’ work is interesting precisely because he was at once a rationalist and a mystic, and we can thus learn something about the relationship of rationalism to mysticism. I will develop my thesis in three steps, hoping to show that, in Maimonides and in Maimon after him, the peaks of rational thought and religious experience and worship coincide: a) I will first introduce a concept of philosophical mysticism, presenting clear and strict conditions for the coexistence of rational philosophy and mysticism.

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b) Second, I will put forward an interpretation of Maimonides’ doctrine of the unity of the Knowledge, the Knower and the Known (referred to below as the threefold unity of the intellect),8 and interpret the closing chapters of the Guide in these terms. c) Third, I will argue that Salomon Maimon, having criticized his own formerly held kabbalistic views, with Maimonides’ help, also adopted philosophical mysticism, at first in Maimonides’ sense, later in a Spinozan or Leibnizian version, and finally, in his own voice: Here the intellectual quest itself took on religious significance, and conjunction with the Active Intellect receded to a focus imaginarius in infinity. However, after Maimon’s turn to skepticism, the attainment of true knowledge was conceived as a hypothetical possibility only. The loss of certainty excluded mystical experience. Still, Maimon continued to believe that pure thought transcends the corporeal faculties and is not found, as Maimonides put it, “in anything else that exists under the sphere of the moon.”9 This property, in Maimon’s view, testifies to man’s descent from the “pure intelligences.” Contact with the divine was no longer sought in apprehension of a divine object, but in the activity of the human subject. The intellectual quest itself replaced religious experience. M YS T ICISM

The word, mysticism, is used in two different ways, to denote a “secret religious doctrine,” or to designate a certain kind of experience.10 A secret doctrine is a body of knowledge, a system of connected propositions, whatever their connections might be. Mystical experience is not typically thought of as something that can be adequately expressed in propositions, although the mystic does raise knowledge claims and even lays claim to knowledge that is ultimate in two respects: in that it is of ultimate reality and in that it is absolutely certain. Experience here ought to mean encounter with an object, not merely a subjective psychic state. That is its usual sense when we speak of everyday experience or scientific experience.11 Religious experience, conceived along those lines, would be a noetic encounter with the divine. For religious mysticism this distinction is essential: the mystic hopes to encounter the divine. Mere subjective elation is not enough. The quest is not simply to have a good time. Two experiences may feel the same subjectively and yet have quite different meanings. One might be attained by way of drugs, the other as the culmination of religious practices. The religious mystic cannot accept the experience reached by drug use as a substitute for the experience of a real mystic encounter. Ecstasy or elation may accompany the encounter with God, but it is not the essence of the experience.

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A mystical experience is a religious experience characterized by the attempt to overcome the hindrances mediating contact with the divine. Therefore, the ultimate mystical experience is the collapse of barriers in conjunction or unio mystica. PH I LOS OPH ICA L M YS T ICISM

Philosophical mysticism should satisfy two further demands. First, the experience itself should involve philosophical content. Second, philosophy should be able to account for the experience. A pantheistic doctrine, for example, might entail the consequence that all entities in the world are but modes of a single, holy substance. The philosopher, who proceeds discursively from proposition to proposition to the conclusion of his argument, could realize in a flash that he too is but a mode of this reality and experience (not merely think) uno intuitu his oneness with it. This would be an example of an experience of philosophical mysticism: The content of the experience is philosophical (a fact referred to by an ontological proposition), and philosophy can account for the experience, if it has elaborated the theory that cognition consists in the unity of the subject with the object. Note, however, that the ontological proposition and the theory of cognition account for the experience but cannot replace it. Union with the divine must be experienced too. Still, this is an experience that can be explained, and its content can be explicated propositionally. It is not a vision, nor is it beyond the reach of the intellect. On the contrary, the experience is the work of the intellect. These characteristics of philosophical mysticism are guided by the important insight that mystical experience is not universally the same, but is culturally mediated.12 Nevertheless, like all mystical experience, philosophical mysticism attempts to overcome some form of opposition between subject and object. And like all negations, the negation of this opposition is saturated with the content of what it negates. Thus every mystical experience must indeed be different from others, since the subject-object relation it attempts to overcome is different from any other. But all such experiences attempt to overcome an opposition between subject and object. And Philosophical mysticism seeks to overcome the opposition between subject and object by philosophical means.13 THE THREEFOLD UNITY OF THE INTELLECT

The presupposition that mysticism is opposed to rationality often underlies the difficulty in accepting Maimonides as a mystic, and the few scholars who believe that Maimonides was a mystic have often accepted this. David Blumenthal, for example, has insisted in various papers that Guide III 51 is about a mystical experience, but he believes that this experience is ‘post-rational.’14


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Whatever ‘post-rational’ means, it is clearly not rational. We still face an assumption like Hermann Cohen’s—that rationalism excludes mysticism by definition. My thesis is that Maimonides’ mysticism is thoroughly rational and that Cohen’s and Blumenthal’s problem does not arise. If there is mysticism in the Guide, it is intellectual, in other words, tightly connected to intellectual activity. Mysticism here is not an alternative to reason, nor does it come after reason, which prepared for it. Rather, such mysticism is the culmination of metaphysical apprehension. When Maimonides speaks of the bond between man and God, he speaks of the intellect: If, however, you have apprehended God and His acts in accordance with what is required by the intellect, you should afterwards engage in totally devoting yourself to Him, endeavor to come closer to Him, and strengthen the bond between you and Him—that is, the intellect.15

This bond (ʷʥʡʣ) between man and God is purely intellectual; indeed it is the intellect. As soon as man thinks of something other than God, “that relation between you and Him is actually broken off at that time.”16 This bond can even become union (ʺʥʣʧʠʺʤ) with God. Maimonides says of the patriarchs that God made a covenant with them “because of the union of their intellects (scil. God’s and the patriarchs) through apprehension of Him.”17 Since apprehension brings about this unification, the question is whether apprehension is to be explained rationally and whether Maimonides theory of apprehension can account for the experience of union with God. I will therefore turn to Maimonides’ discussion of apprehension in Guide I 68 and then interpret Guide III 51, the mystical chapter, in the light of his notion of apprehension. GUIDE I 68

In Guide I 68 Maimonides discusses the threefold unity of the intellect. This epistemological thesis is introduced as a (or the) “foundation of our religion,” since its negation contradicts the uniqueness and unity of God. The thesis is about intellectual apprehension of an intelligent agent as such, whether human or divine. Certainly, attributing apprehension and knowledge to God is incompatible with the view that ‘knowledge’ when applied to God and man is merely homonymous, the term ‘knowledge’ being used equivocally in such a case.18 But this view is already excluded in the first chapter of the Guide, when ‘image’ in the phrase “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26) is interpreted as refering to the “intellectual apprehension” common to God and man. The apparent contradiction is resolved if we take our lead from Maimonides’ argument that ‘knowledge’ (and also ‘life’, ‘power’ and ‘existence’) cannot be predicated of God in the same sense as they are of man, since they are not properties added to God’s essence but are one with His essence.19 This

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is just the point that Maimonides wishes to establish in Guide I 68. The ontological difference between ‘essence’ and ‘property’ implies that ‘knowledge’ is used equivocally, but it does not mean that the word does not share the same semantic field.20 Maimonides repeatedly warns that the threefold unity of the intellect is likely to be misunderstood, since sense perception and imagination are often mistaken for conceptual understanding. Only those who have studied books concerning the intellect and understand the soul and its powers are likely to avoid this misunderstanding. However, once these powers are properly understood, the threefold unity of the intellect can be demonstrated, attaining the highest certainty possible for human knowledge.21 But how could the knowing subject, knowledge, and the object known be identical? A decisive hint is given by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, where he remarks that the object of knowledge is on one side of the list of opposites (1072a30). He refers to correlative opposites, like half and double, as in Categories 10. The other example given there is the object known and the knowledge of the object. The peculiarity of correlative opposites is that each is of the other, as double of and half of in the propositions ‘A is the half of B’ and ‘B is the double of A.’ The relations are converse, and the propositions are equivalent, referring to the same fact in the world. By calling the object known and the knowledge of the object correlative opposites, Aristotle implies that they are identical.22 More precisely, the knowledge of the essence or form of an object and the essence known are one and the same. This does not mean that the corporeal, knowing subject and its material object, as such, are identical. But the doctrine of the unity of the knowing subject, knowledge, and the object known holds when knowledge exhausts the knowing subject, when the subject is nothing but intellect and the object known nothing but its essence. This is difficult to understand if we mistake sense-perception for intellectual apprehension, corporeal subject and object for the intellect and the essence. Perception may cease, while the subject and its sense organs remain, ready to resume their activity. Not so the intellect. The intellect is not a substance. When an intellect is not intellecting, it does not exist. When a human being is not cognizing he has a soul but not an intellect. Perhaps the soul may be called ‘potential intellect,’ but this does not mean that there exists, in the soul, a dormant intellect. It only means that a normal human being may begin to think, to cognize, and then, indeed, there is an existing intellect. The ‘I’ that unites with the object known is not a body or soul, but the subject of the activity called knowledge—the intellect. As Salomon Maimon will put it, the intellect is the logical subject (ʩʩʰʥʩʢʤ ʠʹʥʰ) of the activity, an entity posited to bear the activity, since activity cannot be an action of nothing.23 There is an interesting analogy between these ideas about the intellect and various ideas about space. In Aristotle the place of a body is the inner boundary of the body surrounding it; place does not exist without the contained and the containing bodies. The familiar theory of absolute space, on


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the other hand, conceives of space as an empty receptacle in which bodies may be placed. On this account, space is still there even when empty. Likewise with the intellect: for Aristotle, the intellect is the knowledge of the object. Intellect does not exist without content. Alternatively, the intellect has been conceived as an empty receptacle in which different contents may be placed but which exists independently of its content. Aristotle rejects any such notion. The intellect comes into existence only together with its content. Thus Alexander of Aphrodisias compared the potential intellect not to a tabula rasa but to the absence of writing on a tablet.24 When the intellect is potential, it does not exist, although the soul does, bearing its potential for intellect. Thus the intellect “can have no nature of its own.”25 When the intellect is actual, it functions as matter for the essence of its object, and this essence functions as its form.26 The conclusion of this conceptual analysis is that the knowing subject, or intellect, is identical to the knowledge of its object. The content of the intellect in actu is nothing but the known essence or form of an object. Therefore the knowledge of the essence of an object and the essence known are one and the same. Thus, when the intellect is actual, it is identical to its object—the form of the object known. So knowledge is identical both with the knowing subject and with the object known. The threefold unity of the intellect, established by conceptual analysis, is demonstrable, as Maimonides held.27 It is crucial to remember that the unity established is not between a human and a sensory spatio-temporal object. Human beings do not become the objects they know. The threefold unity applies only to the intellect and the essence or form of its object. A material object is not exhausted by its essence, nor is a subject by its intellect. Again, the distinction between sense perception and intellection is crucial, for sense perception depends on the matter of its object and that of the sense organ. But intellectual cognition is impeded by corporeality. Sense perception involves the material properties of its objects; essences captured by the intellect do not. So, the threefold unity of the intellect does not apply, without qualification, to human cognition. It applies, without restriction, only to the cognition of immaterial intellects, but it is an ideal that an animal rationale may seek to approach.28 A human being may approach the threefold unity without qualification when the exigencies of the body weaken with age or bodily demands are diminished through moral training, or when one is able to concentrate so intently on the object of cognition to the extent of forgetting one’s body. On the other hand, to the extent that the object of cognition is nonphysical, it may exhaustively enter into the union with the intellect. It follows that an exhaustive threefold unity of the intellect would require that the cognitive subject be entirely intellect, as when the intellect is separated from the body, and the object of cognition is nonphysical. Under such conditions, the threefold unity of the intellect would be complete, unifying the subject, the intellect, and the object entirely.

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Thus, in human life, the threefold unity of the intellect is best attained when a person exclusively cognizes nonphysical objects, especially God. For, being incorporeal, God is identical with His essence. Further, the person who has a passionate love (ḥesheq, ʷʹʧ) for God concentrates exclusively on Him. Since the senses cannot be involved, and because ‘passionate love’ is different from ordinary human ‘love’ (ʤʡʤʠ) precisely in that “no thought remains that is directed toward a thing other than the Beloved,”29 a person may forget his body and become almost like a separate intellect that unites with its divine object. This epistemological doctrine forms the basis of the mystical union of the subject and the divine object, as it also forms the basis of pantheism. Consider mysticism first. Mysticism speaks of conjunction or unification with God. The epistemological doctrine explains why knowing God implies conjoining to or uniting with Him, and it explains the experience by way of its explanation of cognition in general. Philosophical mysticism and Maimonides’ rationalism and religiosity are vindicated at a single stroke: The highest and most adequate cognition is identical with the highest devotion and religious experience. The mystical implications of the threefold unity when applied to the apprehension of the divine are not at all peculiar to Maimonides. On the contrary, since the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias the same implications have been drawn.30 Mystical experience is often characterized as intuitive. It should be emphasized that such intuition may be discursive. Atemporality does not rule out discursiveness. For there is no necessary connection between time and discursive thought. Discursive thought requires a successive order—and time is one such successive order. But nothing prevents thought from being successive and instantaneous. Medieval Aristotelian philosophers like Avicenna developed conceptions of intuition that retain succession without duration.31 Such intuition immediately captures the middle term connecting the major premise and conclusion of a syllogism. At its highest peak, such intuition is prophecy, the overflow of the divine, Active Intellect to the human intellect. Individual providence, too, is the result of such overflow.32 This overflow does have its effect within nature. Intuition is a form of cognition. It is temporal, limited, and human. That calls for some explanation, for the limitations and the duration of human thinking do not follow from its essential character but from its connection to the sensuous. Deliverance from bodily hindrances frees cognition and intuition. All deficiencies originate in matter. “For all the hindrances keeping man from his ultimate perfection, every deficiency affecting him and every disobedience, come to him from his matter alone, as we shall explain in this Treatise.”33 In Guide III 51, Maimonides observed that the righteous, the patriarchs, and the prophets—particularly Moses—experienced liberation of their cognition from corporeal limits and from concern for corporeal, mundane affairs. They thus achieved the highest levels of cognition, intuition, and unification with the divine Active Intellect, without any supernatural augmentation of their


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natural faculties. All that was required was the removal of “the obstructions that separate us from Him”34—the overcoming of impediments. Once such barriers are removed by death, “the impediment that sometimes screened him off having been removed,” the bond between man and the divine attains “enduring permanence,” and the “intellect remains in one and the same state.”35 Maimonides’ philosophical mysticism depends on the identification of the subject of cognition with the intellect and of the object of cognition with its essence. Both conditions depend on deliverance from materiality. Such a mysticism, its conditions being contrary to normal human experience, is open to only a few rare individuals who succeed in transcending this life. Maimonides’ foremost example of such a person is Moses, of whom he writes that he reached the state of a “pure intellect”: Moses, the father of all the prophets was the chosen one of all of mankind, for he attained a greater knowledge of the Blessed One, more than any other man ever attained or ever will attain . . . he gained the exalted status of an angel. There did not remain any screen that he did not rend and penetrate; nothing physical held him back. He was devoid of any flaw, great or small. His powers of imagination, the senses, and their perceptions were nullified; the power of desire was separated from him leaving him pure intellect. It is for this reason that it is said of him that he could speak to Him, blessed be He, without the mediation of angels.36

Moses reached the level of a pure intellect, permanently conjoined to the divine. In chapter 5 of his Introduction to Tractate Avot, Maimonides writes: it is the duty of man to subordinate all the faculties of his soul to reason. He must keep his mind’s eye fixed constantly upon one goal, namely, the attainment of the knowledge of God (may He be blessed!) as far as it is possible for mortal man to know Him.37

Immortality is a direct consequence of the attainment of this knowledge: “The afterlife of the soul consists in the existence of its known object, to wit: the creator, may He be blessed, since this known object and the soul are one thing, as the greatest philosophers have taught.”38 In this state, souls experience the same bliss the angels enjoy in knowing Him. The same doctrine of the threefold unity of the intellect serves to establish the unity of God, since He and His knowledge are not two things as are a man and his knowledge. Rather “He is knowledge, the knower and the Known.”39 Consider now pantheism. If God is an intellect, His knowledge of the world means that he is one with it. And since God is a pure intellect in actu, and His knowledge meets with no hindrances, He must be one with his entire object. Why not say, then, that God and the world are one and the same? Shlomo Pines argued that Maimonides avoided that inference: since cognition involves identity, this conception would appear to entail the identification of God with the intelligible structure of the universe,

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regarded both as the subject and as the object of cognition. The argument does not entail the identification of matter with God or with an attribute of the Deity. To call Maimonides’ position or its corollaries “pantheism” would therefore be to go beyond the evidence.40

I believe that there are good reasons to maintain the opposite. First, in Guide I 68, Maimonides elaborates the doctrine of the threefold unity of the intellect for God and humans alike. Yet humans cannot fully achieve this union, since they are impeded by their materiality. Apprehension means unity with the object. But such unity is obstructed, in practice, by human corporeality. The same is not true of God. Is it the case, however, that God’s apprehension is limited by the materiality of temporal objects? Such a claim goes beyond the evidence. Whatever Maimonides thought or dared to say, there is little doubt that he could be, and has been, read as a pantheist of sorts. Given the preceding, this is not surprising. If, in cognition, subject and object are identical, then mysticism follows when man knows God, or ultimate reality, and pantheism of some sort follows when God apprehends the world. In either case, the opposition between subject and object collapses. Hermann Cohen had these affinities in mind when he protested against attributing one as well as the other to Maimonides, or to Judaism in general. For a philosopher of the Enlightenment, especially for a Kantian, thought and self-consciousness are inseparable. The threefold unity of the intellect depends precisely on the negation of self-consciousness. Thought is nothing but the essence known. That is why the after-life of the imperishable intellect excludes individuality, that is, personal consciousness. Enlightenment philosophy abhors mysticism and pantheism. In the case of nonrational mysticism and pantheism this is because of the collapse of distinctions and abrogation of reason; in the case of philosophical mysticism and pantheism it is because both negate its main ideal, the autonomous personality. This interpretation is confirmed also ex negativo. Avicenna shared the doctrine of the threefold unity of the intellect, but insisted on the difference between “conjunction” with the divine, which he maintained, and “union” with the divine, which he rejected. Avicenna’s reason for insisting on the difference is exactly this: in “conjunction” individuality is retained, in “union” it is not.41 The insistence on personal identity is not surprising in Avicenna, the author of the “proto-cogito,” the “Floating-Man-argument.”42 Whatever the reasons and motives for the differences, whatever the specific stance taken by the several philosophers, this connection remains: unreserved mystical union depends on the absence of selfconsciousness, on the absence of an Eigen-nature of the intellect, on the identity of the “intellect,” the “knowledge of the object” and the “known essence.” R E A D I N G G U I D E I I I 51 O N T H E B A S I S O F G U I D E I 6 8

In the light of the discussion above, we may now interpret the Guide’s mystical chapter, III 51, which Maimonides says does “not include additional matter


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over and above what is comprised in the other chapters of this Treatise.”43 Yet it is easy to recognize that this is the work’s peak, despite the fact that the chapter does not contain new metaphysical doctrines or interpretations of the Bible. Rather its conclusions concerning the unique devotion of “those who apprehend truths” and personal providence are developed from the theory of the threefold unity of the intellect.44 The intellect is the bond between man and God.45 This bond requires the overcoming of corporeality and of materiality in general. But liberation from corporeality is a complex process. Corporeal faculties are in inverse ratio to the intellect. It is, therefore, doubtful whether moral virtue and pure thought can be attained in youth when “the bodily humors are in effervescence.”46 Aging aids in this but is not enough; training is required. Maimonides teaches that worship and the fulfillment of the commandments “have only the end of training you to occupy yourself with His commandments, may He be exalted, rather than with matters pertaining to this world.”47 This view deprives the Mitzvot of intrinsic religious meaning and presents them as exercises preparing for philosophical contemplation of God. Maimonides further details a training program beginning with exclusive concentration “consistently for years”(!) when reciting the first verse of Sh’ma‘ and saying the first benediction, and ending with exclusive concentration when performing all of the commandments.48 Beyond this, special hours should be reserved for solitary contemplation. Maimonides illustrates the process by describing those who achieved the highest degrees of closeness to God. First of all come Moses, the Patriarchs, and those who attained freedom from corporeality when their soul left their body in the highest state of pleasure and joy in their apprehension of the divine: Moses, Aaron and Miriam.49 The lesson is that the highest perfection can be attained only in solitude, turning one’s back to worldly matters, either neglecting them or performing necessary actions mechanically while focused on the divine. When God is the object, the threefold unity of the intellect centers a cluster of religious ideals: It explains the proximity of human beings to God, the meaning of afterlife, why and how ethics prepares the way to the knowledge of God, prophecy, providence, and finally mystical union. All this is developed on the basis of a rational philosophy. Even in extreme cases, where death follows intense concentration on God, nothing supernatural, not explained by the doctrine of the threefold unity of the intellect, is involved. The intellect has no form of its own and is nothing but the known form of the object. Fully uniting with the Active Intellect means being liberated from the body and, thereby, from individuality. This liberation may be for a time—“this is the worship peculiar to those who have apprehended the true realities”50—or forever, in death. In the discussion above, I used both “unification with God” and “unification with the Active Intellect.” Both are present in Maimonides’ Guide. This is not a careless use of language, but an expression of the tension between the religious ideal and philosophical insight into the limitations of the human

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intellect.51 It shows up in Maimonides’ twofold definition of metaphysics and in his twofold determination of the peak of human apprehension. Maimonides first characterizes metaphysics as the “apprehension of God,”52 and later as the “apprehension of the Active Intellect.”53 The same shift reappears in the concluding chapters of the Guide. In the “mystical chapter,” Guide III 51, Maimonides repeatedly speaks about conjunction and unification with God through apprehension of Him. In the following chapter, he intimates that the king in the palace whose proximity is sought in the “mystical chapter” is the “Active Intellect.”54 In the final chapter of the Guide, however, we learn again that the highest human perfection is the apprehension of God.55 I submit that there is no contradiction. The highest human end is the apprehension and love of God—thus, conjunction with Him. However, as the final two chapters make clear, the Active Intellect, “the intellect which overflowed from Him” is our bond with Him.56 It emanates from God, actualizing the human potential intellect. While God’s existence, unity, and incorporeality are certain, the separate intelligences are not known with certainty. Yet the role of the last of these intelligences, the Active Intellect, in human cognition is “indubitable.”57 The human intellect passes from potentiality to actuality, and that change requires an external cause, which must itself be in actu. Finally, the threefold unity of the intellect is a “demonstrative truth.”58 So Maimonides’ caution regarding metaphysical knowledge in general, and knowledge of the separate intelligences in particular, does not pertain to the Active Intellect, presumably because of its role in making possible human knowledge. The question whether the highest end is to “conjoin” or even “unite” with God or with the Active Intellect is thus reduced to a question of whether we conjoin or unite with God or with the Active Intellect. Whatever the answer, since the Active Intellect is an emanation of God, closer to Him than anything terrestrial, it remains valid that knowledge (especially of metaphysics), that is, conjunction or unification with Him or with His proximal emanation, the Active Intellect, has religious value. The unity of Maimonides’ Weltanschauung should be noted. The highest end of human life can be expressed religiously as love of God and closeness to Him, or philosophically as vita contemplativa. This view is embedded in Maimonides’ discussion of human perfections.59 The fabric of society and human conduct (fulfillment of the Law included) should be conducive to the attainment of this supreme end, even if only by the few. The theory of prophecy, the valuation of the intellect over the senses and imagination, Maimonides’ view of the afterlife and of the messianic age, and other important issues are tightly connected to these teachings. Thus the experience of unio mystica is not isolated and inexplicable but integral to a comprehensive worldview and ethics grounded in Maimonidean metaphysics and epistemology.60 But in any Weltanschauung a distinction must be made between what is central and what is peripheral. For Maimonides, the argument in Guide I 68 is epistemological, and the implications are ontological.


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But this is perhaps over simplified. It is true that Guide I 68 deals with cognition and has ontological, pantheistic implications when applied to God’s cognition, mystical when applied to man’s. Yet, the argument for the threefold unity of the intellect is based on the relations of matter and form in substance, so of course it is ontologically colored. Maimonides’ first purpose is to establish God’s unity and uniqueness and is, hence, theological. The ethical consequences, too, are theologically colored. But all this will change in the Enlightenment. Although some in the Jewish Enlightenment will return to Maimonides, the perspective will be new. Salomon Maimon will interpret Guide I 68 first of all from a strictly epistemological standpoint. His argument for the threefold unity of the intellect is not ontologically based. It rests on Maimon’s conceptions of the understanding and of truth. And Maimon will ascribe more value to the activity of seeking truth than to its attainment. Even in so loyal a follower of Maimonides, the center of the Weltanschauung shifts from ontology to epistemology, from theology to eudaimonia. M A I M O N : T H E YO U N G M Y S T I C

In Maimonides, Moses represents the height of human achievement. For Salomon Maimon, Maimonides himself occupies this place. Even quasireligious adoration is not missing from Maimon’s attitude toward Maimonides. Maimon credited Maimonides with the decisive influence on his “spiritual rebirth”61 and named himself ‘Maimon’ after Maimonides: “My respect for this great teacher went so far, that I saw in him the ideal of a perfect human being and his teachings as if dictated by divine wisdom itself.”62 These are not empty words. While criticizing many of Maimonides’ teachings, Maimon remained faithful to Maimonides: at the core of his own Weltanschauung were commitments to rationalism, stoic ethics and the ideal of vita contemplativa. These congruences, together with the different versions of his ever-developing epistemology, enabled Maimon first to endorse Maimonides’ philosophic mysticism63 and later to adapt it to his anthropocentric, Enlightenment worldview. Maimon became known as a “irremediable heretic” and “philosophic sinner.”64 Yet, both his autobiography and his early writings testify to his deep religiosity and to his mysticism, although the forms they took would vary in different stages of his career. Maimon tells us that he was deeply religious in his youth.65 He wished to lead an ascetic life, to live without permanent housing, and to mortify himself: He speaks of T’shuvat ha-Qaneh and T’shuvat ha-Mishkal.66 He changed his mind under the influence of Maimonides, “who was no friend of enthusiasm and excessive religiosity.”67 Under the influence of the Guide (or employing Maimonides’ authority to justify his conduct), he gave up the daily prayers and turned to intellectual worship of God, in other words, to his studies.68 In the late 1760s, Maimon heard of the Ḥasidim.

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He traveled to the court of the groisse maggid of Mezritch on hearing of the Maggid’s homiletic interpretations of a biblical verse and of a Mishna. The point in both cases was what Maimon calls “die Zernichtung des Ich,” selfannihilation before God.69 His writings on the religious practices and views of the Ḥasidim are focused on this theme of self-annihilation before God and unification with Him: “Their worship consisted in a voluntary elevation above the body, that is, in abstraction of thought from all created things, even from the individual self, and in union with God.”70 Maimon deems Ḥasidic ecstatic worship “sound,” although it may be abused.71 The young Maimon was, then, religious and strongly inclined toward mysticism and ecstatic practices. I will argue that Maimon, as an adult, retained the motif of self-annihilation but transformed it radically in the spirit of the Enlightenment. From various forms of religious mystical practices, he turned toward the “intellectual worship of God,” and from this he would retain the idea of the human intellect’s transcendence of the natural world. But Maimon’s emphasis shifted from the divine object of the intellect to the intellecting subject itself, and from the possession of knowledge to its generation. Like Leibniz, he saw knowledge as an infinite progression rather that a state to be attained. Yet knowledge still meant union with the known. Once Maimon turned skeptic and doubted that such knowledge could be attained, the infinite intellect became a postulate necessary for the pursuit of truth, but no longer a truth in its own right. This was the end of Maimon’s mysticism: Mysticism demands certainty, not doubt; and no conjunction or unio mystica is possible with a mere postulate. Still, Maimon held fast to the idea that the intellect itself, in other words, the logical operations of the understanding, transcends the empirical world, whether its premises and conclusions are true or not—so long as the operations of the understanding conform to the requirements of logic: The intellect testifies to the God-likeness of man, even if God does not exist. F RO M K A B B A L A H T O M A I M O N I D E S (VIA LOCKE AND LEIBNIZ)

There are good reasons to believe that we possess testimonies of Maimon’s critique of his own, earlier, kabbalistic ideas and of his adoption of Maimonides’ threefold unity of the intellect. In his autobiography, Maimon tells of an early kabbalistic treatise he wrote while still in his native village, which he retained more than fourteen years later in Berlin, keeping it as a “monument of the striving of the human mind for perfection, notwithstanding all hindrances on the way.”72 This or other early manuscripts have been preserved.73 Maimon at first criticized Maimonides’ theory of the threefold unity. Later he adopted it. He documented his change of mind in marginal notes and additions to the original text. The change is not confined to this doctrine alone. Rather it reflects a fundamental shift from a neoplatonic, kabbalistic metaphysics to a


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Maimonidean philosophy, albeit with a new epistemological emphasis.74 Later Maimon would shift from a metaphysics in the style of Maimonides and his ideal of human perfection to that of Leibniz. He finally adopted the Enlightenment ideal of perfectibilité and skepticism. Both before and after these profound changes, his views represent alternative interpretations of Aristotle’s idea of the intellect. On one interpretation, the Aristotelian intellect is the form of the human soul, to which the lesser parts of the soul relate as matter. The intellect here might be conceived as a substance with a nature of its own. Yet the intellect, as we have suggested, might also be understood to have no nature of its own and, therefore, to receive the form of the object known, to which it relates as matter. The tension between these rival interpretations is conspicuous in Maimon’s early manuscripts. He first endorsed the idea that the intellect has a nature of its own, denying the possibility of the threefold unity of the intellect.. Later, under the influence of early modern philosophy, he adopted the view that the intellect has no nature of its own and accepted the threefold unity. In an early manuscript, Maimon wrote: The opinion of the metaphysicians, who negate attributes of Him, may He be exalted, is known, and also Maimonides discussed this at length in the Guide. But you should know that this is true in respect to Himself without connection to the existent beings, since in this latter respect the opposite is true, as it appears from the plain sense of the Scripture and from the books of the Kabbalists, [who say] that the whole Torah is the names of God, blessed be He. . . . And we know, and Maimonides of blessed memory clarified the issue, that knowledge, the knowing and the known are one once the intellect has turned from potentiality to actuality, and this is not the case earlier, since then these are three different things. And in his opinion this follows from the nature of the soul, that is nothing but potentiality and preparation, and therefore, before the intellect turns from potentiality to actuality, they are three different things. The first is the knowing (maskil), the bearer of that potentiality and preparation, and the second is the knowledge (sekhel) and is this potentiality and preparation, and the third is the known (muskal) attached to its substantial subject outside the soul. But after the intellect turns from potentiality to actuality, i.e. when the forms are abstracted from the materials bearing them, all three become one thing. This is so, since the known is the abstract form, and is itself the actualized intellect, and is itself the knowing, as he [Maimonides], his memory be blessed, explained at length. See there. And after asking his honor for forgiveness, I say that it is the other way round. I say that the soul is a separate substance, existing for itself, attached to the body but not mixed with it.

Conceiving the soul as an independent, incorporeal substance raises a problem as to how it can know corporeal objects. This is the epistemological

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version of the general difficulty of conceiving the interaction between the physical and non-physical realms, and thus the effects of “supreme power” on the physical world. Somehow the gulf between these realms must be bridged, or blurred. The latter is what Maimon does here: Although the spiritual lacks bodily form, he says, it nevertheless resembles a corporeal picture. Maimon builds a connection of a “seperate form” to a given body upon a notion of resemblance and “signs.” In later years he will criticize Kant as to the relations of understanding and intuition, asking how (quid juris, that is, by what right) we can apply forms of the intellect (the categories) to objects in space and time. By what signs (Merkmale) are they coordinated? (See e.g. Transcendentalphilosophie, 60–70). But at this earlier stage, Maimon still attempts to gloss over the problem: And in general I say that all things are images (tzelem) of the separate forms, since we know already that the image is a body of a certain picture (t’muna) done wisely to accept a supreme power adequate to this picture, since the separate [form], although it is spiritual and lacks bodily form*,75 nevertheless has some resemblance to that picture, and therefore the body shaped according to that picture is drawn to that picture because of the signs and the resemblance of the things, and therefore not just any separate [form] will act upon any chance body, but every separate [form] will act upon a particular body. And [He], may He be blessed created different bodies according to different pictures corresponding to the separate [forms] that are parts of the supernal chariot, and therefore, due to this similarity, from the understanding of the corporeal the spiritual will be understood . . . 76

Opposite this page we find an Aleph, and a note to the locus indicated by the asterisk above. In this note, Maimon mentions Locke and Leibniz, whom he read in Berlin, making this note a later, critical reflection on his previous views:77 And this is analogous to the similarity between the body with its accidents and the idea (tziyyur) received in the soul and its apprehension. And although in Locke’s opinion there really is no similarity between them, Leibniz already questioned this view of his and explained that there really is a similarity between them and said that we will not apprehend this similarity (see Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding and Leibniz’s New Essays). But what has been said that all creatures are images and separate forms will be understood according to Leibniz in the following way: The separate forms, as is the soul of man, are the monads whose apprehensions are clear, and the bodies are the monads with unclear representations (dunkle Vorstellungen), and they are images and models of the former. But all I have written here is based on the view of some of the early philosophers who say that the hylic intellect is a separate substance and something other than the apprehended [forms] (muskalot) that are in fact


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received.78 But I now revoke this opinion of mine since in fact there is no hylic intellect or a subject other than the forms apprehended (muskalot) in actu, and I agree with Leibniz that the apprehensions are always in actu, but that they are sometimes obscure, sometimes apparent and clear. And nevertheless we may say that the S’firot are separate intellects and that their apprehensions (hassagot) are not entirely clear and that they are liable to augmentation and diminution, as was said, and that they are like the apprehensions of the imagination and the sense. And the Einsof, blessed be He, apprehends all the truths in clear apprehension, always in actu, like the apprehension of the clear intellect. And then the distinctions I mentioned are justified.79

These passages are telling in several ways. Note that Maimon renounces his former opinion under the influence of modern philosophy and, in consequence of that dramatic turn, reinterprets his own text, still finding that his earlier conclusions were correct. The distinctions between God as transcendent and as He relates to the world were justified. The same distinctions may also be applied to Maimonides, who first speaks of conjunction of man with God80 and later interprets this conjunction to refer to the Active Intellect,81 denying, in the end, that the intellect can fully apprehend the transcendent God.82 Maimon retained, throughout his life, a monistic metaphysics, sometimes more kabbalistic or like that of Giordano Bruno, sometimes of more abstract tincture, Maimonidean or Leibnizian, but always monistic and retaining the motif of subject-object unification in knowledge. The distinction between the Einsof and the Creator and Ruler of the world reappears in Maimon’s interpretation of Spinozism: Maimon reads the Kabbalah as an elaborated Spinozism. As Einsof, an sich, God is the ultimate cause and ground of all being, of which nothing can be predicated. Still, “in relation to finite beings, positive properties may be predicated of Him.”83 The distinction is, of course, a variation on the duality posited in neoplatonic-Aristotelian monotheism, where God is conceived as the totaliter aliter “One” and as the epitome of all perfections in the highest degree. Later, the same distinction will allow Maimon both to maintain that God is an infinite intellect and to uphold the theory of an anima mundi. Anima mundi, created and immanent in the material substances of the world, applies only to God’s relation to the world, not to God an sich. Through this distinction, Maimon will claim that his conception is neither atheist nor Spinozist.84 While Maimon’s broad outlook remained the same, his particular theses changed. The change depended on a shift from myth to rational philosophy, from figurative to conceptual language, from imagination to reason, from mysticism in the sense of doctrine to philosophical mysticism in the sense of an experience arising in philosophy and explained by it. Ultimately, the meaning of knowledge itself changed: from unity of human and divine intellect, to the

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process of generating knowledge as such, without reference to a given object. In short, Aufklärung. Consider a prominent example of the shift from figurative, anthropomorphic language to abstract conceptual language. In Maimon’s youthful manuscript quoted above, tzelem is defined as the sensible embodiment of a certain figure. Maimonides, however, opens the Guide with a discussion of tzelem and argues that it may not be read as a sensible figure.85 At the time of his writing, Maimon deeply disagreed with Maimonides. However, beginning a discontinued table of contents of the Guide on a separate and presumably later sheet which does not belong to the body of the Hesheq Shlomo, Maimon wrote, on Guide I 1: Tzelem is said of the natural form of the genus, and this is the meaning of “in our tzelem” [“Let us make man in our image (tzelem), after our likeness (demut),” Genesis 1:26] because the intellect in man is in His image, may He be blessed, i.e., is intellect as He is. It is true that “likeness” (demut) is a noun [derived] from d-m-h and is a similarity in re, and this is the meaning of “in our likeness,” i.e. apprehension without an organ as it is with Him, may He be blessed.86

Maimon here negates all sensible similarity between the divine and the corporeal. The God-likeness of man refers to the incorporeality shared by the divine and man—the intellect, as Maimonides had it. An important move is the shift from ontology to epistemology. Whereas the position reached, pantheism or panentheism, remains largely unaltered, its grounding is now in an epistemological thesis, the threefold unity of the intellect. The thesis itself has changed in the same sense. At first it was based on the nature of the intellect in terms of matter and form, potency and actuality. As a result of Maimon’s encounter with Locke and Leibniz, it now becomes truly epistemological in both content and support. Pantheism or panentheism remained, but the entire character of the philosophy in which it was embedded underwent a change typical of modernity, from ontology to epistemology. Thus, metaphysical claims must first prove possible in light of the scope and limits of human knowledge. Here too, Aufklärung. After the turn, Maimon develops a pantheistic conception on the basis of the threefold unity and ascribes it to Maimonides. In a marginal note to his super-commentary on Abraham Ibn Ezra, Maimon writes, “But it seems more likely . . . that in knowing Himself He knows all, since He, may He be exalted, is the most excellent of all Beings and the knowledge the knowing and the known will be one.”87 However, identifying God with the plurality of beings in the world threatens God’s unity and uniqueness. Maimon addresses this issue in a short, separate, and probably late commentary on the Sh’ma‘. The name of God here, he writes,

PH I LO S OPH ICA L M YS T ICIS M

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refers to all individual beings, and this may lead some to believe that there is plurality in Him, God forbid, and this means that this is not so, but God is one and in truth He knows Himself only and from this knowledge He knows all, and this knowledge is not added to Him, but the knowing and the knowledge and the known are one, distinguished only in aspect. Understand this!88

In other places, Maimon goes a step further and explicitly identifies God not just with the forms of the world but also with its matter: And for a better explanation, let me say: You should know that the intellect (sekhel) is the most excellent and first being and the cause of the least and last being outside the intellect, as with the craftsman the known form is the most excellent and first being and the cause of the least and last outside the intellect. And therefore, since [He], may He be blessed, is an intellect in actu, the knowledge, and the knowing and the known are one, and He contains the four causes of beings, which are the matter, the form, the efficient and the final cause.89

So God is not only the efficient, formal and final cause of the world but also its material cause. This claim is repeated in Maimon’s printed commentary on Maimonides’ Guide, as part of Maimon’s contribution to the the controversy over Spinozism. His own stance is now overtly pantheistic.90 Yet the distinction between the transcendent God and God as related to the world fends off the charge of atheism: Pantheism characterizes only God’s relation to the world, not the transcendent God. God an sich remains untouched. Finally a fresh development emerges: the shift from knowledge focused on the goal of correspondence with the object or its form to knowledge as an open-ended process in infinitum, measured by its improvement on previous stages, not by its proximity to an existing objective truth. The conflict between these two notions appears in the introduction to Ḥesheq Shlomo. Maimon first explains that, since all knowledge involves conjunction with the Active Intellect, unio mystica, bliss and immortality, would seem either to be proportionate to knowledge or to be attained by all. In the first case, “the augmentation of the sciences (ʺʥʮʫʧ) in all generations” would imply that none of the ancients (ʭʩʰʥʹʠʸ) could have attained this state. But if even a very limited apprehension suffices for conjunction, then everyone attains bliss and immortality. For even the dullest person has access to common notions and the like. On the latter view, there would be no point in pursuing ever more knowledge. For the ultimate conjunction with the Active Intellect would be already attained with the very first apprehension.91 At this point, Maimon leaves the resolution of the dilemma to faith, but it will return in a new form, along with skepticism.

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At this stage, Maimon still attributes a quasi-religious significance to both the progress of knowledge and the attainment of truth. He conceives of knowledge in terms of an infinite process in which knowledge and elation gradually increase in infinitum in step with apprehension.92 In the margin of the manuscript, Maimon adds: And our Sages z”l referred to this when they said: Scholars (talmidei hakhamim) have no rest—neither in this world nor in the world to come, as it is written: They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God. (Psalms 84:8).93

Yet, at the same time Maimon claims here that the end of this life is a gradual ascent not only toward the Einsof, but toward actual union with the divine and loss of personal identity: Hence, if the perfect man merges with the substance of the Einsof as he rises, as Maimonides says, z”l, there is no enduring [of the individual soul] at all. Rather, the man is gone and the Einsof remains as it was.94

Here we find self-annihilation before God as the end of a life devoted to knowledge. As he so often did, Maimon characterized his shift here most happily himself. In describing Ḥasidic ecstatic practices, he had approved of their “contemplative worship,” their “abstraction of thoughts from all created things, even from the individual self, and in union with God.”95 But, in the voice of the later narrator, he commented in his autobiography: “Self-annihilation before God is sound only if the faculty of knowledge is so much occupied by its object (because of the latter’s greatness) that man exists as it were outside of himself and only in its object.”96 The motif of self-annihilation and union with God remains, but the enlightened Maimon no longer looks for its fulfillment in ecstatic religious practices. Rather he turns to rational scientific and metaphysical knowledge, culminating in the threefold unity of the intellect. And knowledge now is an infinite process rather than a state to be attained. Indeed, the mature Maimon weighs “philosophical systems of theology” by two criteria: whether they seek unmediated union with God or approach God through rational study of his works (sciences and metaphysics), and whether they rely on the imagination or on the understanding. Maimon, of course, approves of those systems in which the understanding and the sciences are central, those which do not attempt an unmediated union with God and apply discursive thought rather than inspired enthusiasm. Comparing these views to Maimon’s early manuscripts, his critique of Schwärmerei, enthusiasm, reveals itself to be self-criticism.97 I N F I N I T E P RO G R E S S T OWA R D T H E THREEFOLD UNITY OF THE INTELLECT

Maimon’s mature work in philosophy begins with his Transcendentalphilosophie of 1790. A year later, his Hebrew commentary on the Guide Part I was


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published under the title Giv‘at ha-Moreh. The threefold unity of the intellect is present in both, but in different ways. In Transcendentalphilosophie, Maimon first believed that he discovered a “point of unification” (Vereinigungspunkt) of all the philosophical systems he knew (Maimonides, Spinoza, Hume, Leibniz, and Kant), allowing him to develop a “system of coalition” among them all.98 He wished to show that Maimonides and Kant’s epistemologies were adequate to human finite cognition, beginning with the knowledge of particulars and ascending to generalizations. Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s philosophies are true when applied to the infinite intellect: God begins with the most general concept(s) and proceeds to particulars through ever finer determinations. The finite and the infinite intellect begin from opposite ends of the spectrum, but they continuously approach each other. God’s concepts are, of course, adequate to their objects. For the objects are either created according to these concepts or simply are these concepts. A human judgment is true if it coincides with the corresponding thought of God. However, since God is not corporeal and has no sensory knowledge, true knowledge sans phrase will not contain sensuous terms. Perception, says Leibniz, is confused thought. Human cognition approaches the truth insofar as it distances itself from the perceptual. So, for Maimon, Maimonides and Kant fuse with Leibniz and Spinoza: Maimonides and Kant discuss human knowledge adequately, but not truth as such. Leibniz and Spinoza treat of true knowledge and explain how our finite knowledge is not just adequate to our empirical experience but approaches Truth. The two kinds of knowledge meet in any pure truth conceivable by both a finite and an infinite intellect. But this meeting-point is reached from opposite extremes and by opposite processes: a generalization from particulars (bottom-up, as it were) for humans, and particularizing determinations (topdown, as it were) for the infinite intellect. Maimon concludes his Transcendentalphilosophie with a discussion of the resultant complementarity of metaphysics and science: However, according to my system (or non-system) . . . Reason finds that it [in itself] and its mode of operation are only possible if an infinite reason is presupposed. The difference between the two (in addition to infinity) consists in this: the latter begins with the most general and proceeds (by way of determinations) through various infinite series to the particular (I do not mean beginning and proceeding in time, but according to nature). Every synthesis completed in this way by reason constitutes a real object which relates to all others in relations of subordination and coordination (as species and genus or as different species of one genus). The former, however, begins with the particular and ascends ever more (by means of abstractions) to the more general ( . . . ), and this happens in time. This reason approaches the former in infinitum. The idea of reaching it is the idea of their unification.

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. . . Our Talmudists (who certainly at times expressed Thoughts worthy of Plato): “Scholars (talmidei ḥakhamim) have no rest—neither in this world nor in the world to come.” To which, in their manner, they refer the words of the Psalmist: “They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God” (Psalms 84:8).99

The knowledge of the finite intellect, proceeding empirically from the particular to the general, is identical with the knowledge of the infinite intellect that moves timelessly from the general to the particular. The proposition, “Man is as a thinking animal,” is the same whether reached by generalizing from ‘man’ and ‘donkey’ to ‘animal’ or by specifying ‘animal’ by adding the specific difference ‘thinking’ to form the new concept ‘man.’ Now, if knowledge really means the unity of the intellect with its object, as in Aristotle and Maimonides, then for each truth we would have two intellects uniting with the same object. The divine intellect simultaneously conceives and produces the object by the synthesis of a general concept and a differentia specifica. The human intellect conceives this same object a posteriori, resolving the specific concept into genus and differentia specifica. The threefold unity of the intellect is here at work both in God and in man. From the perspective of the infinite intellect, the threefold unity of the intellect yields pantheism, divine unity with the conceived world. In the finite intellect, the threefold unity implies mystical union when human understanding apprehends God or (potentially) attends to all possible relations (objects), whence it is potentially co-extensive with God’s intellect: We here have (cum venio verbo) a Trinity: God, the world and the human soul. If we understand by ‘world’ only the intellectual world, i.e. the system of all possible objects which can be produced through all possible relations thought by an understanding; by ‘soul’ the threefold unity of the intellect, understanding (power of thought) adverting to them such that all these possible relations can be thought by it; and by God an understanding, that in actu thinks all these relations, then all these three are one and the same thing (Ding).100

Both pantheism and mysticism follow, then, from the threefold unity of the intellect. In the introduction to Ḥesheq Shlomo Maimon faced a dilemma: whether to stress progress and hold that the ancients did not know the truth or to accept their claim to knowledge and cast doubt on progress. The dilemma is here resolved in favor of progress.101 Every step in cognition, every replacement of perception by thought, brings us closer to unity with the infinite intellect: Here is the point where materialists, idealists, Leibnizians, Spinozists, yes even Theists and Atheists (if these gentlemen would only understand themselves and not incite the rabble against each other out of malice) could unite. Certainly, this is only a focus imaginarius.102


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While the mystical connotations are clear in the earlier passage on Trinity, here the meaning of “absolute intellect in actu” as both God and Truth is underscored. We conceive of Truth as the apprehension of an absolute intellect, so this notion is indispensable for the atheist too, if he upholds the notion of truth. However, since we are but finite intellects and our apprehension is neither complete nor pure but continuously extends and rationalizes sensible apprehensions, the idea of the infinite intellect and our approximation of it are the “real object of the understanding,” a “desideratum grounded in our nature, although not its attainment.”103 The limitations of human knowledge and therefore of mystical union do not affect the notion of the infinite intellect or the pantheist consequences: As we all agree, everything possible in God, exalted be He, is in Him always in actuality, and there is in him no potentiality whatever, and it is also necessary that what God conceives, exalted be He, is true, that is, adequate to its object, or that the known (muskal) is the object itself. Now, what is conceived by God is the notion (tziyyur) of the world, i.e. the notion of all possible things, their ratio and relation to one another. It clearly follows from this that the world is in Him, exalted be He, as the known is in the intellect.104

Indeed, were we certain that our reason approaches the divine in infinitum, we could maintain that the intellect will appear before God. However, there was good reason to doubt it. In Transcendentalphilosophie, Maimon produced a proof that the straight line is the shortest distance between two points. If successful, the proof would have been an important step in the Leibnizian program of reducing a perceptual property (straight) to a concept of the understanding (‘shortest’ falling under ‘magnitude’). In the process of editing his Transcendentalphilosophie, Maimon realized that his proof was faulty. Since Maimon retained his Leibnizian, purely intellectual concept of knowledge, and did not accept the legitimacy of knowledge based on both intuition and understanding, as Kant proposed, he drew skeptical conclusions: We cannot know whether our empirical knowledge is real (i.e., conceptual) knowledge, nor whether the infinite progress of knowledge approaches Truth or goes astray. The truth of the infinite intellect thus changed its status from a goal to be attained to a hypothetical postulate. And with this change mysticism received a lethal blow. S K E P T I C I S M , T H E L AW O F D E T E R M I N A B I L I T Y, A N D A N E W C O M M E N TA RY O N M A I M O N I D E S ’ G U I D E I 6 8

“Aristotelian” Reasons for Skepticism: “Propria” The unification of the finite with the infinite intellect presupposed that “The way up and the way down are one and the same.”105 How do we know this? How do we know whether the general concepts we abstract from our initial

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empirical knowledge are the relations by which God thought and created the objects? How do we know that our generalizations will retrace the path of particularization projected by the infinite intellect? The problem in concreto: a proper determination of a given concept functions as a differentia specifica and produces a specific new object. However, an object that we contemplate may have more than one property in common with all the particulars of its kind. How do we know which is the essential property that served God as a differentia specifica? The problem is the distinction between essence and proprium, well known since Aristotle. Consider a human being: the definition is animal rationale. Animal is the proximate genus (genus proximum), rationale the differentia specifica and essence of humans. But there are other properties common to all humans and belonging only to humans, yet not included in the definition of ‘human.’ A human being is the only proper animal sociale (zoon politikon), the only animal ridens (laughing animal), et cetera. Furthermore, humans can be uniquely singled out by bodily properties that are not essential: flat finger nails, et cetera. Such propria are common to all human beings and only human beings. In other words, these properties are co-extensional with the essence, but their intension is utterly different. This had devastating consequences for Maimon’s confidence in the possibility of reaching a point of unification with the infinite intellect. Beginning with the rich concept of this object and proceeding by abstraction to more general concepts, which of its determinations is the “proper” proximate differentia specifica? Choosing one such property over another marks out a different line of advance toward more general terms and might produce an entirely different ontology than the one by which the infinite intellect created the world. Moreover, if the way up by abstractions misses the actual ontology of the world, the failure may never show up, since the process is infinite. The outcome is skepticism as to our ability to reconstruct the world’s true ontology and so reach the “point of unification” with the infinite intellect. A further problem arises: the distinction between substance and property. Beginning with the empirical object, for example, a donkey, suppose that the intellect abstracts a property common to donkeys, oxen and humans, namely life, which is the essence of a common genus, animals. We might believe that the addition of differentiae specificae yields donkeys, oxen, and humans. But why should we say that donkey is a substance and living a property rather than the other way around? Why not conceive of life as a substance and donkeying, humanizing, etc., as differentiae specificae? This may sound ridiculous to a native speaker, but natural language is not a good advisor in ontology.106 Clearly the ontological tree would be completely different if an early decision about abstraction deviated from the way down taken by the absolute intellect. Such a deviation could occur without any violation of the rules of induction. For neither the difference between substance and property nor that between essence and proprium is adequately determined. In short, neither the common


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Aristotelian theory of abstraction nor Leibniz’s theory of analysis is sufficient to explain true knowledge. To obtain true knowledge, we must assume that our analysis proceeds along the same pathway (in reverse) as the true, synthetic generation of concepts/objects. In Maimon’s words: The definition of the understanding according to the Rabbi z”l is too narrow to capture it (definitio angustior definiti) since the understanding does not only perform analysis but also synthesis. Moreover, the main function of the understanding is really synthesis . . . 107

How can we distinguish between substance and property or between the essential form and a nonessential proprium? The problem lies in the difference between a priori and a posteriori thought. The only area in which we think synthetically and produce particularized objects is geometry. Here our thought is like God’s: We think and produce objects in one act.108 Reality here conforms to the concept since the concept produces it. But empirical thought starts from given objects and proceeds analytically. At every step of analysis, there is more than one possible way to proceed. Maimon here applies his Law of Determinability. It does not solve the problem, but it goes one step further than normal abstractions and generalizations can. The Law of Determinability, like the Law of Non-contradiction, is a negative criterion of truth: it cannot determine what is true, but it can determine that whatever violates its principle is false.109 It states that every synthesis must conform to the general structure of subject-predicate and produce a real synthesis. It distinguishes between the subject (which can be thought by itself) and the predicate (which can be thought only in relation to a subject). So this allows the synthesis ‘living donkey’ and excludes ‘donkeying life’: “. . . it is possible to conceive that the body of the donkey be connected to life or to the absence of life, but it is not possible to conceive of life without the body.”110 With his the Law of Determinability, Maimon solves the problem of distinguishing between substance and property. Applied to the case of the decision between the living donkey and the donkeying life, the correct form is: subject is donkey, property is life. A further, seemingly paradoxical component of the principle of determinability is that, in a real synthesis, there is exactly one predicate for each subject term. It thus demands for a line either straight or curved, for a curved line either open or closed, etc. The principle positively determines that a real synthesis is a synthesis only if it yields a new object. The hallmark of an object determined by real thought is that new consequences follow from it, consequences that flow neither from the subject nor from the predicate terms alone but only from their synthesis. Thus, the posit of a triangle has certain consequences (e.g., that the sum of its internal angles equals two right angles). A further real synthesis produces a right-angled triangle. This synthesis is real because it has a further consequence, which flows neither from triangle nor from right angle but only from their synthesis—namely the Pythagorean The-

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orem. Maimon’s criterion excludes an attempted synthesis like “sweet line.” But it also excludes “flat-fingered animal” as a definition of humans: No new consequences follow from that attempted synthesis, as they do from animal rationale. So the notion of “real synthesis” explains why only one predicate applies to a subject. With each “real synthesis” a new object is created. Thus, a successful predication precludes applying another property to the original subject, since a new object has already been formed. Maimon does not wish to replace analysis with synthesis, that is, to think like God. He hopes only to control analysis. For every proposed abstraction or analysis, it should be asked whether the relation of the terms for the subject and predicate satisfies the ontological structure of substance and property. Certainty that our knowledge corresponds to the absolute apprehension of God would require that we reach the most general, first concept and then synthetically reproduce the world. As finite intellects, this is not given to us. We may only detect more or less obvious mistakes; we will not attain absolute truth. If we could reach the first concept from which all derives, if we could attain certainty, the human intellect would coincide with the infinite intellect in a mystical union and no individuality would be retained: What if we could subsume all possible figures, all objects of human knowledge under one and the same concept? Here human reason would lose itself in immortality, and man, as a finite being next to man as an infinite being becomes nothing.

This, of course, is none other than the Maimonidean threefold unity of the intellect, but it is now conceived as a hypothetical focus imaginarius! Maimon drew these conclusions in the wake of his skeptical turn in the summer and fall of 1789. His conception of knowledge as the threefold unity of the intellect did not change, nor did its mystical implications. But now he doubted that real knowledge and, therefore, conjunction with Truth could be attained. A Kantian Reason for Skepticism: All Knowledge is Merely Self-Knowledge Yet another reason for skepticism arose from Kant’s epistemology. If we reflect on the analysis performed, we discover that in abstracting life from donkey, ox, and man, we presupposed the recognition of similarity, an a priori form like the subject-predicate paradigm itself. In recognizing that one thing is similar to another, I apprehend the structure of my own understanding in the objects of cognition. Whatever belongs to the material of the object of cognition, to sense perception, cannot be intellectually apprehended. On this Maimonides and Kant agree. But Kant’s thesis of the a priori nature of the forms of knowledge by which all objects are known, renders the threefold unity of the intellect a reflective thesis without objective import (in the traditional sense of objective). What the intellect really knows in objects, then, are the forms


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it imposes on them. So it unites only with itself. For it cannot know an object independently of its sensory properties and the subjective forms imposed on it. The thing-in-itself cannot be known: In this way the knowledge and the knowing and the known are one and the same in respect to the form of apprehension alone, when it is itself the object of apprehension . . . but the external object that is the cause of the existence of the sensible object is neither sensually perceived nor known in itself, since its essence is entirely unknown to us.112

The identity of the form of cognition with the ontological forms was, of course, shared by Maimonides. But for Maimonides the general forms were objective. In Kant they are subjective and prescribed to the objects in cognition. The Copernican turn guarantees that knowledge conforms to experience, or vice versa, but it excludes the possibility of knowing reality as such: Metaphysics becomes impossible. Although Maimon failed in his attempt to put Leibniz’s program into practice, he did not abandon Leibniz’s conception of truth. If we grant Leibniz that sensibility is not an independent source of knowledge, as Kant thought, but merely confused conceptual knowledge, and that the forms of the intellect are the same as the logical forms by which the world was created, then we may indeed achieve unity with the essence of the objects themselves, not merely with the a priori forms of cognition. If so, we come close to the form of knowledge possessed by the infinite intellect: the perceptual given can be dissolved into its conceptual content, that is, into concepts of relations. But, in the divine intellect, the relation exhausts the object and no (sensible) remnant remains. For us, this is not the case: We conceive of relations as grounded in substances. We cannot dissolve empirical objects without remainder. The residuum of confused knowledge in us, testifies to our finitude.113 Still, we know one example of the exhaustion of an object by a relation in the case in arithmetic. For “numbers are nothing but known ratios, i.e. forms of knowledge and their subjects in one.”114 What Maimon means is that the number ‘two’ refers chiefly to the ratio 2:1, objectified as the cardinal number, ‘two.’ Natural numbers need not be conceived as given, but they can be generated from ratios, pure concepts of the understanding. We reach the following conclusions: the threefold unity of the intellect is realized in different forms and to different extents by all “systems concerning the intellect.” With Kant, Maimon improves on Maimonides in that the general forms (similarity, subject-predicate structure, etc.) are conceived first not as ontological but as epistemic and subjective. The hoped-for knowledge of objective relations proves to be self-knowledge. Only under the Maimonidean and Leibnizian assumption that the human intellect is an image (tzelem) of the divine intellect can it be maintained that the relations we come to know are not merely subjective but objective, the very forms God thinks, and by which he created the world.

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With Leibniz, Maimon improves on Maimonides and Kant in that he does not accept sensibility as an independent source of knowledge. He conceives sensibility as confused conceptual knowledge that can be resolved into relations in an infinite progress. And he improves on Leibniz with his principle of determinability, retaining the Maimonidean (in fact, Aristotelian) subject-predicate structure to govern all conceptual knowledge. So he can avoid the ambiguity of analysis, which does not favor “living donkey” over “donkeying life” and animal rationale to animal ridens. Maimon named this synthesis his “system of coalition.” One problem remains. What about the ‘I’? Am I not myself a subject remaining outside the union with the object in intellection? Don’t the Kantian forms of thought, which Maimon agrees are a priori and necessary for cognition, need a subject in which to inhere? Are they free-floating? In that case, the threefold unity of the intellect would miss the loss of self in God. Maimon addresses the question, maintaining that the I is “merely the logical subject of the form of the intellect,”115 introduced to give the forms a subject in which to inhere. However, we need this subject only for the potential intellect, which in truth does not exist. When knowledge occurs, nothing remains outside the intellect, or knowledge. Neither an independent object, nor an independent subject exists: both are merely different perspectives on the unity of the essence known or the knowledge of the essence. The upshot is this: proper knowledge involves the unity of the intellect with its object. Supreme metaphysical knowledge of either the manifestation of God in the world or of God himself therefore realizes the conjunction of the human intellect with the divine. However, there is no guarantee whatever that human apprehension achieves proper knowledge. The various “systems concerning the intellect,” Maimon’s included, can avoid some errors, but they cannot guarantee proper knowledge. Knowledge is conjunction with its object, but it is doubtful whether knowledge is real. Since knowledge involves truth, and truth involves the infinite intellect, Maimon upholds simultaneously rational dogmatism and empirical skepticism. E L AT I O N

I have argued that Maimon began as a religious enthusiast and mystic; at that time he rejected the threefold unity of the intellect. But under the influence of modern philosophy he changed his mind and endorsed Maimonides’ threefold unity of the intellect. Moreover, in Giv‘at ha-Moreh, he improved on Maimonides’, Kant’s and Leibniz’s conceptions of knowledge, supplementing their views with his principle of determinability. In his own epistemology, Maimon maintained that knowledge involves the threefold unity, and he used this principle to ensure that human knowledge, which proceeds from the particulars to abstractions, would coincide, as much as possible, with the infinite knowledge that proceeds from general concepts


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to particulars. Finally, I argued that the “I” disappears here, as it is often presumed to do in mystical experience. With the rise of skepticism, however, union with the divine Intellect became not just a focus imaginarius but a hypothetical focus. With a focus imaginarius we know that we will never reach our end but may assume that we can approach it ever closer. With a hypothetical focus, we cannot tell whether a given step brings us closer to our end or distances us from it. Once mystical union has become a mere hypothetical focus, the now skeptical Maimon loses the philosophical grounding of his mysticism, and it must be abandoned. As long as we have true knowledge and the metaphysics of the infinite intellect is no mere fiction, we can hope for union with God. But if we cannot know whether our seeming knowledge is sound, the certitude of mystical experience vanishes, dissolved in the acid of skepticism. The exclusion of mysticism does not exclude a different kind of elation, also based on certain knowledge. What remains is mathematics, especially arithmetic and algebra, independent of sensibility. Mathematical knowledge will open an alternative path to transcendent experience. The vehicle is not the unity of the knowing subject with the divine object but the apodictic knowledge of mathematics, with its independence of sensibility. For, in mathematics, conceiving and creating coincide, as they do in the divine intellect. In conceiving/creating mathematical objects, man still demonstrates that he is an image (tzelem) of God.116 So the practice of mathematics takes on an ethical dimension, in that it refutes materialism and reassures man that his nature partakes of the divine. The close connection between mathematics and human perfection endures throughout Maimon’s life. When he first arrived in Berlin in the spring of 1780 and learned of Bendavid’s mathematical education, he burst into tears and said, “Oh, my son . . . how happy you are to have at your disposal the means of perfecting your soul . . .”117 Fourteen years later, Maimon still had clear and moving words to say about practicing mathematics. He calls the infinitesimal calculus a “divine spark” in man, a “patent of nobility” testifying to the descent of the human intellect from the “pure intellects.” In practicing mathematics, man experiences the power of his intellect and achieves eudaimonia: “Who would reason away the eudaimonia inherent to this exercise? Evidently only a person, who never enjoyed it.”118 Maimon was certainly not among such unfortunates. Maimon now returns to the motif of his introduction to Ḥesheq Shlomo, where he quoted Maimonides and Aristotle at length in support of the vita contemplativa as man’s end and the eudaimonia that it is integral to. But it is no longer knowledge of God, but of mathematics, that elicits elation, and it is not mathematics as the object of thought that is divine, but mathematical thinking itself. Mathematics testifies to the “dignity of man” as the animal rataionale. Human dignity shows up in the “exercise of the powers of the soul as such even if it had no other benefit,” and

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it is accompanied by “eudaimonia.” The shift from knowledge of God to mathematics, from product to process (exercise of the powers of the soul), reflects the inference Maimon drew from his skepticism. Maimon wrote several articles on ars inveniendi, as well as a book that has been lost. He now considered original, independent thought more valuable than truth learned from others: I appreciate a little thinking of one’s own more than complete theories and systems learned from others. Even an error can completely annul only the value of the results, since through the discovery of the error the thought becomes unemployable, but the value of the thought itself is at times diminished only slightly, and I value much more some people who believed that they found the squaring of the circle, regardless of the fact that they erred in this, than a person who learned all of mathematics merely from others, without having ever thought for himself or even fallen into error.119

In his last book, published in 1797, Maimon first argues, against Kant’s ethics, that eudaimonia depends on what is unique to man: morality and the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge presupposes truth, and the existence of a realm of Truth and of an intellect in which idea coincides with object, that is, God. God’s reality here is a postulate of our striving for knowledge. Our union with this Being and our complete independence of the laws of nature (by which immortality is attained) are postulates of the desire for knowledge elicited by the higher faculties of our intellect.120 The possibility of certain knowledge and true morality require positing the existence of the infinite intellect, if they are to exist. But precisely this is now cast into doubt. It may be that we deceive ourselves and, indeed, have no apodictic knowledge and no true morality. Maimon even considered the possibility that mathematics itself is not true, that its basic assumptions are in error. Yet, as long as our reasoning conforms to the laws of logic and correctly leads from false assumptions to false conclusions, the value of intellectual activity is not diminished. It may be that mathematics is based only on experience and habit and that morality only masks our passions. Likewise it may be that we feign an infinite intellect simply by extrapolating from our own finite intellect. It cannot be ruled out that the notion of an infinite intellect has no actual referent. Such doubts disallow mystical experience. Still, the elation of pure rational thought, transcending empirical and sensual knowledge, remains. The way to express this experience remained the traditional language of metaphysics: Pure thought is a “patent of nobility” testifying to the descent of the human intellect from the “pure intellects.” Even eudaimonia is preserved. CONCLUSION

When the Aristotelian threefold unity of the intellect is applied to God, pantheism follows; when it is applied to man, mysticism follows. This is


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the essence of the philosophical mysticism studied in this paper. It was shown to be present in Maimonides’ Guide, in Maimon’s Ḥesheq Shlomo, and even in his Transcendentalphilosophie. We have also seen that, even when Maimon upheld the doctrine of the threefold unity, his version soon parted company with Maimonides’. What was ontological in Maimonides becomes more epistemological in Maimon. But the most important shift in Maimon’s mature, skeptical position consists in this: Maimonides, in Guide III 51, presents knowledge of supreme metaphysical truth as union with God or the agent intellect, the peak of religious experience. In Maimon, the emphasis shifts to human knowing conceived as a process. And, in the end, Maimon’s skeptical turn subverts his philosophical mysticism. As knowledge falls into doubt, the threefold unity of the intellect falls away. Maimon retains his notion of truth. But accepted truths become hypothetical possibilities. Alas, these are no longer compatible with the certitude claimed for mystical experience. Only in mathematics does certainty remain possible. Mathematics, not metaphysics, becomes the locus of transcendence for human thought. But the character of the experience has changed. Directing one’s thoughts to God and uniting with Him is one kind of experience, practising mathematics and experiencing in it a certainty that transcends mere empirical knowledge is another. It is the experience of transcending worldly, sensual knowledge, but it is not the experience of an encounter with ultimate reality, certainly not with the divine. Of course, mathematical thinking may be interpreted as testimony to the God-likeness of man. But an interpretation of an experience is not the same as an experience. The experience of uniting or conjoining with the divine requires the certainty of the encounter with a sublime object, not a postulate. Yet, in Maimon’s rational dogmatism, true thought was conceived in terms of union with infinite intellect. In Maimon’s empirical skepticism, the reality of true thought was cast into doubt, and God was thinned down to a mere postulate, necessary to account for truth, should our hypotheses indeed be true. Both empirical skepticism and rational dogmatism found expression in Maimon’s concluding words on the hypothetical status of our knowledge and on God as a mere postulate: “The wise enjoys in this life the eternity of the soul and union with God.”121

NOTES 1. Guide III 51. See Kellner, Maimonides on Human Perfection. 2. Since the second part of this essay discusses Salomon Maimon’s interpretation of the Guide, which he knew in Ibn Tibbon’s translation, I use the Hebrew terms. The Guide to the Perpexled is here quoted in the translation of Shlomo Pines. References to Maimon’s works are by volume and page number of the Valerio Verra edition of the Gesammelte Werke, hereafter abbreviated GW. References to Maimon’s Com-

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mentary on Maimonides’ Guide I are to Giv‘at Ha-Moreh, ed. Samuel Hugo Bergman and Nathan Rotenstreich, hereafter GM. Ḥesheq Shlomo is an unpublished Hebrew manuscript in the possession of the National Library in Jerusalem (MS 806426). All translations from the Hebrew and German are mine. I am indebted to David Blumenthal, Lenn Goodman, James Grady, Orna Harari, Hanna Kasher, Steven Katz, Sarah Klein Braslavi, Diana Lobel, Josef Stern, and Shmuel Weller for suggestions, comments, and enlightening discussions. I owe an important literary debt to Philip Merlan, especially his Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness. 3. Guide III 51 (Pines, 623, 624). 4. In his translation of excerpts from the Guide, which he included in his autobiography, Maimon included Maimonides’ discussion of Moses’ apprehension of God. In the (Hebrew) text it says that “because of his joy (simḥa) at what he apprehended,” Moses did not eat or drink (Exodus 34:28). In Maimon’s translation it says that upon his apprehension, Moses “fell into such ecstasy” (“in Ekstase geraten”) that he didn’t eat or drink (GW I.447). Ecstasy clearly refers to a mystical experience. See David Blumenthal, “Maimonides’ Intellectualist Mysticism and the Superiority of the Prophecy of Moses”; also his “Maimonides: Prayer, Worship, and Mysticism.” David Blumenthal is currently preparing a collection of these and other essays. Diana Lobel confirms Blumenthal’s reading of Guide III 51 and shows that Maimonides shares themes and vocabulary with Sufi mysticism, probably known to him via Baḥyā ibn Pāqūda and Avicenna. See her “Philosophers and Sufis in the Medieval Mediterranean World.” Josef Stern attempted to interpret away the message I consider to be obvious. See his “The Enigma of Guide I, 68,” an unpublished lecture at the Maimonides Conference, Jerusalem, May 2004. 5. Guide III 51 (Pines, 620). 6. Hermann Cohen, Ethics, 25 (§ 33). 7. See Cohen, Ethics, 118–119 (§ 114) and 121 (§ 115). 8. The usual formulations are misleading. The Latin “intellect, intelligens, intellectum,” the Hebrew Sekhel, Maskil, Muskal (as also the Arabic) suggest that intellect is a substance. Exactly this connotation should be avoided. In MT Sefer ha-Mada‘ Hikhot Yesodei ha-Torah, 2.10, Maimonides uses the formulation: ʲʥʣʩʤʥ ʲʣʥʩʤ ,ʤʲʣʤ. I prefer this formulation and will translate it as “The Unity of Knowledge, the Knower, and the Known.” However, I will also use ‘intellect’ and ‘cognition,’ since these are the terms in which this doctrine is usually discussed. 9. Guide I 1 (Pines, 23). 10. For a survey see: Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: The Foundations of Mysticism, 265–343. All my comments on ‘mysticism’ refer to the Judaeo-ChristianMuslim tradition. 11. In Hebrew we would distinguish between Ḥavaya (ʤʩʥʧ) as a psychic state, and Hitnassut (ʺʥʱʰʺʤ) as an encounter of a subject with an object. See also Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience, 136–154. 12. See Steven T. Katz, “Language, Epistemology and Mysticism.” 13. Certainly, “philosophical mysticism” can be further specified. The experience of unity with the “Active Intellect,” for example, would not normally appear in our philosophical culture, where this entity does not exist.


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14. See, for example, David Blumenthal, “Philosophic Mysticism: The Ultimate Goal of Medieval Judaism,” a paper delivered at the 1999 meeting of the Association for Judaeo-Arabic Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, GA. http://www.js.emory.edu/BLUMENTHAL/PhilMyst.html#%23 The second section of this paper is titled: “Toward a Doctrine of Post-Philosophic Mysticism.” For the idea of rational mysticism, see also L.E. Goodman’s introduction to Ibn Ṭufayl, Hayy Ibn Yaqẓān, 45–47. 15. Guide III 51 (Pines, 620). 16. Guide III 51 (Pines, 621). 17. Guide III 51 (Pines, 623). 18. See Guide I 57. 19. See Guide III 20, 21. 20. The difference between properties and essences follows Maimonides’ example in Millot ha-Higayyon: ‘Ayyin means both ‘eye’ and ‘spring.’ The isolated sentence “The ‘Ayyin is dry” could mean that an eye does not tear anymore or that there is no water in the spring. Out of context we do not understand the sentence. This is not the case with “God knows” and “man knows.” J. Guttmann compared Guide III 20 to III 21. In the former chapter Maimonides speaks of knowledge as a homonym, in the latter of the great difference between a “maker’s knowledge” a priori and an inquirer’s a posteriori knowledge. Guttmann concludes that the idea of the personal God in Maimonides overcomes the notion of the metaphysical God as an unknown supreme unity. See his Religion and Knowledge, 103–118, especially 111. See also Hannah Kasher, “Self-Cognizing Intellect and Negative Attributes in Maimonides’ Theology.” Kasher argues that the tension between God as the epitome of supreme perfections and as totaliter aliter is intrinsic in philosophical theology. 21. At the beginning of the Guide I 68 Maimonides refers to his Sefer ha-Mada‘. There are important differences of nuance between the expositions here and there. In Sefer ha-Mada‘, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 2.10, Maimonides says that we cannot express and cannot thoroughly know the threefold unity of the intellect. In the Guide he expresses skepticism about those who “pretend to knowledge” but doubt that the mind can attain certainty of this kind. Maimonides addresses the person who has studied “the books composed concerning the intellect” (Pines, 163), called in Sefer ha-Mada‘ the “wise and understanding by himself” (B. Ḥagigah, 11b, 13a) to whom the religious mysteries may be revealed. The differences can be reconciled if we assume that in the Guide Maimonides addresses philosophers (and elaborates the epistemological and ontological issues), whereas in Sefer ha-Mada‘, which was not written for philosophers, he hints at the mystical implications that human tongues cannot adequately express. Thus the philosophical thesis can be demonstrated, but its religious implications cannot even be expressed. 22. This Aristotelian characterization was taken up with a significant modification by Alexander of Aphrodisias: “Before the intellect actually thinks, the thinking and the [thing] thought are relative to one another and opposed like correlatives. When they are actualized, they become one, and the opposition ceases.” (De intellectu, ed. Bruns, p. 108.12–15), quoted from Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect and the Scope of Metaphysics,” 74.

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23. Maimon may have adopted this notion from Kant, who argued that transcendental apperception refers to an I which must be supposed to accompany all my representations. However, this introduction of a subject to bear the potential of the intellect, is already found in Shemtov’s commentary on Guide I 68: “this potentiality called hylic intellect has no realty without a subject . . .” (Shemtov ad locum, Guide [ed. Warsaw 1861], fol. 99b.). 24. Compare Aristotle, De anima III 4, 430a 1–2, with Alexander’s De anima, ed. Bruns, p. 84.24–28. See Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect and the Scope of Metaphysics,” p. 68. 25. Aristotle, De anima III 4, 429a20–25. 26. This is the core of the difficulties with Aristotle’s theory of the intellect and it gave rise to innumerable interpretations. In order to receive the forms of objects, the intellect can have no form of its own; it must be matter for these forms. Yet, the intellect is the differentia specifica of humans and thus the form of the soul. So the intellect is epistemologically defined as matter, ontologically as form. But in Aristotle there is no clear distinction between epistemology and ontology. The different interpretations arise from one or the other of the dilemma’s horns. 27. The literature on Aristotle’s notion of the intellect is immense. I learned much from O. Hamelin’s La théorie de l’intellect d’apres Aristote et ses commentateurs. 28. With the divine, “the essence that apprehends is undoubtedly the same as the essence that is apprehended. For in our opinion He is not composed of two things, the thing that apprehends and another thing that does not apprehend, as man is composed of a soul that apprehends and of a body that does not apprehend” (Guide I 51; Pines, 122). 29. Guide III 51 (Pines, 627). 30. Altmann writes that this implication is an “unexpected claim” and that Alexander’s De anima “springs a surprise on the reader” (“Maimonides on the Intellect and the Scope of Metaphysics,” 79). Altmann quotes P. Moraux, Alexandre d’Aphrodise, Exégète de la Noétique d’Aristote, p. 103 f., who stresses the mystical character of this notion. In the light of the discussion above, I believe that the mystical implication of the epistemological theory is anything but unexpected. 31. See Dimitri Gutas, “Intuition and Thinking: The Evolving Structure of Avicenna’s Epistemology.” On atemporal thought, see especially p. 174. See Barry S. Kogan, “What can we know and when can we know it?,” 125, 129. Also, in Early Modern philosophy intuition is not conceived as nondiscursive. Descartes discusses intuition extensively and credits it with “evidentia et certitude,” as opposed to deduction, which requires memory. See the third rule in Regulae ad directionem ingenii, in Oeuvres de Descartes, 10.369–370. Descartes recommends training until a deductive chain can be grasped almost without memory, “as if intuited in one instant” (“rem totam simul videar intueri,” rule seven, 10.388). 32. Guide III 51 (Pines, 621, 625, 626). 33. The introduction to the Guide (Pines, 13). See also Guide III 8 and III 11. 34. Guide III 51 (Pines, 624). 35. Guide III 51 (Pines, 628). See the discussion in H. Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge,” 94–96. The epistemology that forms the basis of this


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cognitive-religious system is not peculiar to Arisotelianism. But in its details and in its notion of the intellect as existing in actu only, it is specifically Aristotelian. That the knowing subject coincides with the known concepts is a claim found in both historical and contemporary philosophies which are not internal to the Aristotelian tradition. See for example, Spinoza, Ethics II, 7. Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, chapter 14, Gesammelte Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe, Bd. III.2, pp. 116–117. German Idealism and its “Identitätsphilosophie” are in fact based on this view. For an example from the phenomenological school, see Joseph König, Der Begriff der Intuition. Cf. also Wittgenstein’s Tractatus 5.631, 5.641 and the Diary 1914–1916, entries of August 7 and 11, 1916. 36. The seventh of Maimonides’ “Thirteen Principles,” in the introduction to Pereq Ḥeleq. Emphasis added. 37. Maimonides, Eight Chapters, ed. Gorfinkle, 69. 38. Introduction to Pereq Ḥeleq. 39. Eight chapters, chapter 8, and Sefer ha-Mada‘, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 2.10. 40. Shlomo Pines, “Maimonides,” 5.131. 41. Avicenna “criticized Porphyry for upholding the union of the soul with the intellect, taking this clearly to imply the loss of individual identity, defeating what Ibn Sīnā took to be the very goal of rational mysticism, the attainment of individual immortality” (Goodman, Avicenna, 166). Goodman sides here with Majid Fakhry, who, in “The Contemplative Ideal in Islamic Philosophy,” 139–140, insists on this distinction (with the exception of one locus), and criticizes Merlan (who “fuses,” as Goodman says, conjuction—ittiṣāl—and unity—ittiḥād). See Philip Merlan, Monopsychism, 25; Goodman, Avicenna, 169–172. 42. On Avicenna’s “Floating Man argument,” which intends to establish selfconsciousness and even the substantiality of the soul, see Goodman, Avicenna, pp. 149–163. 43. Guide III 51 (Pines, 618). 44. The different degrees of proximity to God are detailed in Hanna Kasher, “The Parable of the King’s Palace.” See also Steven Harvey, “Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace.” 45. Guide III 51 (Pines, 620). 46. Guide III 51 (Pines, 627). Cf. also Guide I 34. 47. Guide III 51 (Pines, 622). 48. Guide III 51 (Pines, 623). 49. Guide III 51 (Pines, 627–628). 50. Guide III 51 (Pines, 620). 51. Recent years have seen growing interest and controversies over the issue of the limitations of the human intellect in Maimonides. For our present purpose it is important to emphasize that a thesis on the limitations of the human intellect is very different from skepticism. Indeed it is its opposite. The view that the human intellect is limited marks off an area in which knowledge is established and casts doubt on the possibility of transcending this area. That is the case in both Maimonides and Kant.

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The skeptic addresses the preserved area itself and casts doubt on claims to certain knowledge within it. The difference is crucial to Maimon’s final rejection of Maimonides’ philosophy and mysticism. 52. Guide I 34 (Pines, 77). 53. Guide I 62 (Pines, 152). 54. Guide III 52 (Pines, 629). 55. Guide III 54 (Pines, 636–637). 56. Guide III 51 (Pines, 621); and Guide III 52 (Pines, 629). 57. Guide II 4 (Pines, 257–258). 58. Guide I 68. 59. On the hierarchy of human perfections, see Howard Kreisel “Individual Perfection vs. Communal Welfare.” 60. Josef Stern, “Maimonides and the Growth of Knowledge,” suggested that Maimonides conceived of philosophy as “a way of life.” I believe that this is indeed the case, and that it is not peculiar to Maimonides. However, this does not imply that this way of life “values intellectual processes as much as their products” (145). I will argue that this view is Maimon’s (and the Enlightenment’s in general). In Maimonides philosophizing means apprehending truth. Here the process is not separable from its product. 61. GW I.301. 62. GW I.307. 63. Guide I 68; III 51. 64. “Unverbesserlicher Ketzer,” “philosophischer Sünder,” H. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 11. 140. 65. GW I.181. 66. GW I.184. 67. GW I.185; presumably alluding to the Introduction to M. Avot, Sh’mona P’raqim, chapter 4. 68. GW I.195–196, presumably alluding to Guide I 18, 54; III 51, 52 69. This homiletic exegesis, so Maimon later judged, “wrenched passages of the Holy Scriptures from their context” “which fitted best the principle of Self-annihilation before God” (GW, I.229; trans. Murray 166). On the “astounding” “exceeding precision and faithfulness” of Maimon’s rendering of this exegesis some fifteen years after he had heard it and before they ever appeared in print, see Josef Weiss, “On one homily of the Maggid of Mezritch,” 97, and “On a Ḥasidic Doctrine of the Maggid of Mezritch,” 107–108. See also David Assaf, “The Teachings of Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch,” 99–101. 70. Where possible, I quote Maimon’s autobiography in the (partial) translation of J. Clark Murray. GW 1.220; trans. Murray, 160–161. 71. GW 1.222–223; trans. Murray, 162. 72. GW 1.143.


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73. Maimon says that when still in his village, he wrote a kabbalistic treatise in which he interpreted the Sefirot of the Kabbalah as the categories of Aristotle. In the kabbalistic treatise included in Ḥesheq Shlomo, Maimon discusses neither the Sefirot nor the categories of Aristotle. I cannot discuss here in extenso the substantial problems in identifying and dating the manuscripts in Maimon’s literary estate. Ḥesheq Shlomo contains five different compositions. It is more than doubtful that they were all written at the same time. It is quite clear that the date on the title pages—5538—that is, from October 1777 to the end of September 1778, cannot be the year in which all of them were written. In the introduction, Maimon says (19) that he left his native village in 5538. If both dates were correct, Maimon must have written the five treatises—including a long textbook on mathematics—in less than a year, beginning immediately on his arrival at Posen. Maimon says (GW I.276–277 ) that he reached Posen before the High Holidays (September 1777) and before R. Zvi Hirsch Ben-Avraham (Hirsch Janov or Hirsch Charif), who favorably received him in Posen, left for Fuerth (on Tevet 1, 5538; 31.12.1777). If Maimon indeed arrived in Posen around September 1777 and if the title page was also written not later than September 1778, then he wrote a manuscript of almost 300 pages in less than a year. Since Maimon wrote that he began writing when his days turned long (ʭʩʮʩʤ ʩʬ ʥʫʸʠ) it is clear that the time span must have been ever shorter. In light of the significant changes in style and handwriting, I suspect that Maimon did not write all of Hesheq Shlomo in so short a time. Moreover, the introduction itself contains extended quoted material from Maimonides on the vita contemplativa. I suspect that it was written after Maimon’s adoption of Maimonides’ theory of the intellect, hence in Berlin, after he read Locke, that is, after March 1780. 74. This is a general trait in Maimon’s adoption of Maimonides’ philosophy. See G. Freudenthal and S. Klein-Braslavy, “Salomon Maimon reads Moses Ben-Maimon.” 75. In the margin, in the same line as the asterisk, is an Aleph, referring to the note quoted below. 76. Ma‘ase Livnat ha-Sapir, Ḥesheq Shlomo, 125. 77. Maimon stayed in Posen presumably from the autumn of 1777 to beginning of 1780, and arrived in Berlin in March 1780. All positive references to the theory of the threefold unity of the intellect are notes in the margins of the manuscript of Ḥesheq Shlomo. I assume, therefore, that they are all later additions. 78. This opinion is alluded to in Shemtov’s commentary on Guide I 68: “Fourth, it should be known that Aristotle said the that hylic intellect must be unmixed [with the body] and the commentators understand that the hylic intellect is an eternal intellecting substance, i.e. of the nature of the intellect since it is prepared even though it is separate . . .” Shemtov ad locum, Guide (Warsaw, 1861), fol. 99b. 79. Ḥesheq Shlomo, 124. These views are succinctly summarized in Maimon’s autobiography: “God as the ultimate subject and as the ultimate cause of all beings is called Einsof (the infinite, of which, considered in itself, nothing can be predicated). In relation to the infinite beings, however, positive properties are attributed to Him; these are reduced by the kabbalists to ten, which are called the ten S’firot” (GW I.141). Maimon expresses very similar views in his article on the “world soul” in which he proceeds from Giordano Bruno’s views. There, too, he equates the views of Locke and Leibniz (and Bruno). See Maimon, “Über die Weltseele.”

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80. Guide III 51. 81. Guide III 52. 82. Guide III 54. 83. GW 1.141. The original says “in relation to the infinite beings.” This evident printing mistake has not yet been corrected in later editions. 84. See “Weltseele,” GW 3.205, 213–220. See Maimon’s letter to Kant of May 15, 1790: “Oder fürchtet man hier Spinozismus . . . dem Spinozismus zufolge ist Gott und die Welt ein und ebendieselbe Substanz. Jener Erklärung aber zufolge ist die Weltseele eine von Gott erschaffenee Substanz. Gott wird als intelligentia pura extramundana vorgestellt” (Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, 11.170). 85. Guide I 1. 86. Ḥesheq Shlomo, 283. 87. Ḥesheq Shlomo, 101. 88. Ḥesheq Shlomo, 304. This is a separate sheet and not part of the body of the manuscript. 89. Ḥesheq Shlomo, 285. This conception can be interpreted both as relying on the threefold unity of the intellect and on the anima mundi theory. The note is written on a separate page. 90. On Guide I 69; GM 109. 91. Ḥesheq Shlomo, 8. There seems to be a tacit understanding that in conjunction the greater intellect absorbs the lesser. Union with the Active Intellect or God is conceived as a loss of individuality by the human individual, whose intellect is “absorbed” by the divine intellect. 92. Ḥesheq Shlomo, 9–10. 93. Maimon concluded his Transcendentalphilsophie with the same quotation (p. 444 = GW 2.440). 94. Ḥesheq Shlomo, Introduction, 9. Maimon repeats this view almost verbatim in his autobiography when reporting his disagreement with Mendelssohn. However, in the autobiography the kabbalistic terminology disappears and purely Maimonidean langauge is used. “Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele bestand bei mir (nach dem Maymonides) in der Vereinigung des in Ausübung gebrachten Theils des Erkenntnisvermögens mit dem allgemeinen Weltgeiste, dem Grade dieser Ausübung gemäß; so daß ich diesem zufolge nun diejenigen, die sich mit Erkenntnis der ewigen Wahrheiten abgeben, in dem Grade, daß sie sich damit abgeben, dieser Unsterblichkeit theilhaftig hielt. Die Seele muß also mit Erlangung dieser hohen Unsterblichkeit, ihre Individualität verlieren. Daß Mendelssohn nach der neuern Philosophie hierüber anders dachte, wird mir ein jeder gewiß auf mein wort glauben” (GW I.482–483; see also 4.434). 95. Murray, 160; GW I, 221. 96. GW I, 223. Maimon repeats this message: “Some simple men of this sect, who sauntered about idly the whole day with pipe in mouth, when asked, what they were thinking about all the time, replied, ‘We are thinking about God.’ This answer would have been satisfactory, if they had constantly sought, by an adequate knolwedge of nature, to extend their knowledge of the divine perfections” (trans. Murray, 163) (AB I, 223).


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97. See my “Salomon Maimon: ‘Philosophical Systems of Theology’.” 98. GW 1.558–559. 99. Transcendentalphilosophie, 442–444. This is a sentence that Maimon also added in the margins of his Ḥesheq Shlomo. 100. Transcendentalphilosophie, 206–207. 101. The question whether the ancients attained immortality although they knew less than the moderns does not rise anymore. The meaning of “immortality” has radically changed and now refers to an inner-worldly state of mind. 102. Transscendentalphilosophie, 207–208. Concerning his first German book, Versuch über die Transscendentalphilosophie, Maimon claimed (GW I.558) that he developed therein the systems of Spinoza, Hume, Leibniz, and Kant, such that their “point of unification can easily be arrived at.” This “point of unification” (Vereinigungspunkt) is the center of Maimon’s own “Coalitionssystem.” 103. GW 2.521ff. 104. GM, 165. 105. Heraclitus, Fragment 69. 106. Consider the following example: How do we know that a triangle is a geometrical form in the plane particularized by the differentia specifica that it is enclosed by three straight lines? Why not define it as a geometrical form in the plane particularized by the differentia specifica that it has three angles? Why not define it as the figure of which it is true that the sum of its internal angles equals two right angles, etc.? The native speaker might have preferred saying that “triangle” refers to the angles, not the sides of the figure. Yet Euclid defines the triangle by the three sides. We may of course alter the structure of geometry, but the true ontology of the world is not at our disposal. 107. GM, 105 108. Über die Progressen der Philosophie, GW 4.20. 109. Maimon appeals to the Kantian insight that the understanding cannot analyze what it has not itself synthesized. (GM 105). However, this is applied in the Maimonidean, not the Kantian context. Synthesis means here that we conceive the concept of an object as a synthesis of the subject term and a further determination. 110. GM, 105. 111. “Über die Progressen der Philosophie,” GW 4.64 ff. 112. GM, 107. 113. GM, 107–08. 114. GM, 107. 115. GM, 106. 116. Commentary on Guide I 1; GM, 33–34. 117. Lazarus Bendavid, “Über Salomon Maimon,” 93. 118. Versuch einer neuen Logik, 1794; GW V, 266f. 119. Maimon an Lazarus Bendavid, 7. Februar 1800. In Jacob Guttmann, “Lazarus Bendavid,” 207–211.

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120. “If we think that our actual thought has reached its highest grade, we obtain the idea of Deity with which we then unite” (GW 7.354). 121. “Der Weise genießt schon im diesseitigen Leben die Erhaltung der Seele und die Einheit mit Gott” (Kritische Untersuchungen, GW 7.277, my emphasis).

EIGHT

Persecution and the Art of Representation: Schocken’s Maimonides Anthologies of the 1930s Martina Urban

Als Regel aber gelte: Er [der Weise] gehöre zu den Verfolgten und nicht zu den Verfolgern, zu den Gedemütigten und nicht zu den Demütigenden. As a rule: He [the wise person] belongs to the persecuted and not to the persecutors, to the humiliated and not to those who humiliate. —Maimonides, Mishneh Torah Hilkhot De‘ot 5.13

I . T H E S C H O C K E N V E R L AG A N D S P I R I T UA L R E S I S TA N C E

The above passage, a literal translation from Rambam’s Mishneh Torah,1 reflects in a tragic manner an axiom of Jewish self-assertion under National Socialism. This axiom governed the representation of Maimonides in the popular anthologies published by the Schocken Verlag of Berlin in 1935, marking the eight hundredth anniversary of his birth. My essay, as readers will readily discern from its title, is inspired by one of the seminal works written on Maimonides in the twentieth century, Leo Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing, whose lead essay appeared in 1941, shortly after Strauss’s emigration to the United States. Strauss argues there, famously, for a “necessary correlation between persecution and writing between the lines”2—at least for the premodern philosopher of heterodox views. The esoteric character of philosophy, on Strauss’s account, results directly from the efforts of medieval philosophers to withhold intellectually derived truths from the uneducated masses, for fear of persecution or social ostracism when the views they wished to propose seemed likely to provoke conflict with the custodians of orthodox opinion. 153

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M A RT I NA U R BA N

Although confined to a discussion of what he saw as the prevailing tendency of philosophers in a premodern or preliberal period to inscribe their true messages “between the lines,” Strauss’s understanding of philosophical writing as given over to a hermeneutics of dissimulation was undoubtedly honed by his experience as a Jewish author in Nazi Germany. In the title essay of the volume he obliquely remarks that his analysis of the relation between philosophy and politics can be read as pertaining also to the situation of Jews in Nazi Germany: “In a considerable number of countries which, for about a hundred years, have enjoyed a practically complete freedom of public discussion, that freedom is now suppressed and replaced by a compulsion to coordinate speech with such views as the government believes to be expedient, or holds in all seriousness.”3 Strauss draws the consequences from this turn of the tides: Persecution, then, cannot prevent independent thinking. . . . For it is as true today as it was more than two thousand years ago that it is a safe venture to tell the truth one knows to benevolent and trustworthy acquaintances, or more precisely, to reasonable friends.4

The discipline of a sociology of philosophy, in which Strauss situates his investigation, is a major threat to totalitarian rule. As a Jewish publishing house, Schocken Verlag played a paramount part in what has been called “the spiritual resistance” to National Socialism. The strategy ultimately adopted in this resistance was adumbrated by Martin Buber in a conversation with Lambert Schneider, the non-Jewish director of Schocken Verlag: “We have to learn how to live in the catacombs. What is required of writers like us is to write so subtly that those currently in power won’t immediately detect our resistance and grab us by the scruff of the neck—so subtly that many people will have read us before one can be held responsible.”5 Buber made these remarks in 1933, shortly after the Nazis took power. He had met with Schneider to discuss strategies that would allow the publishing house to continue its work under the new circumstances of censorship. The challenge faced by the publishing house was to find ways of advancing its program for the revitalization of Jewish culture without becoming an instrument of NS propaganda or provoking a reaction by the Nazi authorities.6 All works with a political orientation or perceived implication were subject to censorship and liable to be placed on a “list of pernicious and undesirable writings,” or banned outright before publication. In some instances permission to publish was continuously deferred, or annulled after the fact, placing already published titles on a newly revised index. The strategy devised at Schocken was to focus its publishing activities largely on anthologies. Presenting a selection of representative writings from the Jewish past, the anthologies, to be accompanied with minimal scholarly commentary, were meant to be perceived as nonpolitical. A close reading of the ostensibly apolitical Rambam anthologies of the 1930s belies their presentation as neutral, even neutered documents. The

PERS ECU T ION A N D T H E A RT OF R E PR E S EN TAT ION

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thematic selection, chapter and section headings, prefaces and epilogues, organizing and editorial principles (governing omissions and abridgements), and above all the free translations of some of the source texts served to alert the reader as to how to read Maimonides under the Nazi regime. The Schocken anthologists incorporated into their translations terms that had been central in conservative thought during and since the days of the Weimar Republic. But in so doing they subverted their meaning. In this “semantics of inversion,” as it might be called, “most pointed remarks,” as Ernst Simon writes, had to be “wrapped in somewhat nebulous conceptual language” to conceal the tone or edge of resistance. Yet after the Redeverbot, new regulations introduced to crack down on free speech, “a new, still more deeply hidden internal language [Binnensprache] had to be found to continue to express the truth.”7 What was resisted was not the Nazi effort to rescind the political emancipation of the Jews. For any hint of such resistance would be quickly spotted and squelched by the authorities. Rather, what this level of resistance aimed to counteract was the state policy aimed at reghettoizing the Jews spiritually and culturally, by obliging them to stress their particularity and “otherness.” On the face of it, the Schocken publishing program might seem to have conformed neatly to Nazi designs to exclude the Jews from German culture by confining them to Jewish cultural work. Indeed, Salman Schocken had seen it as the mission of his press to promote, as he put it in 1916, “the Hebraization and Judaization of German Jewry.”8 But this appropriation of Jewish knowledge, like the earlier movement of the Haskalah, was hardly a retreat from European culture. On the contrary, as chairman of the Kulturausschuss (cultural commission) of the Zionist Federation of Germany (ZVfD), Schocken and his intellectual collaborators held that restoration of the “Jewish book” to the cultural canon of German Jewry would complement the European, particularly the German, humanistic ethos that Jews had embraced since emancipation and, at the same time, would challenge uncritical assimilatory tendencies. As a leader in times of intellectual perplexity and a paragon of Jewish rationalism, Maimonides was an ideal figure upon whom German Jews might be expected to pin their own visions of an intellectually and spiritually engaging Judaism wedded to universal culture. Maimonides’ prestige was enhanced by his widely acknowledged influence on Christian scholasticism.9 These virtues cast him in the eyes of many liberal Jews as a prototype of the modern Bildungsjude, a Jew who successfully combined general culture with Jewish faith. Hence, as Nahum Glatzer wrote in 1935: “Maimonides was rooted in the [Jewish] people and its destiny, but at the same time also in humanity, with which all thinkers are united beyond time and space in their striving for knowledge of nature, the cosmos and divinity.”10 This image of the Rambam lent itself to a reaffirmation of the humanistic ideals of German Jewry in a time of persecution when the cultural-political discourse was pervaded by a mythos tracing the vitality of every people spiritually and intellectually to its pristine beginnings.11

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I I . T H E L A S T I N G VA L U E O F M A I M O N I D E S

Before turning to the anthologies themselves, a few remarks on the modern reception of Maimonides may be apposite. Minds were split over the relevance of Rambam’s legacy. The great rationalist had formulated articles of Jewish faith that posed a problem to the fathers of the Haskalah like Moses Mendelssohn and Saul Asher, who hoped that Jewish belief and practice could stand on its own feet in an enlightened society, where free and rational inquiry gave their tradition all the intellectual sway it should require. Neo-Orthodox theologians like Samuel David Luzzatto and Samson Raphael Hirsch, on the other hand, had reservations about Maimonides’ concessions to and accommodations of Greek philosophy.12 But the general tendency was to view Maimonides as a forerunner of the Enlightenment, to draw from his teachings a message of universal appeal and to present him as a precursor of Kant, while downplaying the Aristotelian dimension of his thought. This trend persists throughout the nineteenth century. It reaches its epitome in Hermann Cohen, who understood the Rambam’s God as the God of ethics, known through moral acts alone.13 Drawing on his own authority as a celebrated neo-Kantian philosopher, Cohen, the first nonbaptized Jew to hold a chair in philosophy at a Prussian university, cast Maimonides as an advocate of a demanding messianic ethics, which made Plato’s idea of the good the goal of history.14 By 1935 the parameters of the discourse had changed strikingly. The Enlightenment faith in the ultimate triumph of reason and in the ineluctable progress of society toward a humane and just political order stood refuted by history, and the need for a reassessment of the Jewish alliance with liberalism was vigorously articulated in a monograph on Maimonides by Leo Strauss, Philosophie und Gesetz: Beiträge zum Verständnis Maimunis und seiner Vorläufer, published by Schocken Verlag in 1935. Strauss considered the Rambam’s elaboration of a philosophical foundation for the Law as his enduring contribution to Judaism. Strauss saw in Maimonides’s philosophy of law the insight that would expose a fundamental flaw in modern Jewish liberal thought. Accepting the modern rejection of revealed religion, Jewish rationalists tended to ground their faith, to the degree that they preserved it, in appeals to a distinctively religious mode of consciousness. Pointedly directing his critique at Julius Guttmann, a disciple of Hermann Cohen, Strauss sets out to reclaim and secure the unique value of revelation as a foundation of theonomous duties and a dialectical foil to reason. The humanistic, liberal outlook so widely adopted by German Jewry since Mendelssohn, in Strauss’s judgment, had proved an altogether inadequate response to modernity. In subscribing to the liberal ethos and adopting the naïve conception of human nature promoted by liberalism, Strauss held, Jewry had compromised its spiritual integrity and distinctiveness. Maimonides, Strauss counseled, could serve once again as a guide to Jewry in confronting its theological and political perplexities. Once the twelfth-century philosopher was properly understood, modern Jews would


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be in a position to discard their liberal “prejudice,” the supposition that it was impossible to recapture what was sound and precious in medieval rationalism.15 By treating revelation as law and thus as an aspect of the political order, Maimonides understood that the philosopher is not a free and independent agent but is indeed dependent on revelation to address practical questions about the social order. That made the Rambam, for Strauss, the paragon of a more sober and tempered rationalism than could be found in its modern liberal analogue.16 III. ANTHOLOGI ZING M A IMONIDES: N A H U M G L AT Z E R’ S A P P ROAC H

Maimonides would no longer be of merely antiquarian or apologetic interest. Although few of Strauss’s Jewish contemporaries would endorse his radical critique of liberalism, they shared his conviction that the theological-political predicament faced by German Jewry made the Rambam’s teachings about law and polity urgently relevant. Even the first publication of Schocken Verlag had featured selections from the writings of Maimonides. Sendung und Schicksal. Aus dem Schrifttum des nachbiblischen Judentums, published in 1931 is an anthology of traditional texts, testifying to Jewish self-assertion through the ages.17 The volume, presented by Nahum Glatzer and Ludwig Strauß, includes six selections from the Rambam’s writings—from the Guide, the Mishneh Torah, and the Commentary on the Mishnah. In 1935 two additional Maimonides anthologies were published: Des Rabbi Mosche ben Maimon More Newuchim (Führer der Verirrten) im Grundriss. Auswahl, Übertragung und Nachwort von Alexander Altmann, and Rabbi Mosche ben Maimon. Ein systematischer Querschnitt durch sein Werk. Ausgewählt, übertragen und eingeleitet von Nahum N. Glatzer.18 Glatzer, as an advocate of a liberal theology, and Altmann, as a representative of an Orthodox Weltanschauung, wove into their anthologies responses to the political discourse of the time, expressing their distinctive religious and intellectual positions in their representations of Rambam.19 The title Sendung und Schicksal (hereafter: SuS), Mission and Destiny, published as the threat of National Socialism gained momentum and the demise of the Weimar Republic seemed imminent, encapsulates the motto by which German Jews were meant to reassert themselves as a community in a time of discrimination and persecution. Recalling the covenantal nature of Jewish fellowship, Glatzer and Strauß intended above all to revalorize a religious understanding of Jewish peoplehood as a Schicksalsgemeinschaft, a community forged by a shared destiny, a destiny, in fact, bound up in Israel’s historic mission. Insight into the spiritual contours of Jewish history and experience was meant to help the Jewish people cope with the crisis they faced and to enhance the dignity of Judaism and Jewish peoplehood. The term Schicksal, destiny, had been in vogue since the eve of World War I. In his essay Das Problem des Schicksals (1913) Georg Simmel presents the term

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Schicksal as the product of the “synthetic energy of the I.” As a construct and a category of meaning, Schicksal can transform the uncanny of the coincidental into a necessary and thus positive teleology. Against the backdrop of Oswald Spengler’s cultural pessimism, as voiced in Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West, 1918; English translation by C.F. Atkinson, London, 1932), Schicksal, understood as fate, had come to portend a tragic vision of history. But, with Heidegger, the Schicksalsbegriff, or concept of destiny, acquired a positive, existential inflection and exerted an impact on German Jewish thought. In Sein und Zeit (Being and Time, 1927) Heidegger identified “the existential problem of historicality,”20 or the ontic condition of being situated in history, and refashioned the concept of “destiny” as the opening up of “the very possibility of taking action” (die Möglichkeit zu handeln), that is, action which is existentially authentic.21 For Heidegger destiny (Schicksal) was not simply a state of “thrownness,” or the ontological and historical “situation” in which one finds oneself as an individual and a member of a given community. Rather, destiny emerges from one’s historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) and takes the form of a resolute choice among the “possibilities” inherent in a given historical and ontic situation. Destiny is thus not imposed by history; it is an existential moment in which a people affirms one of the possibilities of its historicity, including its heritage (Erbe). How one understands one’s rootedness in one’s people and its fate (Geschick) and how one takes hold of that fate actively and decisively are the key determinants of a people’s future.22 In just this sense Glatzer and Ludwig Strauß saw Jewish destiny as calling for a resolute choice. A Jew must face history by dedicating himself to his religious heritage and the realization of Judaism’s mission. Authentic Jewish existence is a dialectic: “mission continually proves itself through destiny; destiny continuously fills itself with meaning through the mission.”23 As Glatzer and Strauss saw it, the question of destiny can be addressed only from a religious stance: “a religiously neutral realm does not exist, and every moment consummates itself through human decision.”24 As we study the Rambam anthologies, we readily see that the “spiritual resistance” camouflaged in the anthology form was encoded throughout in a nuanced translation of the classical terms of Jewish faith and philosophy. The first piece from Rambam in SuS is taken from the Guide III 12. With the problem of theodicy, Glatzer and Strauß introduce a theme hitherto accorded little attention in the program of Jewish cultural renewal, and indeed little stressed in Jewish thought since the Enlightenment. In this well-known passage Maimonides disputes the view of pessimists who argue that evil is dominant in the world. Glatzer and Strauß tellingly entitle their excerpts “On Good and Evil, the Necessary and Superfluous, and the Proper World Order.”25 Their use of the term “world order,” a term fraught with topical meaning at that moment, plainly alerts the reader to the fact that the problem of evil is not to be viewed solely in theological and metaphysical terms, but also in terms of practical philosophy, and practical experience.


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The texts that together define the Jewish mission raise a contrapuntal chorus of contrasting views on this matter of theodicy, ranging from hymns in praise of God’s bounty, favor and compassion to summonses to martyrdom. Glatzer and Strauß make no effort to suppress that diversity of voices. They construct their work under the guiding premise that “It is not a matter of blurring contradictions, but of allowing them to complement one another.”26 What mattered in the anthology, according to Glatzer and Strauß, was “an account borne by a credo.”27 A systematic, more rational account of faith must stand side by side with the naïve doctrinal affirmations. Both are authentic expressions of a Jew’s relation with God. In the same spirit the editors include in their anthology a passage on repentance from Hilkhot T’shuvah 11, a text on the levels of cognition from the Commentary to the Mishnah, and a patently political text on the messianic king from Hilkhot Melakhim 11–12. In this last passage, found in the concluding chapter of the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides presents an utterly realistic and political conception of the Messianic era, which he emphatically differentiates from the eschatological notion of “the world to come” and the promise of the soul’s immortal bliss.28 He writes: “The sages and the prophets did not yearn for days of the Messiah in order to seize upon the world, and not in order to rule over the heathen, or to be exalted by the peoples [of the world], but to be free for the Torah and its wisdom, free from oppression and intrusion, so that they might be worthy of life in the world to come.” Clearly, Glatzer’s choice of the word “order” (Ordnung) in the heading of this section of his Rambam anthology is not casual. Maimonides himself had often used the Hebrew counterpart, seder, when speaking of halakhic regulations or of political life. But the German word Ordnung, evoking thoughts of the ongoing discussions of destiny, resonates with the discourse that had marked conservative political culture in Germany since the 1920s. Glatzer is using the anthology format to respond to the constitutional jurist Carl Schmitt, whose book The Concept of the Political (1927) had put forward a comprehensive conception of political order grounded in a secularized version of the sovereignty and infallible authority of the Roman Catholic Church. By treating the polis as an existential totality, Leo Strauss had pointed out, Schmitt’s book was nothing less than “an inquiry into the ‘order of human things,’ . . . into the State.”29 Schmitt’s political theory was grounded in visions of a cosmic antagonism between friend and foe. The centrality of this struggle, on Schmitt’s account, obliged one to conceive of politics as destiny and to regard political engagement as the only antidote to liberal relativism. Strauss read Schmitt as presenting a “basic critique of the prevailing liberal concept of culture” and an aggressive “critique of the autonomous value of aestheticism.”30 For Schmitt, as for the Nazis, the individual was necessarily and rightly subordinate to the “will of the sovereign ruler.”31 Arguing through the words of Maimonides, Glatzer proposes a Jewish alternative: that the fulcrum of “the proper order” must rest in the individual.

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In translating the Rambam’s delineation of the evils that befall man as a result of untamed desire, Glatzer tellingly inserts into his rendering of a passage from Guide III 12 the phrase, “disruption of the order” (Störung der Ordnung), to signal the responsibility of the individual for the social order.32 Here Glatzer also interpolates a key concept from Heidegger’s existentialism. He renders the Hebrew terms heyot (being) and metzi’ut (reality), both, by the word Dasein (existence). By way of this device, Glatzer presents Maimonides as a proleptic critic of Heidegger’s single minded focus on the individual’s experience of the world from the anguished perspective of his own Dasein. By viewing the world’s Dasein from the narrowed window of one’s individual Dasein, the evils of the world are made to loom large and existence is made to seem meaningless. Glatzer conveys the point by a play on words: “so bildet sich jeder Tor ein, alles sei nur für ihn da.” (Every fool thus imagines that everything exists only for him). The myopic, narrower focus is characteristic of “fools,” on Maimonides’ account. For the wise person, the philosopher, considers Dasein from the standpoint of the universe at large; as a result the goodness of the world becomes manifest.33 The second text in SuS from the Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot T’shuvah 5) deals with the problem of divine providence and free will.34 The Rambam argues here against various theories of predestination.35 His defense of the central Jewish tenet that every person is the author of his own deeds challenges not only religiously motivated denials of human agency, but also, by implication, twentieth-century notions of race that would make personal choices ultimately mere functions of the genetic predispositions of one’s ethnic group. The title chosen by Glatzer and Ludwig Strauß for this section speaks of ‘freedom of will.’ But their translation renders the corresponding term exclusively as “power of authority” (Vollmacht). Significantly, the term Vollmacht also bears in German the juridical meaning of “power of attorney.” In Glatzer’s translation, the term figures as a recurrent leitmotif: “full authority is in your hands” (Vollmacht ist in euren Händen). That insistent ethical-cum-political message evokes a liberal outlook and reminds all who read it that their destiny lies in their own hands and that moral and political life must rest on freedom of will and autonomy of action. The anthologists were not wholly independent as to the content and editorial principles they would use. Moritz Spitzer, the literary editor at Schocken Verlag, often requested changes that seemed fitting to him. He also recommended to Glatzer his own preferred title for the anthology: “Rabbi Mosche ben Maimon. ‘Der Mittlere Weg.’ Ein systematischer Querschnitt durch sein gesamtes Schrifttum” (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon. ‘The Middle Path.’ A Systematic Cross-Section of his entire Writings). Spitzer was here expressing the general policies of the firm, which sought to adhere to a golden mean, balancing faith and reason in representing Jewish themes: Sie werden wohl verstehen, welcher zentrale Punkt der Rambamschen Lehre damit gemeint ist. In den internen Ankündigungen für den Buch-


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handel usw. verwende ich zunächst diesen Titel. [ . . . ] Es wäre mir lieb, wenn Sie sich damit einverstanden erklären könnten.36 You will certainly understand which central aspect of the Rambam’s teachings is meant here. In the internal announcements for the book trade etc. I will use this title provisionally. I would be pleased were you to agree to this.

Glatzer declined to make explicit mention of the ‘middle path’ (cf. Hilkhot De‘ot 1.3) in the title, although the idea of a golden mean echoed his own understanding of the Rambam as a thinker who effectively harmonized what appeared to many as irreconcilable extremes, philosophy and faith.37 When Glatzer planned an anthology tentatively entitled “Leidenszeiten” (Times of Suffering), Spitzer swiftly objected to any evocation of the nineteenth-century lachrymose conception of Jewish history, with its all too familiar portrayals of the Jew as hapless sufferer. Given the goals of Jewish adult education in Germany, he considered the narrow perspective reflected in that title anachronistic. It failed to place the focus on positive models of identification and self-assertion: Die Zeit ist vorbei, in der die deutschen Juden von dem, was uns getroffen hat, vor den Kopf geschlagen und echt erschüttert sind. Man beginnt sich wieder einzurichten, sehr häuslich einzurichten und die erzieherische Aufgabe ist jetzt nicht die, eine Sinndeutung des ‚Leidens’ zu geben, sondern Vorbilder der Bewährung in allen Geschichtszeiten, daß dazu diejenigen besonders geeignet sind, in denen etwas besonderes geschehen ist, bleibt dadurch unberührt.38 The time is past in which German Jews are offended and genuinely distressed by what has affected us. One begins once again to settle in comfortably, very comfortably, and the educational task is now not to present an interpretation of the meaning of [our] ‘suffering,’ but models of self-assertion in all historical periods; that those [periods] in which something extraordinary has happened are specifically suited [to achieve this goal], remains unaffected by that [objective].

Although Jewish suffering was indeed a dominant theme in Glatzer’s new selections, they did also project the necessity of messianic hope. Glatzer mentioned in his epilogue the Rambam’s famous epistle to the Jews in Yemen, the Iggeret Teman, in which he spoke of “the power of Jewish teachings to overcome all the suffering of history.”39 Wary of arousing the ire of the censors, Glatzer chose not to include the Rambam’s powerful appeal to the Jews of his day to “resist the strain of persecution” and his reassurance that ultimately divine justice would prevail (“they cannot destroy us or erase our name”). When he moved to the United States and founded Schocken Books Inc. in New York in 1945, Salman Schocken published an English adaptation of SuS the following year, and Glatzer unhesitatingly added the omitted passage.

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In the Rambam anthology that he edited alone, Glatzer does not confine himself to the Rambam’s two chief works, the Mishneh Torah and the Guide, but includes in his “systematic cross-section” some of his letters on the moral teachings of the law, statements focused on practical philosophy. But the majority of the selections are drawn from the “Code,” albeit not from the philosophical sections. From the Guide, Glatzer chose only passages from the third part (52, 51, 32, 34, 12), avoiding metaphysics, that is, the discussions of creation, divine attributes, the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God, and prophecy. These speculative topics, confronting the biblical outlook with the challenge of Aristotelian philosophy, did not seem well suited to furthering the self-assertion and spiritual renewal of the modern German Jew. Glatzer extols Maimonides for simplifying the Halakhah and bringing it “back to life.”40 Maimonides reminds his reader what “the Law means for the Jew.” It is not just a moral system. Rather, as Glatzer pointedly put it, it encompasses “the order of everyday life and the holy days, the cult, the ritually ‘forbidden and permitted,’ not only civil and criminal law, not only the wide-ranging realm of the ethical . . . but also philosophy, as the teacher of knowledge of God.”41 Justice is a cardinal principle of biblical law. By calling one of the chapters in the new anthology Der Richter, “The Judge” (Hilkhot Sanhedrin 21– 23), rather than employing the more abstract term “justice,” Glatzer directs the reader’s attention to the responsibility of the individual agent of justice. His interpretative translation again intimates a critique of Carl Schmitt, whose constitutional theory is guided by the Hobbesian principle auctoritas, non veritas, facit legem (authority, not truth, makes law). The selection from Maimonides’ Code opens by citing Leviticus 19:15, in the Buber/Rosenzweig translation: “Es ist ein Gebot, daß der Richter nach Gerechtigkeit richte” (JPS translation: “You shall not render an unfair decision . . . ; judge your kinsmen fairly”). The judge’s authority, as Glatzer stresses, must regard a transcendent standard of justice: “For a judge who passes a true judgment in accord with truth, if but for an hour, has thereby ordered aright the entire world.”42 Maimonides details the demands made upon the judge by halakhic justice. He identifies the judge’s legal-cum-ethical task as that of inducing the parties to a dispute to reach a mutual accommodation rather than simply adjudicating the case legalistically. Justice is the “God-willed order”43 and is thus, above all, subject to intellectual and moral discernment. It is not, as Schmitt would have it, sheerly and simply embodied in the sovereign.44 Glatzer’s pointedly political selection from Maimonides’ text sharply distinguishes auctoritas from potestas, legitimate juridical authority from political power.45 Another Rambam text included in both SuS and Glatzer’s anthology of 1935 addresses a theme that finds its most original expression in Judaism and frames its religious telos, namely, the messianic idea. In this passage Maimonides spells out the political (and theological) meaning of the idea of order. So it is here that Glatzer uses his interpretive translation to elucidate the Jewish


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meaning of the “Concept of the Political,” which contrasts so strikingly with that of Schmitt. Jewish Messianism envisions Jewish redemption. But it is at the same time “among those powers, which open up into the universal.”46 In SuS the chapter from the Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot Melakhim 11–12), is entitled “Messias der gesalbte König” (Messiah, the Anointed King). Glatzer and Ludwig Strauß endorse the Rambam’s de-apocalypticized vision. In commenting on the eschatological reading of Jeremiah 5:6 and Isaiah 11:7, they observe: “In stark contrast [to this eschatological vision of the prophets] is Maimonides’ teaching that the messianic kingdom is to be conceived of only as this-worldly.”47 In his 1935 Rambam anthology, Glatzer chooses a more abstract heading, “Das messianische Reich” (“The Messianic Age”).48 Using the Rambam texts already published in SuS49 gave Glatzer the opportunity to translate them anew and more literally.50 In his elaborations on the Messianic idea the Rambam restates the traditional view: The new order will be inaugurated by divine decision, not human initiative. To underscore that the Messiah is divinely appointed, Glatzer translates the biblical mashiaḥ literally as “the anointed king.” The mission of this king is not only to establish a new and sovereign Jewish political order, but, in Glatzer’s words, “er wird die ganze Welt ordnen, daß sie gemeinsam Gott diene” (he will order the whole world so that it may serve God). The potestas regis of the messianic age will mark the continuation of rabbinic authority. But the spiritual unification of humanity51 will transcend, so Glatzer implies, the nation-state. Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation of the Guide does not fully support Glatzer’s rendering. It uses a traditional religious and at times even mystical terminology in describing the Messiah’s role: “le-taqqen et ha-‘olam kulo” (to restore the entire world). According to the Rambam, in the messianic age the “minhag ha-‘olam” (the accustomed course of the world) will continue as before, with one essential difference, viz., the universal society will be immersed in the knowledge of God.52 The content of the text from Hilkhot Melakhim invites another level of reading. The following excerpt is found in identical translation in both SuS and Glatzer’s anthology: Die Weisen und die Propheten begehrten nicht die Zeit des Gesalbten damit sie aller Welt sich bemächtigen (lo kedey she-yishletu ‘al kol ha-‘olam), nicht damit sie den Heiden abwalten, nicht, daȕ die Völker sie erheben, . . . sondern damit sie frei werden für die Tora und ihre Weisheit und keiner sie stört, damit sie gewürdigt werden des Lebens der kommenden Welt . . . 53 The sages and the prophets did not desire the time of the Anointed One in order to seize the entire world, nor in order to reign over heathens, nor in order that the peoples [of the world] would glorify them, . . . but in order to be free for the Torah and its wisdom, and undisturbed by anyone, and thus worthy of life in the world to come . . .

The politically charged term “bemächtigen” (to seize power, to overpower) is used both in SuS and in Glatzer’s Rambam anthology. By shunning a quest

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for power or conquest (lo kedey she-yishletu ‘al kol ha-‘olam), the biblical prophets are set apart from the false political prophets of the twentieth century. Most remarkable in this context is Glatzer’s decision to include a letter on Kiddush ha-Shem, sanctification of God’s Name through martyrdom, from the Responsa of Maimonides, Kovetz T’shuvot ha-Rambam (II, Bl. 12, abridged), which Glatzer suggestively entitles “In Times of Persecution” (In der Zeit der Verfolgung).54 Here the Rambam interprets and endorses an opinion of R. Ḥanina as related in the Talmud (B. K’tubot 3a), which holds that Israelites may never attempt to initiate the restoration of their state but must remain loyal subjects of the state in which they reside, in keeping with the Talmudic principle of dina de-malkhuta dina (the law of the realm is law, in other words, the Halakhah incorporates the law of the land in which Jews live)—but only as long as the free practice of their religion is ensured. Civil disobedience is not sanctioned by Halakhah. But there is an alternative, which Maimonides spells out graphically: . . . daß man jene Gegenden verlasse und dahin ziehe, wo man ohne Glaubenszwang das Gesetz erfüllen und die Tora einhalten kann. Man soll ohne Furcht sein Haus, seine Kinder und seinen Besitz verlassen . . . Wer solchen Hinweis [auf Familie und Besitz] vorbringt, um sein Gewissen zu beruhigen, gilt mir nichts. Er muß vielmehr nach einem für recht befundenen Orte auswandern, und auf keinen Fall an einem Orte der Glaubensverfolgung verbleiben. Wer dort verbleibt, gilt als Sünder, er entweiht den Namen Gottes und gleicht fast dem, der vorsätzlich handelt.55 . . . that one should leave these regions and move to where one can fulfill the Law and keep the Torah without forced beliefs [i.e., conversion]. One must not fear to leave one’s house, one’s children and one’s possessions. . . . Whoever refers to such matters [i.e., who pleads the consideration of one’s house and family] to ease his conscience, is worthless in my eyes. Rather should he emigrate to a worthy place [where he can properly fulfill the law], and in no case shall he remain in a place where faith is persecuted. He who remains in such a place must be deemed a sinner; he desecrates the name of God, and almost resembles one who sins deliberately.

The contemporary relevance of this message is manifest. No reading between the lines is necessary. The background of Maimonides’ original message, sent to the Jews of Morocco in 1160, is the forced conversion of Jewry to Islam. But against the backdrop of Nazi anti-Semitism, Glatzer’s selected text reads as an unequivocal call for emigration or Zionist commitment—the latter still permitted by NS policy.56 One last poignant example of Glatzer’s representation of Maimonides is the piece Glatzer titles “Language and Content” (Sprache und Inhalt), drawn from the commentary on the Mishnah (Avot 1.17). Maimonides is addressing an ethical issue. It is in his view erroneous to hold that the use of Hebrew obviates all questions as to the content of a song or speech. Some Jews apparently


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supposed that when a song is sung in Arabic at a wedding, even if one finds nothing distasteful in the lyrics, it is forbidden for a Jew to listen. The Rambam rules in the opposite sense: Wisse, daß man Lieder, in welcher Sprache sie auch verfaßt sein mögen, auf ihren Stil hin prüfen muß, sie stehen nämlich der ungebundenen Rede gleich . . . Eine Rede ist nicht verboten oder erlaubt, geschätzt oder verworfen oder zu sagen anbefohlen der Sprache wegen, in der sie abgefaßt ist, sondern des Inhalts wegen. Ist der Inhalt recht, dann soll man ihn aussprechen, in welcher Sprache immer es sei, ist der Sinn des Liedes übel, dann ist es zu sprechen verboten, in welcher Sprache immer es sei.57 Know that poems, no matter in what language, must be examined as to substance, just like everyday speech. . . . A speech is not forbidden or permitted, esteemed or despised, or commanded to be spoken because of the language in which it is expressed, but because of its meaning. If the content is right, it may be put in any language whatever; if the text of a song is vulgar, then it is forbidden, regardless of its language.58

These remarks hardly carry an obvious spiritual relevance for the liberal twentieth-century German Jew, who is often no longer even familiar with Hebrew. But against the backdrop of Nazi street terror, which used songs aggressively in anti-Semitic agitation, the passage teaches halakhically and ethically that no language, not even Hebrew, is intrinsically sacred or immune to abuse. In SuS, Glatzer and Strauß incorporate speech into their conception of destiny, linking it to the theme of rightful order: “The destiny of human beings depends precisely on each of their words. For the true word sustains their [social] order, the untrue word threatens to thrust them back into chaos.”59 I V. A L E X A N D E R A LT M A N N ’ S A P P ROAC H

Alexander Altmann’s many theological and philosophical writings published under the shadow of the Third Reich similarly reflect a palpable sense of the imminence of the unfolding tragedy faced by German Jewry. Altmann was keenly aware that Germany had become a police state. So his references were prudent and oblique. Glatzer had emigrated to Palestine in 1933. But Altmann remained in Germany until 1938, when, threatened with arrest by the Gestapo, he emigrated to the Netherlands. What Altmann sought in Maimonides was a firm philosophical grounding for halakhic Judaism. In the epilogue to his Rambam anthology, he highlights the philosopher’s “organic understanding” of the relation between philosophy and Halakhah. Following the Rambam’s example, Altmann calls on his Jewish contemporaries to avoid artificially “grafting onto” the Halakhah either a philosophical or a mystical schema. Although not in contradiction to the precepts of reason, Halakhah is intrinsically valid and requires no philosophical justification. Nonetheless, in consonance with the Rambam’s teachings,

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Altmann advocated a philosophical understanding of the principles underlying the commandments. By virtue of such a philosophical investigation, Altmann envisioned an existential transformation of the self-understanding of his Jewish contemporaries. He hoped for a newly “genuine Jewish existence” faithful to the “organic tradition” and yet dynamic in its appropriation of the biblical and rabbinic heritage. He spoke in glowing terms of the promise of “returning to an unstructured Judaism that is again in flux on the basis of [a] supra-temporal halakhah.”60 Drawing the texts chosen for his anthology solely from the Guide, Altmann, like Glatzer, announces a systematic principle of selection. But this anthology, unlike Glatzer’s, preserves the work’s original structure and thematic sequence as it moves through the three parts of the Guide. The main chapters of the anthology are entitled: ‘The Language of Revelation,’ ‘God,’ ‘The World,’ ‘Prophecy,’ ‘Destiny,’ and ‘The Divine Teaching.’ The selections, often abridged, cover the Rambam’s discussion of the language of Scripture (Introduction and I 1), cognition (I 31), attributes (I 50, 52, 53, 58), the proofs of God’s existence (I 71, 72, II 1), the sublunary order (II 4–5), emanation (II 12), the world’s eternity vs. creation (II 13, 15–17, 25), prophecy (II 32, 36, 41–42), Providence (III 8, 17, 20), and the Commandments (III 27, 54). Spiritual resistance is less prominent in Altmann’s anthology than in Glatzer’s. But he too locates “the lasting achievement” of the Rambam in his aligning of Jewish thought with European intellectual history. Here too, then, Maimonides “proved the historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) of the Jew, notwithstanding the suprahistoricity of Judaism.”61 As the means of rendering everyday existence holy, Jewish law, Altmann stresses, is dialectically engaged in the mundane realm, paradoxically being in and beyond history and the world. It is precisely because of the dialectical nature of Halakhah that Judaism’s Diesseitigkeit (this-worldliness) does not lead to its absorption by the political order. Altmann’s implied ambivalence toward Judaism’s involvement in political life stands in contrast to Schmitt’s political theology. By virtue of its apostolic role as the incarnation of the transcendent divine substance, Schmitt affirmed, the Catholic Church necessarily requires institutional representation and political form as the model of the civitas civilis. Accordingly, the Church is perforce engaged in politics. Maimonides’ placement of the prophet above the philosopher becomes clear when he differentiates prophetic revelation from a merely rational, conceptual relationship to the Active Intellect (Guide II 36). Altmann presents the pertinent discussion under the heading “Die prophetische Begeistung,” that is, Prophetic Inspiration. Here the Rambam is seen to define prophecy as an intuitive apprehension of God, facilitated by the act of divine grace. Although such inspiration is attained only by those whose philosophical growth has brought them to the highest levels of intellectual perfection, Maimonides holds that the deeper truth cannot be attained through cognition alone. Submerged in this discussion of revelation we find a passage


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that Altmann seems to aim squarely at the political situation faced by his contemporaries: 62 Es ist ferner erforderlich, daß der betreffende Mensch [the potential prophet] in seinem Denken und Streben alle eitlen (she-einam amitiyot) Herrschaftsund Machtgelüste überwinde. So die nackte Sucht nach Triumphen, nach Huldigungen, Ehrenbezeugungen und Unterwürfigkeit des Volkes. 63 It is further necessary that the individual concerned here [the potential prophet] must overcome all vain desires for power and dominion. Similarly he must surmount a naked quest for triumph, homage, tribute and a people’s submissiveness.64

Altmann himself has added the adjectives ‘vain’ and ‘naked’ to the phrase “appetite for dominion and power,”65 alluding to the unbounded power hunger of the Nazis and their violent rejection of moral and religious constraints. Altmann’s choice of the word ‘submissiveness’ warns against the dangers of bellicose egocentrism. The prophet, who resembles Plato’s philosopher-king,66 here becomes the antithesis of the secular political leader, and stands at the furthest remove from the tyrant or dictator.67 The king, in biblical norms, must accept the rulings of the prophet or lawgiver and reigns only as a representative of the people. God is the sole sovereign. Even in times of crisis, the divine constitution (the Torah) and its interpretation in rabbinic consensus cannot be suspended or circumvented by the will of a political sovereign.68 In short, Schmitt’s “decisionism,” that is, the pure will of the political sovereign that bows before no transcendent truth, has no constitutional basis in Judaism. Like Glatzer, Altmann highlights the ideas of “destiny” and “order.” Suddenly shorn of the civil rights they had gained since the Enlightenment, the Jews of Germany were exposed to the “tragic singularity”69 of Jewish destiny. Indeed, Altmann makes use of Heidegger’s categories of “destiny” and “heritage” in coming to terms with the crisis now confronted. In a 1933 essay, “What is Jewish Theology?,” Altmann calls these factors “decisive for an understanding of Jewish existence (Daseinsverständnis).” Heidegger’s usage, however, must be adjusted to the “unique Jewish existence:” . . . in the Jewish case these concepts undergo a very conscious turning toward the transcendent moment of divine revelation. It is characteristic of the Jewish people that they are conscious of their heritage, as well as destiny, through which they believe they are ever addressed anew by God in the course of their history. Israel stands anew time and again before the ineradicable givenness of its spiritual heritage, which it must somehow master and satisfactorily incorporate.70

Where Heidegger had dismissed the notion of continuity, Altmann’s argument linked destiny with heritage dialectically in framing the existential premises of Jewish existence.

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It is worth mentioning here that essentialism about the ‘destiny of a people’ had tempted several Jewish thinkers into an ill-fated debate. Hans Bach, an editor of the journal Der Morgen, defiantly asserted German-Jewish patriotism by claiming that Jews, although they form a distinctive group bonded both metaphysically and by blood, shared the destiny of the German Volk: “To remain true to our blood and to the German soil and spirit, we German Jews will take part in the German Schicksal, and, God willing, one day be part of it.”71 Alfred Bäumler, director of the Hochschule für Politik in Berlin, had denied the right and the capability of Jews to share in German destiny: “They could never be capable of sharing and determining together with us our destiny.”72 Given the exclusivity of the majority culture, German Jews would in the end have to confront and determine their own distinctive destiny and determine their own distinctive destiny with respect to the prevailing authorities. To address this latter challenge, Altmann included in his anthology Maimonides’ discussion of laws regulating social life (Guide III 27). In his exposition of the purpose of the laws of the Torah, Maimonides had argued in Platonic and Aristotelian fashion that the polis is a conditio sine qua non of spiritual perfection. Laying out a utilitarian rationale for the most elemental foundations of any system of law, Maimonides makes the well-being of the body and the soul matters of primary “intention” of the Torah (kavvanat k’lal hatorah sh’nei d’varim). Altmann’s modified translation of an excerpt from this chapter, under the heading “On the Intention of the Instruction,” that is, the Torah (“Von der Absicht der Weisung”) gives a heightened meaning to a key passage on the necessary prerequisites of human perfection: Die Wohlbeschaffenheit des Leibes wiederum hängt von der Veredelung der Lebensformen der menschlichen Gesellschaft ab.73 Dieses Ziel macht zweierlei erforderlich: die Verbannung jeglicher Gewalt aus ihrer Mitte,74 derart, daß keines der Kinder Adams sich erlaube, eigenwillig und eigenmächtig zu handeln,75 sondern gezwungen sei, dem Gemeinwohl zu dienen, ferner die Erziehung eines jeglichen der Kinder Adams zu solchen Sitten, die für das Leben in der Gemeinschaft wertvoll sind, damit die Ordnung des staatlichen Zusammenlebens gewährleistet sei.76 The well-being of the body depends on ennobling the forms of life in human society. This goal has a two-fold requirement: The banning of all forms of violence from its midst, so that none of the children of Adam allows himself to act willfully and arbitrarily, but rather perforce would serve the commonweal. It is further required that every child of Adam be educated to mores valuable to the life of the community, so as to ensure the order of the common political life.

Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation of this passage from the Guide reads as follows: ʣʧʠʤ :ʭʩʸʡʣ ʩʰʹʡ ʭʬʹʩ ʯʩʰʲʤ ʤʦʥ ,ʭʺʶʷ ʭʲ ʭʺʶʷ ʭʺʩʧʮ ʩʰʩʰʲ ʯʥʷʩʺʡ ʤʩʤʩ ʳʥʢʤ ʯʥʷʺ ʭʰʮʠ ,ʥʺʬʥʫʩʡʥ ʥʰʥʶʸʡʥ ʥʩʰʩʲʡ ʸʹʩʤ ʭʣʠ ʩʰʡʮ ʹʩʠ ʬʫ ʤʹʲʩ ʠʬʹ ʠʥʤʥ ʭʤʩʰʩʡʮ ʱʮʧʤ ʸʩʱʤʬ ʭʤʮ


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ʺʥʬʩʲʥʮ ʺʥʣʮ ʭʣʠ ʩʰʡʮ ʹʩʠ ʬʫ ʣʮʬʬ ʩʰʹʤʥ ;ʬʫʤ ʺʬʲʥʺ ʥʡʹ ʤʮ ʭʤʮ ʣʧʠ ʬʫ ʤʹʲʩ ʬʡʠ :ʤʰʩʣʮʤ ʯʩʰʲ ʸʣʥʱʩʹ ʣʲ ,ʤʸʡʧʡ Comparison with the Hebrew text shows how Altmann highlights what the right political order demands of the individual: absolute subjugation to the summum bonum. Further, he strengthens the message of lelamed kol ish mib’nei adam by inserting the noun “education” (Erziehung), directing the reader’s attention to the educative and thereby political significance of the Torah. Beyond this, “the teaching,” that is, the Torah, aims for the physical wellbeing (tiqqun ha-guf) of its recipients. The well-being of the body is a prerequisite of tiqqun ha-nefesh, spiritual or moral improvement. It demands, in Altmann’s translation, “eine gute Staatsführung (hanhagat ha-medinah) und bestmögliche Gestaltung der Lebensverhältnisse” (ve-tiqqun ‘inyanei ansheiah kefi ha-yekholet), in English: “which necessitates the good governance of the state and the best possible structuring of social relations, and which must above all be pressed to realization.”77 Altmann’s translation accentuates the responsibility of the polis and its laws to provide the conditions necessary for the ultimate goal of intellectual and moral perfection: “ . . . damit wir eine Welt erlangen, die voller Seligkeit und Dauer ist, das ist der ewige Fortbestand—zunächst aber den zeitlichen Bestand des Leibes, dessen vollkommene Ordnung allein durch den staatlichen Zusammenschluß begründet wird.”78 In English: “in order to attain a world of complete and everlasting bliss it is necessary first, however, to ensure the temporal continuity of the body whose perfect order is established only through political organization. In Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation of the Guide: ʤʣʩʮʲʤ ʠʥʤʥ .ʪʥʸʠʥ ʡʥʨ ʥʬʥʫʹ ʭʬʥʲ ʬʠ ʲʩʢʤʬ ,ʯʮʦ ʺʶʷ ʺʫʹʮʰʤ ʤʰʥʹʠʸʤ ʺʩʮʹʢʤ ʤʣʩʮʲʤ ʺʠʦ ʠʥʤ ʤʦʤ ʭʥʩʤʫ ʥʰʺʥʩʧʬ :ʥʸʮʠʥ ,ʺʣʮʺʮʤ :ʩʰʩʣʮʤ ʵʥʡʩʷʡ ʠʬʠ ʺʸʣʥʱʮ ʭʬʹʺ ʠʬ ʸʹʠ Significantly, Altmann subsumes those sections from the Guide discussing providence (III 8, 17, 20) under the rubric of Schicksal. He too, then, like Glatzer and Ludwig Strauß connects his anthology to the ongoing discussion prompted by Heidegger’s philosophical and Schmitt’s political existentialism. In his epilogue, Altmann interprets destiny and providence in Judaism as a dialectical unity: “In his interpretation of destiny, too, Maimonides decidedly speaks in behalf of Jewish faith. Here that becomes primarily a matter of defending the idea of divine providence.”79 Rival conceptions of providence as predestined fate, determined by divine decree or as the dictate of man’s ontological situation, a function of our embodiment, had tended to be superseded by Heidegger’s notion of Schicksal. But as Altmann interprets Maimonides, the Jewish response to one’s Schicksal must not be obfuscated by metaphysics. Resolute acceptance of Jewish “destiny,” as historically inscribed, would have to be grounded in an “informed analysis of our historical becoming” (erkenntnismässige Analyse unseres Gewordenseins).80 Tradition, which Altmann links with Heidegger’s concept of heritage (Erbe), would necessarily remain the foundation out of which Jews would respond to their historical situation.

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The tensions between reason and revelation and between personal moral autonomy and shared historical destiny are especially sensitive as regards the matter of providence. The Rambam’s writing (Guide III 17), that “providence is a function of divine retribution,”81 and that reward and punishment are allotted according to one’s “just deserts,” would surely provide little comfort in a time of persecution. Yet both Glatzer and Altmann held fast to the view that belief in divine providence is essential to Jewish faith. Neither would exclude from his anthology even the more troubling remarks of Maimonides on this score. Both saw destiny and providence as intertwined in the Torah in a meaningful axiological nexus, balancing God’s will with human freedom. Providence conditions freedom of will just as that freedom is a precondition of the law. In Altmann’s translation: “Es ist eine Grundlehre der Tora unseres Lehrers Moses . . . , daß dem Menschen die volle Handlungsfreiheit (she ha-adam ba‘al yekholet g‘murah) gegeben ist”82 “It is a fundamental doctrine of our teacher Moses that man is granted complete freedom of action.”83 This message is taken to be universal. Here and in Glatzer’s similar rendering,84 the moral worth of all collective conduct rests on individual responsibility. Just as God, the author of the moral law, acts in accord with it, man must strive to realize it. Imitatio Dei lies at the heart of the Jewish understanding of destiny: “[Personal providence] is the only kind of providence that is dependent on the merit of an individual’s deeds in all [his] relations as well as [his response to] good and bad Schicksale.”85 Defending the idea of divine justice, Maimonides objects to the identification of providence with a predestined fate: “Providence is conditioned by reason, with which it is most intimately bound.”86 Significantly, Altmann rejects the common translation “freedom of will,” in favor of “freedom of action,” placing the emphasis on moral agency. Read in the light of Altmann’s ethical adaptation of the Heideggerian idea of destiny, the idea of will as a dialectical correlate of destiny, thereby takes on an existential quality.87 In heeding moral reason, the will determines one’s destiny, or in the language of tradition, one’s personal providence. In his selection of chapter 32 from part II of the Guide, Altmann closes with a literal translation of a key passage: Doch gibt es zahlreiche Schriftverse und Worte der Weisen, die insgesamt dem Grundsatz folgen, daß Gott zum Propheten werden läßt, wen Er will und wann Er will, doch nur den Vollkommenden und Hervorragenden (hame‘uleh be-takhlit), niemals den Unverständigen aus der großen Menge (hapeta’īm me-‘amei ha-aretz). Einen solchen Menschen vermag Er so wenig zum Propheten zu machen, wie es unmöglich ist, daß ein Esel oder Frosch zum Propheten werde.”88 Yet there are numerous scriptural verses and teachings of the Sages that together amount to the following principle: God chooses to become a prophet whomever and whenever He wishes, but only those individuals who are perfect and exceptional, and never those from among the masses


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who lack understanding. He would no more deign to make such a person a prophet than it would be possible for an ass or frog to become a prophet.

The text continues to elaborate this proposition, and there is no obvious reason to have cut off the selection with this forthright statement. But the effect of stopping at this point is to produce an ironic, even mocking allusion to Hitler as the self-declared prophet of the Third Reich.89 V. D E F E N D I N G L I B E R A L A N D H U M A N I S T I C VA L U E S

In sifting the texts of Maimonides and selecting the passages that bespeak the liberal and liberative values and principles of Judaism, in highlighting the centrality of the ethical and downplaying the intellectual perfection that Maimonides had privileged, the German anthologies framed a defiant if muted response to the regnant political and existential nihilism of the Nazis and the theoretical descants of Schmitt and Heidegger. The anthologies thus afford a striking counterpoint to the pessimistic view of human nature that was helping to underwrite political authoritarianism. And yet, even by engaging in such a polemic, Altmann and Glatzer had assumed an apologetic posture. And that posture betrayed the weakness that Leo Strauss diagnosed as “the political-theological predicament” of German Jewry and ascribed to an unwillingness to let go of what he saw as the chimerical promises of liberalism. Altmann shared Strauss’s view that Maimonides had forged a unique blend of Aristotelian and Platonic principles. But his selections from the Guide and his contemporaneous essays on the Rambam show an overriding desire to articulate a new liberal Orthodox position. Similarly, the Rambam remains, for Glatzer, an icon of liberal humanism who interprets Jewish law as a constitution that is distinctive and historical but at the same time universal in its significance.90 Neither Glatzer nor Altmann questioned the liberal vision or its centrality to the Jewish future, despite or perhaps precisely because of the rescinding of political emancipation. Nor did they, as Strauss demanded, systematically revisit the medieval Jewish conception of polity and faith. Their task, as they saw it, was to rehearse and reiterate by way of the Rambam the liberal values that German Jewry had embraced as it entered the modern world. Against the backdrop of the Third Reich, their image of Maimonides as a precursor of the modern, enlightened sensibility is a defiant reaffirmation of the liberal humanistic vision. By overlaying onto his texts the language of constitutional law (Vollmacht, Bevollmächtigung, Grundsatz), Glatzer offers a judicious but pointed critique of Schmitt’s political-theological theory and his vision of a new order, which was adopted with alacrity by the Nazis to give their totalitarianism a veneer of intellectual respectability. Schmitt’s diagnosis of the ills afflicting Germany also had one prominent Jewish adherent, Hans-Joachim Schoeps, who blamed

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the liberal constitution of the Weimar Republic for the political-theological crisis of Judaism.91 Blending Schmitt’s political theology with Karl Barth’s teachings, Schoeps developed a radical dialectical Jewish theology, which stripped Judaism of virtually all its nomistic and cultural-national elements. Conceiving of Judaism as a meta-political community, which could only recognize a non-Jewish political sovereign, Schoeps—a die-hard German nationalist—sought to align the Jewry of the “fatherland” with National Socialism, only to be summarily rebuffed by the guardians of the Third Reich. In his representation of Maimonides, Glatzer offers a daring inversion of some of the key antiliberal terms and concepts of Schmitt’s secularized Catholic politics. Schmitt had upheld the notion of a “concrete order” that is transcendent and antecedent to the state. He had impugned social orders like that of Judaism that are governed chiefly by moral norms. In Schmitt’s theory, the Church had forged “divine substance” into an institution, and that was the source of its preeminent political authority. But Jews were not “a people that exists in the sphere of the political”92—a clear sign of their spiritual desiccation. Against this portrayal, Altmann and Glatzer’s representations of Maimonides portray a liberal Judaism whose meta-historical and meta-political orientation subjects the political to the ethical and vests its legitimacy not in the sheer dynamics of positivity—not even of divine positivity—but in the pure ideals of right and justice, which God himself enunciates. Glatzer and Strauß in SuS, and Glatzer in his anthology, present Maimonides as a spokesman of the view that the unique destiny of the Jews was one of political powerlessness.93 Here passivity defined Jewish ethics. But as a result, no positive value was assigned to mere power.94 Representation is the key conceptual term in Schmitt’s theory of the political order.95 “The Church is a concrete personal representation of a concrete personality.”96 The underlying assumption was of a tight bond with the state as the not-so-silent partner of the “invisible” Sovereign, God.97 Post-biblical Judaism, by contrast, finds no such representation of “the idea,” expressed in the canon of revelation. Nor does Judaism recognize the political order as in any sense an incarnation of the Logos that would endow any merely political institution with sacred authority. Neither the Synagogue nor the Sanhedrin could possibly acquire the status of an “infallible authority.” Through his translation of Maimonides on prophecy, Altmann sensitizes the reader to the enduring recognition of the problem of false authority. Genuine authority, from a normative Jewish standpoint, can never be based on sheer power or on any political-theological foundation that might give political decisions a status independent of ethical norms. Judaism knows only a human authority performing what Altmann calls “the human work on revelation”:98 “In Judaism the people, Israel, stand in the place of the Church as the direct bearer of the historical revelation.”99 The covenant is represented not by some figure of authority but rather through the life of Torah, in “the authority of the Word” (Wortautorität) and the living process of its ongoing interpretation. In


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a similar spirit, albeit less succinctly, Glatzer/Strauß affirm in their Rambam anthology that Jewish “destiny” manifests itself in the life of the Torah: “Scripture seals the mission of the people and determines its destiny.”100 Altmann and Glatzer made of their anthologies vehicles of Jewish selfassertion and moral resistance to National Socialism. Presenting Maimonides as emblematic of the Jewish symbiosis with non-Jewish culture, they responded to the ‘Dialectics of Enlightenment’ that had seemed to some to undermine the possibility of any genuine intercultural sensibility. Praising Maimonides’ work as, in Glatzer’s words, “symbolic of the whole of Jewish history,” they adopted an existential conception of Jewish destiny that induced their readers to turn inward and cultivate Jewish knowledge and consciousness as a redoubt of spiritual resistance. The two scholars did not forswear the liberal assumption that culture had a domain unto itself, impervious to politics and history. Had their idea of culture not led them to construe Jewish powerlessness as itself somehow a meta-historical virtue, they might have conscripted the anthologized text to forge a sharper message, still tucked between the lines, alerting German Jews to the failure of the Emancipation, at least in the Germany they knew, and awakening in them a resolve to emigrate while they could, rather than reaffirm, even in modified form, the traditional understanding of Jewish history and destiny as a ‘dialectic of suffering.’ NOTES 1. As translated into German by N.N. Glatzer, 1935, 92. 2. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 32. 3. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 22. 4. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 23. 5. Lambert Schneider, Rechenschaft, S. 38. See also Anthony David, The Patron, 220–222. 6. The Rambam anthologies were published just before the ordinance issued in April 1935 by the Reichsschriftumskammer (RSK) came into effect. See Dahm, Das Jüdische Buch Im dritten Reich, volume 2: Salman Schocken und sein Verlag Philharmonic 5.2.2. 7. Ernst Simon, Aufbau im Untergang, 75. Buber was subject to the Redeverbot issued on February 21, 1935, after his public lecture in the Berlin Philharmonic “Über die Mächtigkeit des Geistes.” Cf. Simon, Aufbau im Untergang, 73. 8. Dahm, Das Jüdische Buch, 2.398. 9. See, for example, Fritz Bamberger, “Maimonides und seine Wirkung in die Zeit,” Der Morgen (April 1935) 6. 10. Glatzer, 1935, 16. 11. The “strictly halakhic dimension of his teachings” was since the nineteenth century often overlooked. Eliezer Schweid, “Religion and Philosophy,” 166, n. 10. 12. Schweid, 167, n. 11.

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13. “It is the ultimate and most articulate meaning of Maimonides’ theory of attributes that God is not the God of metaphysics, nor the God of cosmic substance, but the God of ethics, that is, the God of humankind. God as the paradigm and ideal for human emulation and the human self: Solely on this human ethical ideal does God relate to the world and humanity” (Hermann Cohen, Ethics of Maimonides, 192). 14. See in this context, Michael A. Meyer, “Maimonides and Some Moderns.” 15. L. Strauss, Philosophy and Law, 21. 16. For a more elaborate discussion, see Paul Mendes-Flohr, “The TheologicalPolitical Predicament of Modern Judaism.” 17. SuS was translated into English and edited by Glatzer as A Jewish Reader: In Time and Eternity but with a revised structure. Without Ludwig Strauss as his co-editor, Glatzer decided to add texts, among them some pieces from his earlier Rambam anthology. Further, he left out the elaborate epilogue. In Time and Eternity—the title seems purposely reminiscent of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit—appeals to a Zionist commitment. Rambam’s elaboration on the laws concerning “The Proselyte,” previously included in the anthology of 1935, is here integrated into a chapter called “The Destiny of Israel,” to underscore that Judaism gives primacy to faith over a racial coding of identity. The chapter title “On Good and Evil, on the Necessary and the Superfluous, and the Proper World Order” is emptied of its Schmittian politico-theological connotations and modified to “The Design in the Universe.” The ‘Thirteen Articles of Faith’ are left out, also in Maimonides Said (see following note). In lieu of medieval documents of Jewish martyrdom (hallowing of the divine Name), Glatzer presents here a testimony from the land of Israel recorded by Flavius Josephus, namely Eleazar’s speech at Masada, which he defiantly entitles “To Die as Free Men!” 18. An English translation appeared as Maimonides Said: An Anthology. This volume contains only one third of the original German Maimonides anthology of 1935, and many texts are much abridged. The anthology opens with an account by Maimonides of how he escaped persecution and arrived in the land of Israel. This text had autobiographical relevance to Glatzer. In his short preface Glatzer summarizes Maimonides’ lasting significance: “Maimonides’ conception of Judaism was broadminded and all-inclusive. It assimilated many great ideas of the non-Jewish world without adulterating the essential teachings of Judaism. This is why Maimonides’ work is of timeless importance. It is, in fact, symbolic for the whole of Jewish history.” (ibid, 10, emphasis mine). Significantly, all those sections that were used by Glatzer to imbue Maimonides with concepts and terms relevant to the political-philosophical discourse of Germany in the 1930s are left out. The title “Von der Weltordnung,” for instance, is linked here unambiguously to the problem of theodicy and rendered “Good and Evil in the World,” and even sentences where order is used in reference to Jewish law, such as, “You should pronounce all this according to its order (Ordnung) . . .” (1935, 112) are modified to “Pronounce all prayers as they are written.” (1941, 57). The chapter “The Judge,” in which Glatzer outlines the ethos of jurisprudence in Judaism, as well as “On the Order of the School,” and the “Thirteen Articles of Faith” are left out. 19. Whereas Altmann limits his Rambam anthology to selections from the Moreh Nevukhim, Glatzer draws upon a great variety of writings from the Rambam, among them the Mishneh Torah, Moreh Nevukhim, Sh’monah P’raqim, his Commentary on the Mishnah and Qovetz T’shuvot ha-Rambam and T’shuvot ha-Rambam.


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20. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, 429. 21. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 1984, 294; Being and Time, 340. 22. In his critique of Plato’s political philosophy focused as he understood it on theory and knowledge, Heidegger argued for a unity of knowing and acting, which he believed he had found in Aristotle’s approach to Dasein, namely, in the latter’s concept of phronesis (practical wisdom). Whatever the appeal of Heidegger’s “phronetic” existentialism may have been for Jews, his concept of Schicksal was undoubtedly unsettling. Developed most fully in section 74 of Sein und Zeit, as Fritsche points out, the notion of Schicksal must be read “from its historical context” and “polemic situation.” In just five pages, Heidegger concisely summarizes the common motif uniting the parties of the revolutionary political Right in their fight against romantic right-wingers, liberals and leftists.” J. Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 129. 23. “ . . . Sendung am Schicksal stetig sich bewährend, Schicksal an der Sendung stetig sich mit Sinn erfüllen.” SuS, 362. 24. “ein religiös-neutraler Bereich besteht nicht, und in jedem Augenblick vollzieht sich die menschliche Entscheidung.” SuS, 350. 25. Italics mine. In his anthology of 1935, Glatzer presents the same passage under the simplified title “On the World Order.” 26. “Es galt nicht, Gegensätze zu verwischen, sondern sie einander ergänzen zu lassen.” SuS, 348. 27. Glatzer/Strauss, 362. 28. See L.E. Goodman, On Justice, Chapter 5. 29. L. Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt, ‘Der Begriff des Politischen’,” 217; cf. Der Begriff des Politischen, 1932, 81. In this context, see also Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue. 30. Ibid., 220. 31. Cf. Hans Bach, “Die neue Ordnung,” Der Morgen, no. 3 (August 1933), 160. 32. Glatzer, 1935, 73. 33. Glatzer, 1935, 71 f., emphasis mine. 34. In SuS this Chapter is entitled, “Über die Freiheit des Willens” (On the Freedom of Will) whereas Glatzer (1935) has: “Menschenwille und Vorsehung” (Human Will and Providence). 35. Rambam elaborates his position against that of Epicurus, Aristotle, the Ash‘ariyyah, and the Mu‘tazilites. 36. Spitzer to Glatzer, January 30, 1935, Glatzer Collection, Vanderbilt University. 37. Cf. Glatzer, 1935, 13. 38. Spitzer to Glatzer, June 20, 1934, Glatzer Collection, Vanderbilt University, emphasis mine. 39. Glatzer, 1935, 8. 40. Glatzer, 1935, 11.

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41. Glatzer, 1935, 11, emphasis mine. 42. Doch ein Richter, der ein wahres Urteil seiner Wahrheit gemäss fällt, und wäre es nur eine Stunde lang, der hat gleichsam die ganze Welt geordnet. Glatzer, 1935, 116. 43. Glatzer, 1935, 78. 44. “Catholicism goes further because it represents something other and more than secular jurisprudence—not only the idea of justice but also the person of Christ—that substantiates its claim to a unique power and authority. [ . . . ] In the proud history of the Roman Church, the ethos of its own power stands side by side with the ethos of justice. It is even enhanced by the Church’s prestige, glory, and honor. The Church commands recognition as the bride of Christ; it represents Christ reigning, ruling, conquering. Its claim to prestige and honor rests on the eminent idea of representation; it engenders the eternal opposition of justice and beauty.” Carl Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, 30 ff. 45. Given Glatzer’s nigh-exclusive emphasis on the ethical-religious aspects in Maimonides’ thought, the subtitle “systematischer Querschnitt” of his anthology remains an unfulfilled promise. In his Introduction to the English translation (Maimonides Said, 1941, 10) Glatzer drops the original subtitle and expressis verbis modifies his earlier claim to comprehensiveness: “This anthology does not pretend to offer a complete cross-section of Maimonides’ thought.” 46. SuS, 359. 47. “Schroff dagegen steht die Lehre des Maimonides, der das messianische Reich als ein nur diesseitiges begreifen will.” SuS, 360. As Goodman documents, Maimonides had a rabbinic precedent for this approach. 48. Evidently, he was not fully content with the rendering of the texts in the anthology he co-edited with Ludwig Strauß four years earlier. Strauß had a predilection for the poetic idiom which Glatzer did not share. 49. With the exception of “Zur Lehre von der Umkehr” from Hilkhot T’shuvah 11. 50. Strauss translates, for instance, the Hebrew word ‘iqqar in poetic-mystical idiom as “root” (Wurzel) whereas Glatzer consistently adheres to a more theoretical language as “basic principle” (Grundsatz). 51. Cf. David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History, 42. 52. Whereas Glatzer/Strauß translate in SuS this phrase in poetic language as “die Welt, nach ihrem Brauche übt sie Brauch,” Glatzer in consonance with his preference for social-political diction renders minhag ha-‘olam as Weltordnung (world order). 53. Glatzer, 1935, 149, emphasis mine. 54. In the initial draft of the table of contents, Glatzer had a traditional title “On the Sanctification of the divine Name.” That he changed the chapter heading to “In Times of Persecution” attests to the program of “concealed” criticism. No other chapter heading was changed. (undated letter of Glatzer to Moritz Spitzer, Schocken Archive Jerusalem, doc. 332/45). 55. Glatzer, 1935, 136–37. 56. Glatzer does not include this text in the English translation of his Maimonides anthology (Maimonides Said, 1941) but in the English translation or rather adap-


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tation of SuS (A Jewish Reader: In Time and Eternity, 1946, 192f.). Reconsidering the original title “In Times of Persecution” he finally but, tragically, belatedly opts for a title that encompasses an unambiguous message: “Emigration.” 57. Glatzer, 1935, 155–56. 58. I follow here the English translation of Glatzer, Maimonides Said, 55. 59. “Selbst an jedem Worte des Menschen hängt ihr Schicksal; das wahre Wort beständigt ihre Ordnung, das unwahre droht sie ins Chaos zurückzustürzen.” SuS, 351, emphasis mine. 60. Alexander Altmann, The Meaning of Jewish Existence, 62. Originally published as “Die religiöse Welt des Mittelalters,” Der Morgen, 10/9, December 1934, 396, emphasis mine. 61. Altmann, 1935, 87. 62. Altmann, who bases his translation on Salomon Munk’s critical edition of the original Arabic text of the Guide, criticized the German translation of Adolf Weiss (Leipzig, 1923), who used Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation, for lacking in the “precision of thought.” 63. Altmann, 1935, 57 (Guide II 36). The Hebrew version reads: ʤʩʤʩʹ ʣʥʲ ʩʥʠʸ ʯʫʥ ʺʹʷʡ :ʸʮʥʬ ʩʰʥʶʸ—ʺʥʩʺʩʮʠ ʭʰʩʠʹ ʺʥʸʸʹʬʥ ʺʥʩʹʸʬ ʥʺʷʥʹʺ ʤʷʱʴʥ ʥʺʡʹʧʮ ʤʬʨʡʺʰ ʸʡʫ ʹʩʠʤ ʤʦ ʭʺʣʥʡʲʥ ʥʩʬʠ ʭʣʥʡʫ ʪʩʹʮʤʥ ʥʬ ʭʲʤ ʬʩʣʢʤ ʥʠ ʧʥʶʩʰʤ 64. Pines, 372. 65. Adolf Weiss, Mose ben Maimon. Führer der Unschlüssigen, 2.244, n. 40, has the following note: “Eine Anspielung auf Mohammed,” and translates the passage as follows: “Es ist jedoch ferner notwendig, daß das Denken und Verlangen dieser Persönlichkeit nach Machtbefugnis und Herrschaft, die keine wirklichen Güter sind, nämlich das Streben nach Geltung oder das Verlangen beim Volke angesehen, geehrt und ausschließlich um seiner selbst willen zu sein, bereits überwunden sei. . . .” 66. See in this context, Abraham Melamed, The Philosopher-King in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Thought. 67. In contrast to Christianity, Judaism did not develop a theory of sovereignty or divine representation. Cf. Zvi Shwarz, The Social and Political Ideas of Maimonides, 120 f. 68. Altmann, 1935, 81 has “Autorität der Schrift.” With implicit reference to the Führerkult, Altmann argues in 1936 that Judaism rejects any claim to human selfrepresentation, which is a form of Bildautorität characteristic of pagan culture and Greek myth. In Altmann’s endorsement of a radical ethical monotheism in which God is the ethical authority, “humble submission under the divine Law” stands in stark contrast to the “self-importance of auctoritas.” Judaism acknowledges only an authority based on God’s word (Wortautorität); auctoritas is not visual and paradigmatic but verbal and demanding: “There is no paradigmatic embodiment of the Absolute (Vollendeten). . . . Man is never an authority by virtue of himself, but only by virtue of the teaching he represents, a teaching vouchsafed by God. . . . He announces the word of God but does not represent it.” Altmann, “Bildautorität und Wortautorität,” in Bayerische Israelitische Gemeindezeitung, 12/11 (1 June 1936) 244. See MT Hilkhot Melakhim; Goodman, On Justice, chapter 5.

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69. Altmann, “Was ist Jüdische Theologie?,” 35. 70. Ibid. 71. “Wir deutschen Juden, unserem Blute treu und deutschem Boden und Geiste zugehörig, werden das deutsche Schicksal teilen und, will es Gott, eines Tages auch daran wieder beteiligt sein.” Bach, “Die neue Ordnung,” 164. 72. “[S]ie [die Juden] können nie die Fähigkeit haben, unser Schicksal zu teilen und mitzubestimmen.” Cited according to Bach, “Die neue Ordnung,” 162. 73. Pines: “the improvement of their ways of living with one another.” 74. Pines: “their wrongdoing each other.” 75. Pines: “not being permitted to act according to his will and up to the limits of his power.” 76. Altmann, 1935, 74, emphasis mine. 77. Ibid. 78. Altmann, 1935, 76, emphasis mine. Shlomo Pines translates here: “which can only be well ordered through political association. . . .” (512). 79. Altmann, 1935, 86, emphasis mine. 80. Altmann, “Die religiöse Welt des Mittelalters,” 396. 81. Fritz Bamberger, Das System des Maimonides, 119. 82. Altmann, 1935, 68 (Guide III 17). 83. Pines: “that man has an absolute ability to act” (469). 84. Glatzer translates in his Rambam anthology as “Freiheit der Wahl” (freedom of choice), which adds yet another nuance to the theme of freedom of will. 85. “Diese Art ist die einzige, deren Einzelwesen in allen ihren Verhältnissen und guten oder bösen Schicksalen vom Verdienst ihrer Werke abhängen.” Altmann, 1935, 70 (Guide III 17), emphasis mine. 86. Altmann, 1935, 71 (Guide III 17). 87. See, Altmann, “On the Meaning of Religious Action” (1932), in Altmann, The Meaning of Jewish Existence, 16–29. In this phenomenological analysis of religious action (Handlung), Altmann draws primarily upon Husserl, Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, and his Doktorvater Paul Hoffmann. Heidegger’s notion of Handlung as an expression of existential authenticity is also palpably present. 88. Altmann, 1935, 53. 89. Hitler repeatedly claimed his political predictions to be prophecy as documented, for instance, in his address to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939. 90. Guide III 39: the Law of Moses is the best ‘constitution’ devised for mankind. 91. See Carl Schmidt, “Verwechslungen: Hans Joachim Schoeps,” esp. 163f. 92. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 50. 93. See in this context Biale, Power and Powerlessness, which critically reevaluates the thesis of Jewish powerlessness, and Eugene R. Sheppard, “‘I am Memory Come Alive’,” 127.


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94. Only in the English translation of 1941 would Glatzer modify his earlier Diasporic, metapolitical view of Jewish history, adding to Maimonides’ reading of the Messianic Age also his call upon the Jews to live in Palestine. 95. See in this context, Duncan Kelly, “Carl Schmitt’s Political Theory of Representation.” 96. Roman Catholicism, 18. 97. Ibid., 25. 98. “Was ist Jüdische Theologie?,” 1933, 17. 99. “Anstelle der Kirche steht im Judentum das Volk als der unmittelbare Träger der historischen Offenbarung.” Altmann, “Was ist Jüdische Theologie?,” 13. 100. SuS, 354.


NINE

Maimonides in the Crucible of Zionism: Reflections on Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s Negative Theology Paul Mendes-Flohr

In 1997, a Jerusalem publisher issued a posthumous Hebrew volume entitled Conversations with Yeshayahu Leibowitz on Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed.1 This prodigious volume of close to nine hundred pages bears the dedication: “A Monument in Memory of our teacher Reb Yeshayahu the son of Mordecai Leibowitz, who until the very moment of his death did not cease to warn against the sanctification of the secular (kiddush ha-ḥolin) and the desecration of the holy (ḥilul ha-Kodesh).”2 Based on the transcripts of Leibowitz’s discussions on Maimonides, conducted with a variety of groups, mostly Israeli high school and university students, the volume is indeed a fitting homage to the philosopher, who died in 1994 at the age of ninety one. For five decades and more he stood at the gates of Jerusalem warning of the dangers of idolatry that he saw sweeping the land of Israel. With prophetic intonations, he fulminated against observant Jews who ascribed religious meaning and value to the state and who cynically exploited the instruments and accoutrements of political power to advance pragmatic, sectarian interests. With equal vigor he resolutely admonished the secular custodians of the state for mobilizing religious sentiments and symbols to justify secular decisions and actions. Citing Maimonides, Leibowitz regarded these abuses of Israel’s ancient faith as tantamount to idolatry, ‘avodah zarah, the worship of alien gods. The enfant terrible of Israeli political culture, Leibowitz had a public image that was refracted through the many legends spun about his phenomenal learning. Some say that he had five doctorates, others six, even eight. In truth he had but two: one in chemistry from the University of Berlin and another in medicine earned at the University of Basel. He did, however, study philosophy extensively at various German universities. In his native Latvia, he acquired a firm and broad knowledge of the classical texts of Judaism before 181

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going to Berlin, in his early twenties, to pursue graduate studies. On emigrating to Palestine in 1935, he was appointed to the faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he taught organic chemistry, biology and neurophysiology. He would also later teach the history and philosophy of science. His famed erudition led to his appointment as the editor-in-chief of the Hebrew Encyclopedia. But Leibowitz was, above all, a homo politicus, deeply engaged in the Zionist project. He was among the founders of the Religious Worker’s party (ha-‘Oved ha-Dati); and, on the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, he was even a candidate of that party for the first Knesset. His failure to be elected seems only to have energized his political engagement. He soon joined forces with the opposition to the first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and Ben-Gurion’s program of étatism (mamlakhtiut). On assuming power, Ben-Gurion set out to incorporate within the bureaucracy of the nascent state all the institutions of the former Jewish community of Palestine. These included the voluntary organizations, the various political institutions, the educational, economic and agricultural institutions, and even prestate organizations of military defense. Leibowtiz believed that the nationalization of these institutions would undermine the volunteer ethos of the country and that concentration of power in the government invited corruption. As a pious Jew he felt even deeper misgivings. In his opposition to Ben-Gurion’s étatism he joined forces with Eliezer Livneh, a secular socialist and erstwhile ally of the Prime Minister’s, who transformed a cultural and political monthly that he edited into a forum for the opponents of étatism and a vigilant watchdog against corruption and the abuse of political power. Leibowitz wrote in virtually every issue of Livneh’s journal, Be-Terem, from 1951 on. He soon gained the reputation of an unyielding critic of the government’s social and political policy. His critiques touched on virtually every aspect of that policy, from wages to health care, from the government’s treatment of the Arab minority to its relations with the United States. The popularity of his trenchant analyses was enhanced by his acerbic style, peppered with sarcastic humor and inflected with learned references to Jewish and general literature. His chief bêtes noires were what he saw as Ben-Gurion’s political messianism and the co-opting of religious parties. BenGurion welcomed the religious parties into his coalition in a symbolic gesture of unity. For the Jewish people, only recently emerged from the horror of the Holocaust, now faced the Promethean task of building their reborn state. But Leibowitz suspected the Prime Minister of ulterior motives. He recounted a heated exchange he once had with Ben-Gurion. The Prime Minister had noted that Leibowitz advocated resistance by observant Jews to the blandishments of political power and had urged them to oppose the “cult of the state.” Ben-Gurion told the philosopher: I well understand why you demand so insistently the separation of religion and state. Your objective is that the Jewish religion reinstate itself as an independent factor with which the political authority will be compelled to

M A I MON I DE S I N T H E C RUC I BL E OF Z ION I S M

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deal. [Therefore] I will never agree to the separation of religion from the state. I want the state to hold religion in the palm of its hand.3

Leibowitz found this to be a telling admission and would later remark that “the status of the Jewish religion in the State of Israel is that of a kept mistress of the secular government—therefore it is contemptible.”4 But it was BenGurion’s ascription of religious, even messianic significance to his policies that truly aroused Leibowitz’s ire.5 Evoking the vision of the biblical prophets, Ben-Gurion gave the Israel Defense Forces the sublime task of absorbing into the Zionist state the sons and daughters of displaced Jewish immigrants from “the seventy lands of their exile.” Under the benign tutelage of the military, immigrant soldiers would be taught not only the art of war but also the requisite skills to participate fully and with dignity in the state—first and foremost, the Hebrew language and Zionist values. The army would, Ben-Gurion claimed, thus play a decisive role in welding the immigrants into the new and proud nation. With the wounds of millennial wanderings now healed, the people would, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah, become “a light unto the nations.”6 Leibowitz found the political use of this image sacrilegious and profoundly dangerous. Leibowitz was hardly a pacifist. In Israel’s War of Independence he served as a platoon leader in the defense of Jerusalem. He viewed the military as a necessary evil that must be recognized as such, lest the instruments of violence it needed take on a self-justifying life of their own. Leibowitz’s forebodings were tragically confirmed in October, 1953, when in reprisal for continual terrorist attacks, a unit of the Israel Defense Forces, led by a young officer named Arik Sharon, crossed the border into the Kingdom of Jordan and laid siege to the Arab village of Kibiyeh, leaving more than fifty of its civilian inhabitants dead and destroying forty homes. The incident was met with stern condemnation in the world at large and in Israel itself. In a long, passionate article published in Be-Terem, Leibowitz argued that there was “a specifically Jewish aspect to the Kibiyeh incident, not a moral problem but an authentically religious one.” He called on the Israeli public to “search its soul” and ask: What produced this generation of youth, which felt no inhibition or inner compunction in perpetrating the atrocity, once given the inner urge and external occasion for retaliation? After all, these young people were not a wild mob but youths raised and nurtured on the values of a Zionist education, on concepts of the dignity of man and a humane society. The answer is that the events of Kibiyeh were a consequence of applying the religious category of holiness to social, national, and political values and interests—a use widely made in our education and mass media. The concept of holiness—the concept of the absolute that is beyond all categories of human thought and evaluation—is applied to the mundane sphere. From a religious perspective only God is holy, and only His imperative is absolute. All human values and all obligations and undertakings derived from them are profane

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and have no absolute validity. Country, state, and nation impose pressing obligations and tasks that are sometimes very difficult. They do not, on that account, acquire sanctity. They are always subject to judgment and criticism from a higher standpoint. For the sake of that which is holy—and perhaps only for its sake—man is capable of acting without any restraint. In our discourse and practice we have uprooted the concept of holiness from its authentic ground and applied it to matters for which it was not destined, courting all the dangers implied by its distorted use.7

The theological presuppositions of this critique would be elaborated in a long series of articles and books on Maimonides. The first of these, “Maimonides— An Abrahamic Man,” was an essay published in Be-Terem.8 This article constructs the scaffolding of all Leibowitz’s subsequent writings on Maimonides and that in a particularly systematic and incisive way. It is an appropriate point of departure for our analysis. At the outset Leibowitz stresses that he reads Maimonides not as a scholar but as an observant Jew for whom Judaism is a “living reality,” a distinctive “way of life” determined by halakhah.9 To the Jew who lives in a world constituted by the Torah and its precepts, Leibowitz affirms, “Maimonides, the man of halakhah, is an unmediated reality (literally, an experience), whereas he regards Maimonides the thinker—the theologian, the philosopher, the scientist—solely as data for investigation and rational reflection. The former, he feels, the latter, he knows.”10 Leibowitz defiantly contrasts the Maimonides who is honored by the observant Jew with the Maimonides who commands the attention of the academic. To typify the conceptual and existential error that informs the work of scholars of Maimonides, he singles out Leo Strauss, who perhaps came to mind because the University of Chicago professor had only recently spent a sabbatical year in Jerusalem. Strauss seeks to explain Maimonides’ project, Leibowitz observes, “by wrenching it out of the realm of pure religiosity (datiut tz’rufah), either as an intellectual exercise or as an emotional experience, and casting it as a project guiding and legislating for human society, much in the manner of the task that Plato assigned to the philosopher.” Strauss’ conception, Leibowitz continues, is “prima facie not negated by the fourteen volumes of the Yad ha-Ḥazakhah [Maimonides’ code of Jewish law] which scholars are generally not accustomed to treat”—for the significance of these fourteen volumes can, in fact, be readily integrated into Strauss’s interpretative framework. But Strauss’ conception of Maimonides is “refuted by the entire spiritual atmosphere that suffuses Maimonides’s project.”11 Academic scholars err in considering the many facets of Maimonides’ work as if they were separate, parallel activities. The fact is, Leibowitz insists, “Maimonides was not a philosopher. . . . Failure to understand this fundamental fact has led to the absurd, tasteless, and fallacious attempts to draw a distinction between ‘the Maimonides of the Yad ha-Ḥazakhah’ and ‘the Maimonides of the


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Guide,’ with the latter completely irrelevant to the former.”12 Hence, Leibowitz argues, “it is essential to regard the Yad and the Guide as forming an integral whole. For without the concepts articulated in the Guide, Maimonides would not have dedicated so much of his life to producing the Yad. And, conversely, without the background of the Yad, he could not have written a single chapter of the Guide.”13 When Maimonides’ philosophical and halakhic writings are considered as an integral whole, Leibowitz concludes, it should become manifest that his writings ultimately “were philosophical neither in purpose nor in content.” For the knowledge Maimonides sought was not that of the philosopher, a knowledge satisfying the omnivorous appetite of reason for objective truth. What motivated Maimonides was not a quest for knowledge for its own sake, but the profound, insatiable desire “to know God and cleave to Him.”14 Impelling this quest was Maimonides’ realization that “in the face of God’s greatness and majestic glory all human values and achievements are negated, of which philosophical knowledge is but one.”15 This bold thesis, challenging regnant academic opinion, was born of an ideological agenda, or rather a theological posture that bore a political sting. Addressing primarily secular Zionist intellectuals, Leibowitz sought to conscript the prestige of Maimonides to advance his conception of the relation between religion and state—and not only to set religion apart from the state, but also to place religion in vigilant opposition to the state and the inevitable conceits of power. To advance this program, he spoke as a practicing Jew who read Maimonides from within the tradition. He questioned the academic conception of the sage of Cordova as primarily a philosopher. Perhaps more significantly, he sought to undercut the widespread image of Maimonides as a prototype of the modern Jew, a rational, liberal humanist. Here we encounter an apparent paradox in Leibowitz’s own thought. He espoused principles and perused causes best described as humanistic. Yet he excoriated humanists, who are beholden, in his judgment, to a naïve conception of politics as a potentially moral force readily placed in service to social justice. Leibowitz thus advocated a critical, even meta-political distance from the corridors of power. Yet all the while he himself was passionately engaged in politics, or rather political critique.16 There is an analogue to Leibowitz’s position in twentieth-century European theology that may allow us to discern a dialectical intent to his paradoxical positions.17 The Protestant theologian Karl Barth, having witnessed the carnage of World War I and the use of religious rhetoric by each of the combatant nations to sanctify its cause, formulated a so-called dialectical theology. Appalled by the scandalous violation of the second commandment that he saw in warfare, Barth sought to free himself from the regnant liberal theological culture, grounded in the celebration of God’s immanence, a correlate to the Enlightenment faith in historical and scientific progress. He thus found it urgent to reaffirm God’s transcendence, not merely in the sense of a relative superiority above creaturely existence. Rather God was for Barth the

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Wholly Other. “God,” he wrote in his commentary on the Epistles of Paul— Der Römerbrief—written in the midst of the War, “is pure negation”:18 God is the pure and absolute boundary and beginning of all that we are and have to do; God is distinguished qualitatively from men and from everything human, and must never be identified with anything we name, or experience, or conceive, or worship . . . 19

Cognizant of the infinite distance, the ontological difference between God and ourselves, we must ever be aware of our finitude and inevitable fallibility. The ‘no’ issued by God to any pretensions that our quotidian activities are blessed by Providence is not meant to bring political and social engagement to a halt, however. There is, Barth affirmed in Der Römerbrief, “a deep secret yes under the above no.”20 Barth would continue unyieldingly to strive for social justice, but his efforts would now carry a dialectical tension: Humbled by the acknowledgement of God’s absolute transcendence, Christians must affirm the absolute transcendence of God even as they work to realize His dominion in the world. The full force of Barth’s theocentrism gained its most dramatic expression in the Barmen Declaration of 1934. Composed largely by Barth, the declaration defiantly repudiated the theological claims of Hitler and the Nazi state. “We reject,” Barth and his colleagues in the Confessing Church exclaimed, “the false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans.”21 Immediately after the issuance of the Declaration, the Nazi authorities dismissed Barth from his professorship at the University of Bonn. Within twenty-four hours he accepted an invitation from his native Switzerland to teach at the University of Bern, where Leibowitz was completing his medical studies. We do not know whether Leibowitz attended Barth’s lectures at Bern. But they were attended by hundreds and received wide attention in the local press.22 In his writings, Leibowitz mentions the Christian theologian only occasionally and in passing.23 Yet there are striking parallels in thought between the two. Both men held radically theocentric views anchored in negative theology, and both were alarmed by the frightful implications of a political ethic that failed to eschew the nostrification of the divine and the consequent idolatry of politics and the institutions of governance. Where Barth grounded his theology in Christology, Leibowitz turned to Maimonides. Before continuing our analysis of Leibowitz’s adaptation of Maimonides to the Zionist political context, we should note another circumstantial moment that attests, if not to the influence of Barth on Leibowitz, then, perhaps their affinity. In his often abrasive polemical outbursts, Leibowitz was quick to brand any semblance of chauvinism, hyperbolic patriotism, or abuse of power as fascist or Nazi-like. This manifestly offensive rhetoric might seem lacking in judgment. But, alternatively, it can also be taken as


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testifying to the fears of a Jew—a devout Jew and a fervent Zionist—who had witnessed the rise of National Socialism and the horrors attendant on the glorification of the state. Read in the light of dialectical theology and against the backdrop of the trauma of National Socialism, Leibowitz’s seminal essay on Maimonides’ Abrahamic faith takes on a special significance. For him Abraham is the Urbild of Jewish faith—the pristine image of the Jew’s utter devotion to God. Abraham’s encounter with the Transcendent, as Leibowitz reads the ancient texts, demands that each Jew, like the founding patriarch, transcend all that is worldly, including all that one holds most dear. Called by God to Mount Moriah and commanded to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac, Abraham is prepared, paradigmatically, to relinquish fatherly and humane values and heed the divine voice. It is this Abrahamic faith, on Leibowitz’s reading, that lies at the heart of Maimonides’ radically anti-eudaimonistic theocentrism. “More than any other figure in Judaism,” Leibowitz explains, “Maimonides embodies the position of the first Hebrew facing the trial of the Akedah—the binding of Isaac on the altar—where all human thought, feeling and values are absolutely nullified by the fear and love of God.”24 Abrahamic faith, as Leibowitz understood it, is a severe and disciplined service dedicated to God with no expectation of reward. The Jew fulfills the divine commandments solely to honor God, out of pure “fear and love,” not to satisfy human needs or values. To be sure, as Leibowitz readily acknowledged, Maimonides taught that the Torah and its commandments school one in moral, social and intellectual perfection. “The Law as a whole,” Maimonides tells us in the Guide of the Perplexed, “aims at two things: the welfare of the soul and the welfare of the body. As for the welfare of the soul, it consists in the multitude’s acquiring correct opinions corresponding to their respective capacity. [ . . . ] As for the welfare of the body, it comes about by the improvement of their ways of living one with another.”25 Yet, Leibowitz explains, Maimonides’ endorsement of a “utilitarian” conception of the commandments was but a concession to the benighted masses, whose obedience to the precepts of Torah does have instrumental motives. Maimonides, Leibowitz reasons, held it pedagogically myopic to ignore the endemic weakness of human character. So he deemed it prudent to accommodate our all-too-human frailty and subtly direct it to the true service to God. “Maimonides emphasizes the importance of social perfection as a necessary condition [at least with respect to the average person] for the possibility to achieve the [true] end of religion.”26 Leibowitz duly cites Maimonides, rather freely,27 “For a person will not apprehend the truth and will not perform the commandments when he is sick, hungry or fleeing his enemies.” Leibowitz comments: “for after all deprivation and fear, and to a great degree even illness, are not but functions of social reality.”28 At bottom, Leibowitz stresses, this concession to the functional, instrumental conception of religion reflects the communal character of Judaism. Although religious consciousness and sensibility are “radically private,” he points out

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in explicating Maimonides’ position, “one cannot be a Jew qua individual. A person is a Jew insofar as he belongs to the people of Torah.” 29 Membership in the Congregation of Israel bears with it responsibility to the collective and its “collective reality.”30 But, he hastens to add, Maimonides’ recognition of this reality was qualified. “All action and all social aspects of human existence,” Leibowitz states somewhat apodictically, “are reduced to the status of a propadeutic which qualifies man for the attainment of his true perfection.”31 Even the hope for salvation and redemption are extraneous to genuine service to God. Prayer too should ideally be devoid of content; indeed, its meaning is exclusively performative and has but the intrinsic value of heightening the individual’s awareness of God as the ultimate reality determining all earthly existence. Hence, the centrality to Jewish religious consciousness of Psalm 16:8, “I have set the Lord always before me,” or as Maimonides himself put it, as cited by Leibowitz, “sitting, moving or engaged in other occupations, he is always in the presence of a great king; who, when he speaks and opens his mouth always knows that he is in the Assembly of the Great King . . . who is above him, and is always joined to him” (Guide III 52).32 The commandments are thus to be performed as a sheer act of love. In a meditation on the Sh’ma‘ (Deuteronomy 6:4–9; 11:13–21 and Numbers 15:37–41), Leibowitz observes with references to Maimonides, this central credal affirmation of Judaism is “concerned with remembering and doing. It explicitly directs attention not to the subject of God and man, but to the issue of the Mitzvot [the commandments] and man: ‘And remember all the commandments of the Lord and fulfill them.” Leibowitz explains this latter verse as adjuring the faithful to “bear in mind and perform all [of God’s] commandments.” And Leibowitz adds: it would be mistaken to consider the remembrance enjoined by the Torah merely as a matter of the heart, “for Scripture makes clear that remembrance means none other than the performance of the Mitzvot.”33 The performance of the commandments has one and only one meaning, and that is, the attainment of holiness, “a notion that has no meaning outside the domain of religious faith.”34 As is his wont, Leibowitz concludes his Maimonidean reflections on the Sh’ma‘ with a homiletic exhortation: All ascriptions of the category of holiness other than to “activity” directed to God, are blasphemous and court the scandal of idolatry. “Whoever applies the notion of holiness to a natural or artificial being—to man, land, or institution, a building, or an object—is engaging in idolatry.”35 Such statements, which Leibowitz used habitually to goad and prick the conscience of his audiences in his many public lectures on Maimonides in Israel, elicited invariably angry responses. One of these has now entered the nation’s folklore. In a letter to the editor of the Tel Aviv daily Ha-Aretz, an irate citizen exclaimed that according to Leibowitz Jewry should discard its ancient liturgy, alas, embroidered with dubious cognitive claims about the deity, and pray in the morning “bla-bla-bla,” and in the afternoon “kish-kishkish,” and for the evening prayer, “zum-zum-zum.”36 In reply Leibowitz could


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have cited Maimonides, who in Guide I 59 writes that since God is ultimately beyond our comprehension, in truth, we cannot affirm anything about Him, and, therefore, the most appropriate form of prayer is silence. For as the Psalmist says: “Silence is Praise to Thee” (Psalm 65:2).37 Maimonides, to be sure, concedes that the ordinary person needs to address God in the spoken word, and it was precisely for this reason that the prophets and rabbis composed prayers in the “language of man.” Leibowitz, however, was not prepared to make any concessions to the vulgus. In this he departs significantly from his spiritual mentor. Abandoning Maimonides’ dictum instructing philosophers to conceal their distinctive path to truth and divine communion so as not to confound the uneducated masses,38 Leibowitz rejected all distinctions between esoteric and exoteric, between true and popular religion. With the fury of a Jeremiah he fulminated against “folkloristic religion” for transforming God “into a functionary for human groups, serving as a cosmic minister of health, law, police, and economics.”39 Discerning in the modern secular state’s cooptation of religion the seeds of fascism,40 he expressly rejected Maimonides’ distinction between the esoteric teachings of the Torah, meant for the intellectual and spiritual elite, and its exoteric explications, inflected with imagery and instrumental enticements addressed to the uneducated masses. In a secular age, especially in light of the flagrant political abuse of religious faith and symbols, any distinction between true and folkloristic, that is idolatrous, religion is untenable. As Warren Zev Harvey has astutely observed: Leibowitz is convinced . . . that Maimonides’ pedagogical approach must be abandoned in our modern secular society, because he believes it is foolish to try to advance religion by pointing to its utility in satisfying human needs when these needs are in fact presently being satisfied quite well without religion. To teach religion today as a means, he therefore argues, is to teach that it is superfluous. What is urgent now, he advises, is to teach modern man what [true] religion is, and to distinguish it from other phenomena. . . . In every age, he explains, the true service of God entails rebellion against utilitarianism and anthropocentrism, but today it is additionally a rebellion against the reigning secularist values of society.41

But it was not only the uneducated masses whom Leibowitz saw as victims of anthropocentric and functional notions of religion. In the secular era, intellectuals bent on rescuing religious faith have often taken their lead from Kant, identifying God with ethical imperatives and humanistic values.42 Again Leibowitz appeals to Maimonides: “The gulf separating the profane from the holy—separating the sphere of human values and categories from the realm in which one draws near to the divine—marks the profound difference between Kant’s ethical system and the Maimonidean doctrine of prophecy.”43 From this perspective, one should speak of Judaism as “pure monotheism,” not the “‘ethical monotheism’ of nineteenth century liberalism, in which the human

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or ‘ethical’ category was primary and God had no other function than to serve as a guarantor of morality.”44 Maimonides, Leibowitz reminds us, “does not acknowledge that God has any ethical attributes, any more than He has physical attributes; he even divests the terms ‘kindness, justice, and righteousness’ of any ethical connotation and ascribes to them solely ontic meaning.”45 Armed with Maimonides’ negative theology, Leibowitz battled on several fronts to secure the integrity of religion from those who would subordinate it to political purposes. His aim was to guard religion against what he saw as its trivialization, as a mere ancilla to ethics. Here again we encounter the grand paradox: Leibowitz sought to separate Judaism—constituted by halakhah— from anthropocentric values, so as ultimately to ensure the efficacy of the values of the very humanists he ridiculed no less than the idolators of political power and nationalism. The silent Yes accompanying Leibowitz’s voluble No was the affirmation of a religious humanism and of the vision of a humane and just Israel, a country that he loved with a passion that only grew more intense as he relentlessly criticized its foibles. The depth of Leibowitz’s love for his country and his people made him profoundly aware that invoking Maimonides’ negative theology to chide and admonish his compatriots set him on a slippery path that might end in religious nihilism—the very opposite of the dialectical effect he desired. For, as he mused, “if one finds God, what is the value and what is the need of any other reality? The line that separates religious feeling in all its depth from absolute nihilism becomes very thin at this point; but it is, nevertheless, mighty and powerful—comparable, in effect, to the space between Eden and Gehenna, which according to the Midrash is a mere handsbreadth.”46 NOTES 1. Nuriel, ed., Siḥot ‘al Torah ha-Nevu’ah. 2. Nuriel, ed., Siḥot ‘al Torah, 5 3. Leibowitz, “The Religious and Moral Significance of the Redemption of Israel,” in Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 114. 4. Leibowitz, “The Religious and Moral Significance of the Redemption of Israel,” in Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 114. 5. On Ben-Gurion’s messianism, see Avraham Avi-Hai, “David Ben-Gurion’s Political Philosophy.” 6. Keren, Ben-Gurion and the Intellectuals, 81. 7. “Le-Aḥar Kib’yeh” (Afer Kib’yeh), Be-Terem (December 15, 1953): 7. 8. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam—Ha-Adam ha-Abrahami.” The English translation of this article—“Maimonides—The Abrahamic Man,” by Elvin Kose is unfortunately flawed; its many mistranslations either distort or obscure the philosophical nuance of the original. All translations from this seminal essay are thus my own, and all page numbers refer to the Hebrew text.


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9. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 20. 10. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 20. 11. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 20. 12. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 20. 13. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 20. 14. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 20. 15. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 21. 16. On the multiple paradoxes of Leibowitz’s thought, see Menachem Brinker, “Analysis and Polemic.” Brinker argues—rightly in my view—that Leibowitz’s loyalties, which at first glance seem inconsistent, when analyzed in the context of Leibowitz’s polemical objectives display an inner coherence and consistency. 17. The suggestion that Barth’s dialectical theology may be regarded as an “analogue” to Leibowitz’s negative theology is meant to provide a heuristic perspective for analyzing Leibowitz’s position. Although I raise the possibility that Barth may have exercised an influence on Leibowitz, the question of influence, direct or otherwise, is ultimately not germane to the present analysis. 18. K. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 141. 19. K. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 331 ff. 20. K. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 493. 21. “The Theological Declaration of Barmen,” paragraph 8:27, trans. by Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s Confession under Hitler, 242. 22. He may have also learned of these lectures from his sister, Nechama Leibowitz, a biblical scholar who studied under Barth in Basel during this period. 23. As Professor Christoph Schmidt of the Hebrew University reminded me, it is also noteworthy that Barth’s writings occupied a significant place in Leibowitz’s personal library. 24. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 21. As a proof-text, Leibowitz might have cited Guide III 24, where Maimonides comments that the words “God tested Abraham” (Genesis 22:1) do not mean that God put Abraham through a test but that He made the example of Abraham serve as a test case of the extreme limits of love and fear of God. 25. Guide III 27 (Pines, 510); cf. Guide III 51 (Pines, 618–622). 26. Leibowitz, “Judaism’s Conception of the Individual and Society,” in Judaism, the Jewish People, and the State of Israel, 320 [Hebrew]. 27. Leibowitz is apparently referring to the Guide III 27, where the text actually reads: For one cannot nurture a true conception of God “if he is in pain or is very hungry or is thirsty or is hot or is very cold” (Pines, 511). 28. Leibowitz, “Judaism’s Conception of the Individual and Society,” in Judaism, the Jewish People, and the State of Israel, 320. 29. Leibowitz, “Religious Praxis,” in Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 10. 30. Leibowitz, “Religious Praxis,” in Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 11.

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31. Leibowitz, “Religious Praxis,” in Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 11. 32. Leibowitz, The Faith of Maimonides, 18. 33. Leibowitz, “Reading of the Shema,” in Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 45. 34. Leibowitz, “Reading of the Shema,” in Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 45. 35. Leibowitz, “Reading of the Shema,” in Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 46. 36. Ha-Aretz, 24 October 1975, cited in Warren Harvey, “Return to Maimonideanism,” 267, n. 67. 37. Guide I 59 (Pines, 139ff). 38. Maimonides, Introduction, Pereq Ḥeleq; cf. Guide III 27. 39. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 21. 40. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 21. 41. Harvey, “The Return of Maimonideanism,” 259. 42. Leibowitz’s unyielding opposition to anthropocentric, humanistic interpretations of Judaism also points to his affinity to Barth. Excoriating Schleiermacher for introducing into Christian theological discourse a deleterious subjectivism, Barth claims that the great nineteenth-century theologian lacked “a clear and direct apprehension of the truth that man is made to serve God and not God to serve man.” Barth, “Das Wort Gottes und die Aufgabe der Theologie” (1922), in Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, 164. The phrase “man is made to serve God and not God to serve man” would verbatim become Leibowitz’s mantra. 43. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 21 44. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 22. 45. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 22. As his proof text, Leibowitz cites Maimonides, Eight Chapters, 4–5; and Guide I 2 and III 53–54. 46. Leibowitz, “Ha-Rambam,” 21. Leibowitz is alluding to Midrash Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, 28.

TEN

Can We Be Maimonideans Today? David Novak

WHO IS A JEW ISH THINKER?

Maimonides is remembered as a great Jewish thinker, perhaps the greatest who ever lived. But what do we mean by a Jewish thinker, when discussing one who frequently spoke in a philosophical idiom and who influenced and was influenced by non-Jewish thinkers? How is Judaism essential or indispensable to a thinker’s work? A Jewish thinker is not just a thinker who happens to be Jewish but one to whom being Jewish matters intellectually, who holds himself answerable to the Jewish tradition. Most obviously, being a Jewish thinker means directly deriving assertions from an interpretation of canonical Jewish texts like the Bible or the Talmud. Maimonides did a good deal of that in his numerous assertions that took the form of textual exegesis, even when he thoroughly reworked the canonical texts he was interpreting. Less obviously, though, being a Jewish thinker means making assertions meant to enhance the Jewish tradition. So, for example, Maimonides’ claims to be able rationally to demonstrate the existence of God from human experience of the natural order.1 This is done in order to provide intellectual conviction to those Jews who can understand such demonstrations. The demonstrations become, therefore, demonstrations of the existence of the God about whom these Jews have already heard from the Jewish tradition. God has already been named before God has been rationally apprehended.2 (Indeed, one could question whether the God, whose name had never been heard from the mouth of one’s progenitors, could be directly apprehended by anyone.) To paraphrase the eleventh century philosopher-poet, Judah Halevi (with whose works Maimonides was quite familiar): “Happy is the eye that sees it”—taking ‘eye’ here to be the eye of the mind— “sad is the ear that has only heard about it”—taking ‘ear’ to be the receptacle 193

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of traditional lore.3 For Maimonides at least, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God” (Deuteronomy 6:5) is logically subsequent to the more direct “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2), even though one’s actual experience of hearing about God in the third person is temporally prior to one’s philosophical apprehension of God as First Cause in the first person.4 But, if a thinker takes something as important as the philosophical assertion of God’s existence to be fundamentally at odds with what his or her tradition has stated about God, then the Judaism of that thinker ceases to be essential to his or her thought. Such is the case of Spinoza for example.5 Since Maimonides never claimed to have transcended Jewish revelation and its tradition, it is as hard to deny that Maimonides is an essentially Jewish thinker as it is as easy to deny that Spinoza is one. If we accept this criterion of selection, it would seem that an authentic Jewish thinker has to be adept in the interpretation of canonical texts, Jewish texts to whose authority he or she is existentially committed. And since the Jewish tradition’s assertions about God are ubiquitous, so much so that the tradition would be unrecognizable without them, it would also seem that a fully Jewish thinker needs to be a theologian (theology being the Greek word for what some now call “God-talk”). A theologian is one who is invested in what Maimonides called “the science of the divine” (mada‘ ’elohi).6 Thus Maimonides begins his systematic summation of the universe of Jewish norms (halakhah) in Mishneh Torah with the assertion that God is the foundation of all foundations of the world, and of the Torah at the core of that world.7 Does a textually grounded Jewish theologian have to be a philosopher as well? That depends on how one sees the relation between the Torah, to which every authentic Jewish thinker is beholden, and the world with which philosophers are concerned. If one takes philosophy to be the most profound and rationally compelling human discourse about the world in which we humans find ourselves, and if that world is taken to be a meaningful and coherent whole—what many philosophers have called “nature”—then the question is: What is the relation of the Torah to such a world? Some Jewish theologians have regarded the Torah and the world as separate realms—as if dealing with Kant’s seemingly unbridgeable gap between the noumenal and the phenomenal. In this view, the Torah is taken to be what really matters. Worldly speech, even that of great non-Jewish philosophers, is seen as “idle chatter” (siḥah beṭeilah) in Talmudic parlance.8 In their view, the Torah is extra-mundane. But their concern seems to depend largely on whether the non-Jews in question are engaged in philosophical discourse. If not, their intellectual culture may seem to pose no serious challenge. But if the non-Jews in question do engage in philosophical discourse and it is not metaphysical, and thus unconcerned with the God-question or with questions about the nature and destiny of humankind, faithful Jews may feel that they can easily avoid grappling with it. Compared to their Torah and its concerns, such “philosophy” might appear insipid. Yet historically,

CA N W E B E M A I MON I DE A NS TODAY?

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nonmetaphysical philosophy is typically anti-metaphysical. It tends to deny much of the tradition of discourse that gave it its methods of inquiry.9) To these faithful Jews, the discourse of the Torah seems much more challenging and rewarding spiritually and intellectually. But if a Jew’s philosophical contemporaries are interested in the big questions that are the constant concern of Torah-speech and they seem to deal with these issues more astutely than do traditional theologians, a Jewish thinker like Maimonides cannot separate Torah from the broader philosophical discourse without appearing wilfully myopic. How the Torah and the world are connected is a question one must direct to Maimonides as a Jewish thinker. For he does not dismiss philosophy but pursues her with passion. And yet he stops well short of succumbing to that passion. To Maimonides, the Torah is in the world but not of it. Yet for him the Torah connects to worldly philosophy not as God’s word to some merely human constructs. The Torah is a divinely created content within the divinely created world. Neither Torah, nor the world, nor even their interrelation could be anything but the work of God. Our ability to reckon with this Maimonidean idea is what will determine whether we can be Maimonideans today or must remain at most respectful but ultimately selective students of his great works. Who is addressed in these works? Maimonides’ major legal writings, above all, his magnum opus the Mishneh Torah, are written for traditional Jews. The Guide to the Perplexed is also written for a committed Jew, Maimonides’ student Joseph son of Judah, and others who are faithful Jews troubled by the seeming contradictions between the Torah and philosophy (including natural science and cosmology).10 So it seems that to be a Maimonidean fully, one must belong to a class of such readers. One might not be prepared to make a commitment to the truth of whatever Maimonides wrote. I doubt that Maimonides would not want us to be “Maimonideans” in the way traditional Jews are expected to assert that the Torah is truth itself (torat emet).11 For he himself reads his predecessors with a critical eye. So I suspect that he would not want us to be Maimonideans in an uncritical or dogmatic way. He did not present his thought with the authority of prophecy or expect others to be his intellectual clones, however much he tried to persuade readers to adopt his views. Does the critical reader of Maimonides have to be a traditional Jew? Clearly one must be committed to the tradition to have credibility among its adherents. But Maimonides spoke of many matters that are of universal concern. So those who are committed to other traditions might well learn from his writings. Muslims, for example, can learn much from these texts— and have. For Maimonides saw that Jewish and Muslim philosophical theology have much in common.12 Maimonides knew that Jews and Christians have a common Scripture.13 And Christian readers can learn much from Maimonides’ biblical theology—and have. Maimonides saw that the Torah

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incorporates much political wisdom.14 So, by his own account, a political philosopher, uncommitted to historical revelation, might learn much from his political and legal thought as it interacts with the biblical text and tradition. By not requiring unquestioning commitment to his own thought, Maimonides can instruct traditional Jews of diverse philosophical or nonphilosophical outlooks, as well as Muslims, Christians, and theists of various stripes. But can Maimonides’ thought be appropriated by modern atheists and secularists? This I doubt. By atheists, I mean those who reject any affirmative reference to God. By secularists I mean those who reject any normative deference to a divinely revealed law. Doesn’t the denial of God’s existence or authority put the denier out of Maimonides’ discursive universe altogether? T O R A H A N D N AT U R E

Maimonides’ life work can be seen as his exposition of the Torah, taking ‘Torah’ in the broad sense. Even when speaking about nature as something outside the text of the Torah, Maimonides speaks of it for the sake of Torah. His interest in nature is not separate from his interest in Torah. How are Torah and nature are connected? Maimonides speaks of “the general consensus of our community on the Torah’s being created.” He continues: “This is meant to signify that His speech that is ascribed to Him is created. . . . just as He has created all the things that He has created and brought into being.”15 In speaking of the general consensus of “our community,” Maimonides includes himself. Yet he does assert that the Torah’s references to God’s speaking “never signify that He, may He be exalted, spoke using the sounds of letters and a voice.”16 Doesn’t the Torah present itself as the written record of what was heard from the articulate voice of God by Moses and the Israelites? Do we have here one of those contradictions of which it is sometimes said that only one of the contradictory propositions can be Maimonides’ own view, which is at odds with the view of the community? Does Maimonides not believe that the words written in the Torah are the actual letters and sounds God communicated to his prophet? Does he hold instead that God communicated with Moses in some ineffable way? Or does he hold that the audible-then-written word and the ineffable divine communication are somehow linked, so that Maimonides is not departing from traditional belief but deepening it? By calling the Torah a divine creation, Maimonides is denying two alternatives. First, that the Torah itself is divine, that God is the Word and the Torah reveals what God is. This may have been the view of those rabbis who held that the Torah precedes the creation of the world and that the Torah, once uttered, creates the world.17 On this view both God and the Torah are uncreated.18 The Torah explains the world; indeed, the world is only an outer symbol of the divine reality that is the Torah. Not only is the Torah not of the world; it is not even in the world so as to share created status with the world.


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Whatever reality the world has is because the world is in and of the Torah. Such notions became prominent and in post-Maimonidean Kabbalah. But their roots are pre-Maimonidean.19 One can see Maimonides’ implicit rejection of them in his assertion that the Torah is God’s creation. The second alternative is the view that the words of the Torah are a human creation. If so, its precepts are temporal, the work of historically conditioned creatures, not a revelation made for the world by the Creator of the world, who is unconditioned. Much modern Bible scholarship follows Spinoza in holding this view: Scripture is the work of fallible human authors, even though they may have been divinely inspired.20 Maimonides rejects this view, saying: “There is a divine science apprehended by the prophets in consequence of God’s speaking to them and telling it to them so that we should know that the notions transmitted by them from God to us are not . . . mere products of their thought and insight.”21 The Torah, like all structured creation, is natural; it is not a human invention. Here Maimonides employs Aristotle’s distinction between physis and techne.22 Thus in the chapter of the Guide immediately following the one we have been examining, Maimonides states that the tablets of the Decalogue written by God himself that they are “natural and not artificial.”23 Yet despite what might be termed Maimonides’ anti-historicism, he seems to see certain norms of the Torah as responses to historical circumstances. For example, he interprets the prohibition of seething a kid in its mother’s milk as a reaction against a particular idolatrous practice.24 Still, the ban can eliminate only a symptom of the underlying disease, which is idolatry. The Torah can treat the disease but not fully cure it. To eradicate idolatry would destroy human nature in which it is endemic.25 One might try to cure diabetes by removing the pancreas. But the cure would kill the patient. The underlying condition must remain. Like anything natural, the Torah can be studied by the methods that inquire into its nature, that is, how its parts are coordinated, in much the way that biologists today study ecosystems.26 This is the way ordinary scholars interpret the Torah, concluding what the Torah is commanding us by discerning how its words allow us to derive a normative meaning from them. But, if that is all there is to Torah interpretation, there would be no real difference between treating the Torah as created and treating it as uncreated. Indeed, studying the structure of any natural entity in no way requires that we treat it as a creature. Here prophetic understanding or divine science become vital. Ordinary science cannot deal with the divine will as the first cause of all that exists. Thus Maimonides writes: “man cannot understand at first how, where there is a will that a thing should be done, that a thing should be done by the mere will alone.”27 It is the connection between will and its outcome, especially in the Torah, that distinguishes prophetic understanding or divine science. It discerns the priority of God’s will to whatever is the result of that will.

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Maimonides writes: “[T]he words ‘saying’ and ‘speaking’ . . . are used to denote either will and volition or as a notion that has been grasped by the understanding as having come from God.”28 The question now is what this assertion of God’s will and volition tells us that makes us appreciate the created status of the Torah and, indeed, requires us to take this created status into consideration when delving into the deeper meaning of the Torah. And, we can ask the same question of the world itself, which like the Torah, is to be taken to be created. Thus Maimonides says in this same context: “His sayings were volitions only and not speeches . . . the heavens have come to exist through His purpose and will.”29 Our question about will and volition being the cause of the created word and the created thing might well be answered when we consider how Maimonides sees will and volition functioning in nature, in terms of both specific essences and universal existence. This requires that we look at the relation between causes and purpose. There are three ways in which something is said to exist. First, something can be said to be necessary insofar as it cannot be conceived not to exist. Being necessary, it is uncaused and, thus, cannot be said to have been caused for any purpose. No one willed its existence. For Maimonides, God is the only Being necessary in itself.30 Second, all finite beings can be thought of as possible insofar as they could be said not to exist without contradiction. Being possible, they need an external cause for their existence. Someone willed them to exist. When we know their purpose, we may be able to infer that they are intelligently caused and perhaps how they are caused. Third, some existents seem to be without purpose. Their existence seems to be unwilled. We are not able to infer that they are effects of an intelligent cause, let alone know how they may be caused, or why they exist at all. This third type of existence is similar to what Aristotle called chance.31 Were we to know that an existent had an origin and were we to apprehend it as having been created with a purpose, that existent would be truly a created being. The purposeful mind of its creator is what Maimonides means by “will and volition.” One sees that purposeful mind at work in nature and again in the Torah. But, since the Torah is verbal in a way that the rest of created nature is not, divine will and volition are more easily seen in the Torah than in the rest of nature. As an Aristotelian in his general cosmology, Maimonides did believe that the heavenly bodies are animated by intelligences engaged in perpetual thought.32 Yet their thoughts do not yield created words. So Maimonides proposes that one study the heavenly spheres, “the work of creation,” after mastering the study of the Torah.33 The spheres are harder to read than the Torah. Final causality governs all things revealed and natural. Maimonides’ teleology seems to be that of an orthodox Aristotelian. Yet he says that “Aristotle demonstrates regarding all natural things that they do not come about by chance . . . Now if the particular things of the world are not due to chance,


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how can the whole of it be due to chance?”34 Aristotle denies that any natural thing exists by chance. Were things to exist by chance, we could have no science. Whereas Aristotle can develop science about distinct natural entities, he cannot constitute science about being as such. According to Maimonides Aristotelian teleology explains the essence of the various entities in the world: why they function as they do specifically. But it does not explain the existence of all things in general: why there is a universe rather than simply God alone. That is because Aristotelian causes, even final causes, are immanent within entities already there. But a real explanation of the whole can only be from what is beyond the whole, from that Being, which transcends all beings. Thus in summarizing his fundamental difference with Aristotelian teleology, Maimonides does not attempt to limit or eliminate cosmic teleology. Rather, he accuses Aristotle of not being teleological enough. “Now as for us, the matter is clear in our opinion: namely, that all things exist in virtue of a purpose and not of necessity . . . My purpose in this chapter is to explain to you, by means of arguments that come close to being a demonstration, that what exists indicates to us of necessity that it exists in virtue of the purpose of One who purposed; and to do this without having to take upon myself what the Mutakallimūn have undertaken—to abolish the nature of what exists and to adopt atomism.”35 A builder, for Aristotle, is an efficient cause.36 But the builder does not create the house. He is dependent on his materials and on the form of the house, which he probably did not invent. Both matter and form already exist, the materials, and the principles of architecture and engineering, for example. The builder’s only contribution is to impose a specific form on a particular set of materials. But if the matter and the form were created, both they and the product of their union are contingent on an external cause that is truly originative. That cause, the Creator, is the beginning and end of all that is made. Such a cause transcends the four causes of Aristotle. For none of these makes the existence of its effect radically contingent, as God’s creation makes the world and all that it contains. Only a radically free Author could create a radically contingent universe.37 Our search for an Author now works in tandem with our search for a purpose of the world. Such a purpose must be transcendent if it is to serve as the ultimate purpose of the world. Even Aristotle’s ultimate telos, the Unmoved Mover, is still part of the world, albeit at its apex.38 U LT I M AT E T E L E O L O G Y

The question now is what difference this distinction between immanent and transcendent causality actually makes. In speaking of nature, Maimonides seems to leave us in the lurch. Just when we need most an answer from him, he writes: “The universe is consequent upon His perpetual and immutable wisdom. But we are completely ignorant of the rule of that wisdom and of

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the decision made by it. For, in our opinion, volition too is consequent upon wisdom; all these being one and the same.”39 What we see here is that by “will and volition” Maimonides means a “rational will,” in other words, a will that chooses intelligently and purposefully or, interchangeably, an intelligence that acts freely and wisely.40 Only purposeful action can be called truly intelligent, and purposeful action requires a will. That is why, for Maimonides, God’s act is more than God’s thought (the Aristotelian Thought-thinking-itself). Accordingly, human imitation of God is greater than mere contemplation. An active God is greater than an a merely reflective God—another implication of the difference between immanent and transcendent causality. In theoria, the subject merges with the object (culminating in unio mystica).41 But, in praxis, especially when it is truly creative, the subject intends an object that lies beyond any horizon previously projected by another, to use the language of Husserl.42 Maimonides’ identification of the divine will and wisdom does not disclose how they function in creation. Aristotle’s finite causality seems to be sufficient for understanding the world as we experience it. But perhaps, for Maimonides, what we cannot know about the teleology of the universe, we can know about the teleology of the Torah: A man endowed with intellect is incapable of saying that any action of God is vain, futile, or frivolous. According to our opinion—that is, that of all of us who follow the Law of Moses our Master—all His actions are good and excellent. He says: “And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) Consequently, everything that He, may He be exalted, has done for the sake of a thing is necessary for the existence of the thing aimed at or is very useful.43

The assertion that something is “necessary for the existence of the thing” is distinct from the assertion that the thing itself is necessary. Maimonides emphatically states: “if you consider the divine actions—I mean to say the natural actions—the deity’s wily graciousness and wisdom . . . will become clearer to you.”44 This claim seems to contradict Maimonides’ assertion that divine wisdom is humanly inscrutable, a point expressed in God’s response to Job out of the whirlwind.45 The seeming contradiction may be resolved by an analysis of Maimonides’ understanding of the term “good.” In Guide I 2, he analyses the terms ‘true’ and ‘false’ and ‘good’ and ‘bad.’46 Good and bad are basically aesthetic categories, which originated when the first humans preferred corporeal to intellectual pleasures. Subsequently, the terms ‘good and bad’ take on a moral meaning, designating actions beneficial or detrimental to human life. When we predicate ‘good’ of God’s act, we best understand what is actually meant when we consciously, willingly, and purposefully imitate God’s action in our own. And, in fact, the text just quoted is from the section of the Guide where Maimonides is dealing with the Jewish theological theme of the “reasons of


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the commandments.”47 These reasons turn out to be not so much what the Torah explicitly says is the reason of a commandment (as it rarely does) but, rather, what we imagine God had in mind when commanding as he did. A literal translation of ta‘amei ha-mitzvot as “reasons of the commandments” retains Maimonides’ understanding of the concept far better than the often used translation ‘reasons for the commandments.’ To say there are reasons for the commandments suggests that the practical meaning of a commandment is primary and its reason is what we surmise as a secondary or theoretical meaning. On that account our first task is to do what the commandment prescribes; only thereafter may we try to discern what the commandment intends, in other words, what truth it is conveying by commanding us to act precisely in the way we have determined that the commandment is to be performed. This view of the primacy of obedience over understanding comes out in the famous rabbinic interpretation of “everything the Lord has spoken we shall do and we shall hear [na‘aseh ve-nishma‘]” (Exodus 24:7). Taking ‘hear’ to mean ‘understand,’ the Talmud states that Israel’s great virtue was that they “they put doing before [hiqdimu] understanding.”48 But this is not Maimonides’ view, even though he too would advocate obedience even when one has not yet understood the purpose of a commandment. Taking Maimonides’ conception of “reasons of the commandments” to represent his metaphysic of morals (understanding “morals” to be the full range of norms that govern all human actions, both actions that directly intend fellow humans and even relations that directly intend God), we can see why he is so insistent that all the commandments have reasons, even though some of those reasons may have been discerned only by some people, or perhaps by no one as yet. The distinction between commandments whose reasons are readily understandable and those that have reasons but are not readily understandable, might become clearer when we look at to the distinction between ratio quoad nos and ratio per se in the thought of Thomas Aquinas (which was very much, and very gratefully, influenced by Maimonides’ thought).49 All that is ratio quoad nos, that is, evident to any intelligent person, is also ratio per se, that is, inherently intelligible in itself. But not everything that is intelligible in itself is evident to even the wisest human beings. To say that God commands something for no reason, however obscure that reason might be, is to imply that God acts with less intelligence than an intelligent natural being. But natural beings do nothing in vain, in other words, nothing without a reason, and all natural beings are created by God. To ascribe purposes to the creature but not the Creator seems to place the creature above its Creator. But to say that God does something for a reason does not mean that the reason is some kind of prior cause like the Forms for Plato’s Demiurge, compromising God’s transcendence.50 Rather, we should see God’s reasons as simultaneous with God’s creation of the very norms that intend those reasons. The reasons are God’s creative thoughts. They are not metaphysically antecedent to God.

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To assert that there are reasons of the commandments (rather than for them, as if the reasons were an afterthought) better suggests that the commandments intend the very ends for which they were commanded. The reasons are not simply rationales constructed for the sake of explaining the commandments.51 Rather, the reasons of the commandments belong to the wisdom of God, who willed these reasons as ends and chose these commandments as the means thereto. In this light, we can view the Torah as being fundamentally teleological. It instantiates God’s goodness superlatively. It is the distinctive Jewish teleology of Maimonides, for whom God is not just the telos of the universe52 but the Creator who assigns ends (tele) for every creature in the universe and for the universe itself. Taking divine goodness to be universal divine purposefulness, we can see this most clearly if we take the Torah to be a microcosm. One might have seen Maimonides’ designation of the created Torah (torah beru’ah) as implying that the Torah is simply one created thing among others, collapsing revelation into creation.53 But now we see the Torah as a prism through which the world is seen in a way that it could not be seen had not the Torah been revealed. The reason for privileging the Torah in the natural order is that the only two created entities that can actually express their thoughts in speech are humans and the Torah. Since Maimonides believes that “the Torah speaks in keeping with human language” (ki-l’shon b’nei adam), one can see the Torah as God’s creation that can be spoken by humans.54 That is, the Torah is spoken through human beings. Yet it is more than a mere human invention, and the humans through whom the Torah is revealed are themselves more than the passive receptacles of something formulated wholly apart from their active participation. The Torah, of course, is not revealed through ordinary human beings. But through prophets, above all through Moses, the prophet par excellence, whose prophecy has a unique normative force.55 The prophecy of Moses is sui generis—even though the central norms of the Torah were known even before the revelation at Sinai.56 It would seem that the reason the Torah could be revealed only through a prophet like Moses is that prophets have a unique insight into God’s mind, as it were. The prophet, as I see it, apprehends God’s will in his vision of God’s creative wisdom, even before that wisdom, that original rational will, has expressed itself in the words of the created Torah. That is why Maimonides insists that God communicates with a prophet through an apprehension of God’s will on the prophet’s part that is beyond words. Here Maimonides would seem to be speaking of something similar to Plato’s “eye of the mind.”57 That is, a prophet sees something that could not be expressed in words. The prophet sees what God envisions even before God has turned that vision, that divine idea, into an actual created entity, the Torah as we now have it in words. What the prophet sees is the true reason of every commandment, a priori, as it were. But what can we say of Sages who are not prophets? Do they see


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these reasons of the commandments? If so, do they see them in the same way that prophets do? P RO P H E T S A N D P H I L O S O P H E R S

In discussing prophecy in Mishneh Torah, Maimonides insists that a prophet must be a philosopher first, even though being a philosopher does not necessarily make one a prophet.58 Maimonides asserts that this is the case with Abraham, the first person Scripture calls a prophet (Genesis 20:7).59 In the same context, he explains that biblical term, ‘sons of the prophets,’ refers to disciples of the prophets. In Scripture these prophetic apprentices seem to be learning how to become prophets or learning the content of the prophecies of their teachers. Since for Maimonides prophecy cannot be taught, being inspired by God, it would seem that what the apprentices are learning, from and with the prophets, is philosophy. What they learn will make it possible for them to become prophets but will never assure them of that outcome. Although Maimonides regards prophecy as a universal possibility and not restricted to Jews alone,60 his interest is in prophecy among Israelites and its role within Judaism.61 If aspiring prophets are learning a philosophical approach to the Torah, what could be a more philosophical approach to the core contents of the Torah than a philosophical constitution of the reasons of the commandments? Clearly, the hope of these philosophical disciples is to become prophets. Yet the philosophy in which they are apprenticed need not be learned from prophets. One need not be a prophet to be a philosopher capable of teaching philosophical methods to others. The question now is: What differentiates prophetic understanding of the reasons of the commandments from ordinary philosophical understanding of them? The six-hundred-thirteen perpetually binding commandments of the Written Torah are all given through Moses. Other commandments are ad hoc rabbinic prescriptions; for, in Maimonides’ view, the rabbinic Sages have the authority of prophets.62 Mosaic prophecy is sui generis. Its normative status is unique. The distinction for Maimonides, in my view, may lie in the difference between a priori and a posteriori reasons, that is, the difference between reasons that truly ground what they explain and reasons that are merely post hoc. Since Maimonides believes that God communicated with Moses in regard to all the commandments in a nonverbal way, in other words, by way of a teleological vision, one could say that Moses knew all the commandments a priori by virtue of knowing their true origins in God’s purpose. Others, with less prophetic power, be they philosophical prophets or even nonprophetic philosophers, know some of the reasons of the commandments a priori—like the commandment to know that God exists, which Maimonides counts as the first commandment of the Torah.63 Yet everyone but Moses knows the

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reasons of most of the other commandments only in an a posteriori way, first experiencing the commandment and then inferring from that experience what seems to be the explanation for its having been commanded by God. Furthermore, nonprophetic Jewish philosophers know the superiority of prophetic knowledge and thus cannot but desire it. This differs from the view in the Talmud that sees a prophet as inferior to a Sage.64 Knowing the reasons or explanations of the commandments by experience in this way makes philosophical understanding of the commandments more speculative than reflective. It also makes specific interpretations of them much more tentative. Still, even with this tentative understanding of the reasons of the commandments, Maimonides could divine the reasons of many of the commandments with unprecedented insight. So he was able to establish a more rational Jewish jurisprudence than was ever achieved before or since.65 Beyond his rational/teleological approach to the commandments of the Written Torah, Maimonides was able to constitute an even more rational/ teleological approach to the commandments of the Oral Torah, what we now call Rabbinic Judaism. Most of his predecessors and successors saw the Oral Torah as primarily a body of traditions going back to Moses himself, and only secondarily as comprising the rational/teleological jurisprudence of the Rabbis.66 But, for Maimonides, almost all of the Oral Torah is rabbinic jurisprudence. Only a few rabbinic laws, those not seeming to have reasons, are exceptions to the pattern of rational/teleological jurisprudence.67 Since most areas of Jewish law still in force after the destruction of the Second Temple are rabbinic rather than scriptural, Maimonides did not have to make the a priori/a posteriori distinction we have used to explain the difference between Mosaic and non-Mosaic understandings of the reasons of the commandments. For the Talmud itself indicates that, aside from various laws whose origins, historical and rational, are unknown (halakhot), everything the rabbis themselves legislated has a reason (ta‘am)—and that reason is something the Rabbis themselves enunciated as the basis of the law they made.68 Preceding, as it does, the promulgation of the law itself (even if sometimes not revealed to the people for whom the law was made), such a reason takes on an a priori status.69 The juridical difference, though, between the a priori status of the reason of a rabbinic commandment and the a priori status of the reason of a scripturally based commandment is that scriptural commandments do not admit of repeal, whereas rabbinic commandments could be repealed, at least in principle.70 One can see the metaphysical difference underlying the juridical difference. For the Rabbis ruled based on what they surmised God would have ruled had the legislation been called for at the time of the revelation of the Written Torah.71 But Moses did not conjecture about God’s will. He knew it, through his apprehension of God’s wisdom. Being a prophet, Moses was more, not less, than a rabbi/philosopher.


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The question our enquiry has been leading to is this: Can we be Maimonideans today? My answer is no, if by ‘Maimonidean’ we mean someone who can accept the entire content of Maimonides’ systematic thought or even all of its basic assumptions. But my answer is yes if by ‘Maimondean’ we mean one who can in good faith accept Maimonides’ general philosophical method, especially as applied to Judaism. As for the content of Maimonides’ systematic thought, we have seen that it is based on his idea of nature. Like Aristotle, Maimonides grounds his metaphysics in his physics, that is, his view of nature, the inherently intelligible natural world. As with Aristotle, Maimonides’ scientific outlook is teleological, whether he is writing of the organs in the body or the celestial spheres. Again, like Aristotle, Maimonides considered the heavenly bodies to be animated by separate intelligences, whose knowledge of God we humans seek to share in our own embodied existence.72 Now, after Galileo, can one still use such paradigms of cosmology? Do they still apply in the realms of modern astrophysics? And, after Darwin, can one preserve a teleological paradigm? Does it cohere with the language of modern biology? Maimonides himself denied any authority to past scientific paradigms. He insisted that one must use the best available arguments of natural science.73 So, if Maimonides were with us today, he would have to constitute his metaphysics quite differently than he did. In fact, it is rather doubtful that, given the current troubled state of relations between the natural sciences and the human sciences, including metaphysics, one could today use the natural sciences as the basis for a cogent metaphysics. If we wish to adopt Maimonides’ teleological methodology, we will have to restrict its use to the human domain, especially in its social and religious manifestations. As for the relation of this domain and its teleology to natural science, our best strategy might be to seek to constitute the natural world as a place hospitable to purposeful human life.74 But we will not be able to constitute human existence within a larger teleological natural order. Yet this might actually get us back to a more biblical view of the human role in the cosmos. For human beings are the only creatures said to be made in the “image of God.”75 Maimonides did not regard humans as the pinnacle of creation. That was the place of the separate intelligences,76 entities that no longer command much authority today.77 Their revival today would raise significant difficulties for theology, the most significant being the implication that the human relationship with God must be mediated by these separate intelligences.78 To indicate how we might appropriate Maimonides’ methodology without absorbing his metaphysics, an analogy to the relationship of Einsteinian and Newtonian physics might be helpful. Many people suppose that Einstein’s revolution in physics overturned the Newtonian paradigm. A number of scholars have shown that this is an overstatement.79 What Einstein did was

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provide a new cosmology that can deal more cogently with larger questions than Newton’s cosmology. But for the gross mechanics of middlesized objects, the Newtonian paradigm remains more than useful. At a local level, Newton is still applicable, even though his more universal cosmology is no longer to be seen as accurate. In a similar way, we can say that our inability to deploy Maimonides’ overall metaphysical paradigm should not prevent us from using his methods in law and theology. In these areas, his rational/teleological methodology is of extraordinary value, not least in Judaism—especially in avoiding the persistent errors of authoritarianism, superstition, and formalism. These errors are as much with us today as they were in Maimonides’ day. If we cannot accept Maimonides’ metaphysical paradigm, we should try to replace it with a counterpart that is more adequate and fruitful in law and theology. That would be the greatest tribute we could pay to Maimonides: to be mindfully inspired and guided by his own philosophical quest, while not succumbing to any mindless deference to his posthumous authority. NOTES 1. Guide II 1. 2. See Sefer ha-Mitzvot, pos. no. 1; see also, D. Novak, Law and Theology in Judaism, 1.136–50. 3. This is a refrain of a liturgical poem (piyyut) that forms an important part of the Sephardic liturgy of Yom Kippur, and it may have even been recited by Maimonides himself. See Prayers for the Day of Atonment, 242–44; also, “My Dream,” Selected Poems of Jehudah Halevi, 9. 4. In Sefer ha-Mitzvot, the commandment to believe (better: to ascertain) God’s existence is the first positive commandment; the commandment to ascertain God’s singularity is the second. It would seem that a person could affirm God’s singularity by analysis of the meaning of the name “God,” whereas to ascertain God’s existence requires apprehension of the reality of God. To use Kantian language: in fulfilling the second commandment one frames an analytic proposition (“God is the only One” or “the Only One is God”), whereas in fulfilling the first commandment one frames a synthetic proposition (“God is Creator of the world.”) 5. See Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, chapter 13. 6. Guide I 65 (Pines, 158); also, Guide I 34 (Pines, 75) (he-hokhmah ha-’elohit). The Hebrew text of the Guide used throughout this essay is the translation from the Arabic text which Maimonides himself approved, and which has been most widely used since his time, viz., that of Solomon ibn Tibbon. 7. MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah (Foundations of the Torah) 1.1. 8. B. Menaḥot 65b. 9. See David Hartman, Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest. This general point has been powerfully made by the late John Paul II (himself a philosopher) in his encyclical, Fides et Ratio. 10. See Guide, Introduction.


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11. Hence anything in the Torah that seems to be false either needs to be properly interpreted or reinterpreted (see e.g., B. Kiddushin 49a and Tosafot, s.v. “ha-metargem”), or the falsehood is only apparent to the student but not real in the Torah itself (see Yerushalmi: Peah 1.1/15b re Deuteronomy. 32:47). See MT: Foundations, 1.7–9. 12. See D. Novak, “The Treatment of Islam,” 233–50. 13. T’shuvot ha-Rambam, no. 149, 1.284–85. 14. Guide II 40. 15. Guide I 65 (Pines, 158). 16. Guide I 65 (Pines, 159). 17. See B’reshit Rabbah 1.1; Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 5.3–4, n. 5. 18. Cf. J. B’rakhot 9.5 (B. B’rakhot 14b) re Deuteronomy 10:20; cf. B. Baba Kamma 41b. 19. See Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 32–44; H. A. Wolfson, Repercussions of the Kalam, 85–113. 20. See Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, chapter 8. 21. Guide I 65 (Pines, 158). 22. See Nicomachaean Ethics VI 4 (1140a1–20). 23. Guide I 66 (Pines, 160). 24. Guide III 48. 25. So, even though “the foundation of the Law consists in putting an end to this opinion” (Guide III 30 [Pines, 523]), it would seem that it can only “efface its traces” (ibid.). See, also, Guide III 32, 37. To my knowledge, Maimonides never invokes the claim of the Talmud (B. Yoma 69b re Zechariah 5:8) that even the desire for idolatry ended among Jews by the time of the building of the Second Temple. 26. See H.A. Wolfson, Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle, 24–28. 27. Guide I 65 (Pines, 159). Along these lines, Kant asserts that we cannot know how the existence (Dasein) of an object is brought forth into the world inasmuch as we cannot know how objects are created “by means of the will” (vermittelst des Willens), which could only mean God’s will. See Kritik des reinen Vernunft, B125 (p. 133). We can only know how our own will operates when willing morally good acts. (B562 [p. 524], where Kant speaks of our will as being von selbst zu bestimmen). Hence we can only analogize that God’s will creates as our will creates, but we cannot represent just how God’s will operates creatively. See D. Novak, “Das Noachidsche Naturrecht bei Hermann Cohen,” 241–243. 28. Guide I 65 (Pines, 158). 29. Guide I 65 (Pines, 159). 30. Guide I 63 re Exodus 3:14. Maimonides follows in a long tradition of interpretation that seems to have originated in LXX’s translation of the Hebrew ehyeh asher ehyeh as ego eimi ho on (“I am Being”). See, also, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1, q. 13, a. 11. 31. See Physics II 4 (195b30–196b10); Metaphysics XI 8 (1065a30–35). 32. See Guide II 5 re Ps. 19:2.

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33. MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 4.10, 13; also, Commentary on the Mishnah: Ḥagigah 2.1. 34. Guide II 20 (Pines, 312). 35. Guide II 19 (Pines, 302). 36. See Physics II 3 (194b25–35). 37. See T.F. Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order, 26–61. 38. See Metaphysics XII 8 (1074b1–15). 39. Guide II 12 (Pines, 302). 40. Compare Kant’s “rational will,” Critique of Pure Reason, B829–30. 41. See Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics X 7–8 (1177b25–1179a25). 42. See D. Novak, Natural Law in Judaism, 113–121. That is, of course, why God alone is autonomous, in Kant’s sense of the word. 43. Guide III 25 (Pines, 503). 44. Guide III 32 (Pines, 525). 45. See Job 38:1ff. Cf. L. E. Goodman’s note 14 on p. 388 of his translation and commentary of Sa‘adiah Gaon’s translation and commentary on Job, The Book of Theodicy. 46. Guide I 2. 47. See Guide II 25 and, especially, III 54 re. Jeremiah 9:23. 48. B. Shabbat 88a. 49. See Summa Theologiae 1, q.2, a.1; also, D. Novak, “Maimonides and Aquinas on Natural Law,” in Talking with Christians, 67–88. 50. See Plato, Timaeus 29A–30D. 51. Cf., however, Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, 124–43. For a critique of Fox on this point, see D. Novak, Jewish Social Ethics, 25–29, and see L. E. Goodman, God of Abraham, 175–85. 52. See Guide I 69. 53. Guide I 65. 54. Guide I 26. The original use of this expression in the Talmud is not to rationalize scriptural anthropomorphisms but to explain why Scripture (especially the Pentateuch) occasionally repeats words for emphasis, although we assume that Scripture usually intends a distinct meaning for each and every word written in it (see B. ‘Avodah Zarah 27a and parallels; cf. J. M’gillah 1.1/70a). Maimonides’ broadened use of the rabbinic dictum has precedent in the exegetical works of Sa‘adiah Gaon (cf. Book of Beliefs and Opinions, 2.1) and Abraham ibn Ezra (Commentary on the Torah at Exodus 13:17; 19:20; 20:1). 55. See e.g. Guide I 23, 39, 45; MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 7.6. 56. See MT Hilkhot M’lakhim (Laws of Kings and Wars) 8.11–9.1. 57. Plato, Republic 519b, 533d. 58. MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 7.5.


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59. See, also, Guide III 29; MT Hilkhot ‘Avodah Zarah (Laws concerning Idolatry) 1.3. 60. See Guide II 36. 61. Guide II 45–46. 62. See Sefer ha-Mitzvot, Introduction. 63. See Sefer ha-Mitzvot, pos. No. 1; also, MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 8.3; Guide II 33 re Exod. 20:2. 64. B. Baba Batra 12a. 65. See e.g., MT Hilkhot Shabbat (Laws concerning the Sabbath) 2.3 and Guide II 31. 66. See e.g., B. Menaḥot 29b. 67. MT Hilkhot Mamrim (Laws concerning Rebels) 1.1–3. 68. See B. Giṭṭin 14; B. ‘Avodah Zarah 36a-b. 69. See B. ‘Avodah Zarah 35a. 70. M. ‘Eduyot 1.5. 71. Hence the performance of even a rabbinic commandment is preceded by the liturgical formula thanking God “Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us” (ve-tzivanu). See B. Shabbat 23a re Deuteronomy 17:10 and 32:7. Cf. J. Sukkah 3.4. 72. See Guide II 6. 73. See Commentary on the Mishnah: Shabbat 6.2, Pesaḥim 4.8, Kippurim 8.4; and MT Hilkhot Shabbat 19.13; MT Hilkhot Rotzeaḥ ve-Sh’mirat ha-Nefesh (Laws concerning Murderers and the Preservation of Life) 2.8; MT Kiddush ha-Ḥodesh (Laws concerning the Sanctification of the New Moon) 17.24. 74. See D. Novak, “Are Philosophical Proofs of the Existence of God Theologically Meaningful?,” in Talking with Christians, 247–259. 75. See Sa‘adiah Gaon, Book of Beliefs and Opinions 4.1. 76. Guide III 13. 77. Cf. MT Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 4.12; MT Hilkhot ‘Avodah Zarah 1.2–3. 78. See Guide III 51–52. 79. See A. Fine, The Shaky Game, 86–109.


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Contributors

I D I T D O B B S -W E I N S T E I N is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Her publications include Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason.

is a member of the philosophy faculty and the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. His works include Atom and Individual in the Age of Newton: On the Genesis of the Mechanistic World View. He is editor of the forthcoming volume, Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatist, Empirical Skeptic.

GIDEON F REUDENTHAL

L E N N E . G O O D M A N is Professor of Philosophy and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. His books include On Justice: An Essay in Jewish Philosophy; God of Abraham; Judaism, Human Rights and Human Values; In Defense of Truth: A Pluralist Approach; and Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself, the Gifford Lectures of 2005. A R T H U R H Y M A N is the Dean of the Bernard Revel Graduate School and Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy at Yeshiva University. He served as editor of Maimonidean Studies, and his recent work includes Eschatological Themes in Medieval Jewish Philosophy.

is Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. He recently edited and translated Averroës’ Middle commentary on Aristotle’s De anima.

A L F R E D L . I V RY

M E N AC H E M K E L L N E R is Professor of Jewish Thought at the University of Haifa. His books include Must A Jew Believe Anything?; Maimonides on the “Decline of the Generations” and the Nature of Rabbinic Authority; and translations of Gersonides’ Commentary on the Song of Songs and Maimonides’ Book of Love.

225

22 6


is Professor of Modern Jewish Thought in the University of Chicago Divinity School. He has recently written Jüdische Identität. Die zwei Seele der deutschen Juden, and is currently completing a biography of Franz Rosenzweig, as well as two additional books: Franz Rosenzweig and the Possibility of a Jewish Theology and Post-Traditional Jewish Identities.

PAU L M E N D E S - F L O H R

D AV I D N O VA K holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. His most recent works include Talking with Christians: Musings of a Jewish Theologian, The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Political Theology, and Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory. M O S H E S O K O L is the Academic Dean of the Lander College for Men at Touro College. His works include Tolerance, Dissent, and Democracy: Philosophical, Historical, and Halakhic Perspectives and Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy.

is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies, at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on the dialectic of secularization and revalorization of religion in secular modernity. Her first book, Aesthetics of Renewal: Martin Buber’s Representation of Hasidism as ‘Kulturkritik,’ is forthcoming.


Index Locorum

Hebrew Bible Genesis 1:26 1:27 1:31 17:1 20:7 28:15

117 64 200 33 n. 42 203 80; 92 n. 121

Exodus 3:14 13:21 15:26 20:2 21:19 23:5 23:25 24:7 31:2–6 33:18 34:28 35:30–35

198; 207 n. 30 33 n. 47 61 194; 203; 209 n. 63 68 83 17 201 85 n. 24 92 n. 111 144 n. 4 66

Leviticus 11:43 18:5 19:2 19:15 19:16

77 76 80; 90 n. 98; 198; 207 n. 32 162 76

Numbers 6:11

83; 93 n. 143

12 12:3 15:37–41 15:38 15:40 20:10

6 79 18; 188 20 20 83; 93 n. 141

Deuteronomy 4:5–8 4:25 5:30 6:4–9 6:5 6:7 6:8–9 6:16 8:1 8:3 8:14 10:2 11:13 11:13–21 11:17 16:20 17:10 22:2 22:4 22:8 30:6, 16–20 31:26 32:7 32:47 33:4

27–28 6 76; 89 n. 87 18–20; 31 n. 9; 188 15; 194 18 23 67 76; 89 n. 87 71 79 196; 207 n. 18 17 18; 188 20 76; 89 n. 87 209 n. 71 76 83 78 76; 89 n. 87 27; 35 n. 66 209 n. 71 207 n. 11 2

227

22 8

I N D E X LO C ORU M

32:39

62

I Kings 9:3

22

Isaiah 5:20 11:7 11:9 51:11 57:15 65:16

23:12 34:6 38:1

92 n. 111 89 n. 77 200; 208 n. 45

Song of Songs 3:11 43 91 n. 107 163 41 43 44 48

Jeremiah 2:13 5:6 8:22 9:23 17:5 46:11

65 163 66 16; 200–01; 208 n. 47 65–66 85 n. 22

Zechariah 5:8 8:19

207 n. 25 45–47

Psalms 16:8 19:9 34:11 65:2 84:8 119:97 121:5 121:8 131:2 135:6

32 n. 31; 188 79 65 189 132; 134 15 34 n. 48 33 n. 47 67 92 n. 111

Ecclesiastes 3:1 3:11 9:11

70 92 n. 111 65

Esther 9:28 9:29–30

46 48 44

Nehemiah 13:24

17

II Chronicles 16:12 65

Apocrypha Ben Sira 38 38:1–8

85 n. 19 66

Christian Scriptures Matthew 6:26

75; 88 n. 74

Qur’an Proverbs 1:7 2:13 7 15:25 16:4 31:10

91 n. 107 91 n. 107 84 35 n. 71 92 n. 111 84

Job 4:13 5:13 13:4

6 65 66

23:115

88 n. 77

Rabbinic Texts Mishnah B’rakhot 2.2 4.5–6

19 21

I N DE X LO C ORU M Shabbat 6.8 6.10 16.1 Sotah 7.1 ‘Eduyot 1.5

61 66 32 n. 34

20

204; 209 n. 70

229

Nedarim 22a

92 n. 110

Nazir 19a

83; 93 n. 143

Sotah 4a-5a

79

Giṭṭin 14a-b 45b

204; 209 n. 6 23; 32 n. 33

207 n. 11

Avot 1.17 4.1 4.18

164 x 27

Kiddushin 49a

Ḥullin 6.1

33 n. 40

Bava Kamma 41b 196; 207 n. 18

Bekhorot 8.2

61

Bava Metzia 83b 85a

61 68

Bava Batra 12a

204; 209 n. 64

Sanhedrin 22a 73a

32 n. 31 76; 90 n. 91

Babylonian Talmud B’rakhot 2b 13b 14b 30a 58b Shabbat 23a 30b 75a 88a

31 n. 16 32 n. 22 19; 196; 207 n. 18 22 29; 35 n. 72

209 n. 71 42 28 201; 208 n. 48

‘Avodah Zarah 11a 23; 33 n. 43; 33 n. 47 27a 208 n. 54 35a 204; 209 n. 69 36a-b 204; 209 n. 68 Menaḥot 29b 33b 43b 65b

204; 209 n. 66 24; 33–34 n. 48 24; 33 n. 45 194; 206 n. 8

Yoma 69b 83a

207 n. 25 76; 89 n. 88

Hagigah 11b, 13a

145 n. 21

Jerusalem Talmud

Yevamot 105b

22

B’rakhot 9.5

196; 207 n. 18

Ketubot 2a

164

Pe’ah 1.1

207 n. 11

230


Sukkah 3.4

209 n. 71

Megillah 1.1 1.5

208 n. 54 48–49

Nedarim 9.1

83; 93 n. 143

Nazir 9.5

61

Tosefta Ta‘anit 3

44

Kiddushin

207 n. 11

Midrash Genesis Rabbah 1.1 196; 207 n. 17 68.12 34 n. 58 Ecclesiastes Rabbah on 4:11 92 n. 111 Testament of Job

89 n. 81

3 4 6 7 15 18 23 26 27 30 31 34 35 36 39 40 41 45 46 50 51 52–53 54 56 57 58 59 62 63 65

Maimonides’ Works Guide Introduction 3; 7; 11 nn. 6–9, 19; 18–19; 47; 51–52; 54; 58 n. 4; 84; 93 n. 147; 96–97; 100; 105; 110 nn. 12, 27; 120; 146 n. 33; 166; 195; 206 n. 10 Part I 1

2

66 68

69 70

56; 60 n. 37; 115; 130; 141; 144 n. 9; 150 n. 85; 151 n. 116; 166 6; 73; 80–81; 88 n. 63; 92 nn. 116, 129; 190; 192 n. 45; 200

71 72 73 73–76

6 124; 148 n. 57 105; 110 n. 28 82; 93 n. 134 34 n. 58; 80; 92 n. 119 125; 148 n. 68 202; 208 n. 55 202; 208 n. 54 101; 110 n. 17 25; 34 n. 53 107–8; 111 n. 40; 166 123–24; 147 n. 46; 148 n. 52; 194; 206 n. 6 3–4; 5 4 31 n. 8; 202; 208 n. 55 25; 34 n. 53 25; 34 n. 53; 55; 59 n. 25 202; 208 n. 55 74; 88 n. 71 166 119; 146 n. 28 5; 11 n. 16; 166 73–74; 88 nn. 61, 64; 125; 148 n. 68 101; 110 n. 17 117; 145 n. 18 5; 11 n. 17; 166 189; 192 n. 37 124; 148 n. 53 87 n. 56; 198; 207 n. 30 194–95; 197–98; 202; 206 n. 6; 207 nn. 15–16, 21, 27–29; 208 n. 53 197; 207 n. 23 55; 60 n. 32; 103; 117–22; 124–25; 145 nn. 18, 21; 146 n. 23; 148 n. 58; 149 n. 78 131; 150 n. 90; 202; 208 n. 52 25; 34 n. 53; 55; 57; 59 n. 28; 60 n. 34 166 25; 34 n. 53; 55; 59 n. 29; 60 nn. 32, 34; 166 53; 59 n. 16; 87 n. 56 7

I N DE X LO C ORU M 74 Part II Introduction 1 2 4 5 6 12 13 13–25 15–17 19 20 25 27 30 32 33 36 39 40 41–42 45–46 48 Part III 8

11 12

12–13 13 17

19 20

25; 34 n. 53; 57; 60 n. 34

8 8; 166; 193; 206 n. 1 1 54–55; 59 n. 23; 166 166; 198; 207 n. 32 205; 209 n. 72 166; 199–200; 208 n. 39 166 7 166 7–8; 199; 208 n. 35 198–99; 208 n. 34 7; 34 n. 49; 166; 200–01; 208 n. 47 52; 59 n. 11 21; 32 n. 26 166; 170–71 203; 209 n. 63 81; 92 n. 126; 166–67; 177 n. 64; 203; 209 n. 60 10 81; 92 n. 128; 195–96; 207 n. 14 166 203; 209 n. 61 74; 88 n. 73

21; 25; 32 n. 26; 34 n. 53; 56; 60 nn. 34–36; 84; 93 n. 148; 146 n. 33; 166; 169 45; 146 n. 33 72; 74–75; 83; 87 nn. 52, 56; 88 nn. 68, 75–76; 89 n. 78; 93 nn. 144–45; 158; 160; 162 82; 93 n. 134 75; 79; 88 n. 77; 92 n. 111; 205; 209 n. 76 9; 11 n. 24; 75; 88 n. 77; 166; 169–70; 178 nn. 82, 86 74; 88 nn. 65, 72 166; 169

20–21 21 22 22–23 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 37 39 43 44 48 51

52

53–54 54

2 31 117; 145 nn. 19–20 74; 88 n. 65; 95 82; 93 n. 139 71–72; 86 n. 50 86–87 n. 51; 92 n. 111; 200; 208 n. 43 102; 110 n. 19 25; 34 n. 53; 38; 56; 60 n. 40; 80; 92 n. 119; 166; 168; 187; 189; 191 nn. 25, 27; 192 n. 38 6; 56; 60 n. 40 81; 92 n. 130; 203; 209 n. 59 207 n. 25 35 n. 67; 204; 209 n. 6 16–17; 98; 102–3; 110 n. 20; 162; 200; 207 n. 25; 208 n. 44 83; 93 n. 142 162 14; 30 n. 3; 74; 88 n. 66 73; 87 n. 58; 207 n. 25 171; 178 n. 90 38–42; 50 n. 6; 8–9 14–15 197; 207 n. 24 16; 25; 31 n. 11; 34 n. 53; 45–47; 50 n. 21–22; 52; 53; 56; 59 n. 11; 60 nn. 38–39; 113–17; 120–25; 143 143 n. 1; 144 nn. 3–5; 145 nn. 15–17; 146 nn. 29, 32, 34–35; 147 nn. 43, 45–50; 148 nn. 56, 63, 68; 150 n. 80; 162; 187; 191 n. 25; 205; 209 n. 78 124–25; 148 nn. 54, 56, 68; 150 n. 81; 162; 188; 205; 209 n. 77 190; 192 n. 45 25; 34 n. 53; 47–48; 80; 92 n. 119; 93 n. 135; 124; 148 n. 55; 150 n. 82; 166; 200–01; 208 n. 47

Mishneh Torah Introduction 2; 11 nn. 5–6; 14

2 32


Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 1.1 19; 194; 206 n. 7 1.1–7 31 n. 14 1.6 19 1.7–9 207 n. 11 1.8 32 n. 34 2.1 15 2.2 40; 50 n. 10; 56; 60 n. 40 2.10 121; 144 n. 8; 145 n. 21; 147 n. 39 4.8 55 4.9 25; 34 n. 52 4.10 198; 208 n. 33 4.12 205; 209 n. 77 4.13 31 n. 17; 198; 208 n. 33 5.6 76; 89 n. 84 7.5 203; 208 n. 58 7.6 202; 208 n. 55 8 10 8.1 56; 60 n. 40 8.3 203; 209 n. 63

10.6

Hilkhot De‘ot 1 48 1.3 161 2.1 78; 91 n. 107 3.3 71; 86 n. 49 4.1 72; 77; 86–87 n. 51; 90 n. 95 4.15 72; 86–87 n. 51 4.23 77; 90 n. 94 5.13 153

Hilkhot Sefer Torah 7.14 26 10.1 26 10.11 27

Hilkhot ‘Avodah Zarah 1.1 25; 33 n. 46 1.2 203; 209 n.59 21.2–3 205; 209 n. 77 Hilkhot T’shuvah 79; 91 n. 109 3.15 4 5 160 8 42 8.2 43 8.2–3 25; 34 n. 52 8.8 52; 59 n. 9 9.1–2 52; 59 n. 9 10.3 16

11

15–16; 30 n. 6–7; 40; 50 n. 10 159

Hilkhot K’ri’at Sh’ma‘ 1.2 18–19 2.8–10 20; 34 n. 58 Hilkhot T’fillah 1.1 17 1.4–5 17 4.16 32 n. 31 5.3 21 5.4 22 Hilkhot T’fillin 1.13 23–24; 32 n. 37 5.4, 6.13 24–25; 33 n. 41 Hilkhot Mezuzah 6.13 75; 89 n. 80

Hilkhot B’rakhot 1.3 75; 89 n. 81 10.10 29 10.12 75; 89 n. 81 Hilkhot Shabbat 2.3 204; 209 n. 65 11.4 76; 89 n. 83 19.13 205; 209 n. 73 Hilkhot Yom Tov 6.17 38 6.18 38; 50 n. 5 6.19–20 38–39; 50 n. 7 Hilkhot Lulav 8.12 39 8.13–15 39–40 Hilkhot Kiddush ha-Ḥodesh 17.24 205; 209 n. 73

I N DE X LO C ORU M Hilkhot Ta‘anit 5.19 44–45; 50 n. 18 Hilkhot Megillah 2.14 44 2.17 44 2.18 48 Hilkhot Ma’akhalot Assurot 17.29–30 77; 90 n. 98 17.32 90 n. 98 Hilkhot Mattenot ‘Aniyym 10.7 77; 90 n. 92 10.18 77; 90 n. 92 Hilkhot Issurei Mizbeaḥ 7.11 77; 90 n. 92 Hilkhot Yom ha-Kippurim 2.8 76; 89 n. 88 2.9 76; 89 n. 86 3.2 76; 89 n. 85 Hilkhot G’zelah ve-Avedah 1.1 76; 90 n. 91 Hilkhot Rotzeaḥ ve-Sh’mirat ha-Nefesh 1.14 76; 90 n. 90 1.16 76; 90 n. 89 2.8 205; 209 n. 73 11.4–5 78; 91 n. 102 11.6–7 77; 90 n. 96 12.4 77; 90 n. 97 Hilkhot Sh’khinim 10.3–4 78; 90 n. 101 Hilkhot Sanhedrin 1.10 77; 90 n. 94 21–23 162; 176 n. 42–43 Hilkhot Mamrim 1.1–3 204; 209 n. 67 Hilkhot M’lakhim 8.11–9.1 202; 208 n. 56 11–12 45; 159; 163

12.1 12.4–5

2 33 80; 92 n. 123 41

Kovetz T’shuvot ha-Rambam II, Bl. 12 164 Sefer ha-Mitzvot Introduction 2; 10 nn. 3–4; 203; 209 n. 62 Introduction to the Principles, 2 35 n. 69 Positive Commandment 1 193–94; 203; 206 nn. 2, 4; 209 n. 63 Positive Commandment 2 194; 206 n. 4 Commentary on the Mishnah Pereq Heleq, Introduction 4; 10; 11 n. 30; 25; 28; 41–42; 52; 121; 147 nn. 36, 38; 189; 192 n. 38 Sanhedrin 10 56–57; 58 n. 8; 60 n. 42 Ḥagigah 2.1 31 n. 17; 198; 208 n. 33 Shabbat 6.2 205; 209 n. 73 12.5 34 n. 58 Pesaḥim 4.8 205; 209 n. 73 4.10 75; 89 n. 78 Nedarim 4.4 76; 90 n. 91 Kippurim 8.4 205; 209 n. 73 Sh’monah P’raqim 57; 95; 103; 100 n. 22 I 52–54; 88 n. 70 II 60 n. 31; 80; 92 n. 121 III 80–81; 91 n. 106; 92 nn. 121, 133 IV 45; 79–80; 83; 91 n. 108; 92 nn. 112, 115, 121; 93 nn. 140–41, 143; 125; 148 n. 67; 190; 192 n. 45 V 53; 71; 80–82; 86 n. 49; 92 nn. 118, 132; 93 nn. 134, 137–38; 109; 111 n. 43; 121; 190; 192 n. 45 VII 53; 81; 83; 92 n. 126; 93 nn. 140–41 VIII 80; 92 n. 117; 93 n. 148; 121; 147 n. 39

234


The Art of Logic 1; 6; 10; 10 n. 2; 145 n. 20 VIII 8; 11 n. 20 XI 4–5; 11 n. 15. Epistle to Yemen

Poisons and their Antidotes 63 15 87 n. 58 19 87 n. 58

28; 161 Regimen Sanitatis 63

Essay on Resurrection

52 Responsa Medica 63

Medical Works Compendium of Galen’s Works 62 Medical Aphorisms 62–63; 86–87 n. 51 3.26 84; 93 n. 149 3.81 87 n. 59 13.50 87 n. 58 20.10 90 n. 97 22.1 87 n. 58 22.27 87 n. 58 22.35 87 n. 59 22.37 87 n. 58 25.1 88 n. 60 25.59 78; 91 n. 106 Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates 63; 87 n. 55 I 14–19 87 n. 58 On Hemorrhoids 63 4.3 85 n. 10 On Sexual Intercourse 63 On Asthma 6.4 8.2–3 9.15 10.4 11.3 12.5 13.1–4 13.19–22 13.20 13.30 13.38

63 87 n. 59 79; 84; 91 n. 108; 93 n. 149 87 n. 59 87 n. 59 73; 85 n. 10; 87 n. 57 85 n. 10 78; 90 n. 100 77; 90 n. 99 73; 88 n. 60 71; 86 n. 47 72; 87 n. 54

Explication of the Names of Drugs 63

Classical and Jewish Philosophical Texts Alexander of Aphrodisias De Anima 59 n. 21; 119; 146 n. 24 De Intellectu 59 n. 21; 145 n. 22 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica I, q. 2, a. 1 201; 208 n. 49 I, q. 13, a. 11 198; 207 n. 3 Aristotle De Anima II 3 III 4 III 5 Categories 10

52; 59 n. 14 119; 146 nn. 24–25 59 n. 21

118

Eudemian Ethics VII 14 59 n. 21 Physics II 3 II 4

199; 208 n. 36 198; 207 n. 31

Metaphysics XI 8 XII 7 XII 8

198; 207 n. 31 118 199; 208 n. 38

Nicomachaean Ethics IV 2 90 n. 92 VI 4 197; 207 n. 22

I N DE X LO C ORU M VIII 9 X7 X 7–8

41 42 200; 208 n. 41

Hippocrates Epidemics

2 35

86–87 n. 51

Posterior Analytics 98; 109 n. 7

Ibn ‘Abd al-Malik Fī Dhamm al-Takassub bi-Sinā‘at al-Ṭibb 128b-133b 69

Topics 71a1–2

Abraham Ibn Ezra on Exodus 13:17, 19:20, 20:1 208 n. 54

98; 109 n. 7

Baḥya ibn Paquda Ḥovot ha-Levavot 65–68; 70 2 67; 86 n. 30 3.5 62 Hermann Cohen Ethics of Maimonides § 33 114; 144 n. 6 § 114–15 114; 144 n. 7a Ḥasdai Crescas Or Hashem II vi

58; 60 n. 46

Descartes Regulae ad directionem ingenii 146 n. 31 Galen Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequuntur 90 n. 95 De usu partium 87 n. 56; 91 n. 106 Gersonides Wars of the Lord

58; 60 n. 45

Al-Ghazālī Ihyā’ ‘Ulum al-Dīn 64 Judah Halevi Kuzari 14 Prayers for the Day of Atonement 193–94; 206 n. 3 Heraclitus Fragment 69 135; 151 n. 105

Ibn Riḍwān On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt 90–91 n. 102 Ibn Rushd Decisive Treatise

3; 11 n. 10

Ikhwān āl-Ṣafā’ The Case of the Animals vs. Man Ch. 39 70 Joseph Karo Kesef Mishneh 21; 24–26; 33 n. 43 Shulḥan ‘Arukh, Oraḥ Ḥayyim 143:2–3 26 Salomon Maimon Autobiography 125–26; 129; 132; 144 n. 4; 148 nn. 61–62, 65–72; 149 n. 3; 150 nn. 95–6 Giv‘at ha-Moreh 131; 135; 137–41; 150 n. 90; 151 n. 104; 107; 109–10; 112–16 Ḥesheq Shlomo 127–32; 134; 149 nn. 73, 76–77, 79; 150 n. 86–89; 91–92; 94 Kritische Untersuchungen 143; 152 n. 121 Letter to Lazarus Bendavid 142; 151 n. 119

236


Transcendentalphilosophie 128; 132–35; 150 n. 93; 151 n. 99–102 “Über die Progressen der Philosophie” 137; 151 nn. 108, 111 “Über die Weltseele” 129; 149 n. 79; 150 n. 84

Makkī Qūt al-Qulūb 2.4 67 Moses Mendelssohn Morgenstunden 147 n. 35 Plato Republic 405a 519b; 533d

86 n. 46 202; 208 n. 57

Timaeus 29a-30d

201; 208 n. 50

Jacob al-Qirqisānī Kitāb al-Anwār VI 12 66; 85 n. 21 Rashi on B’rakhot 14b 31 n. 19–20 on Yevamot 105b 23 on Giṭṭin 45b 32 n. 33 Sa‘adiah The Book of Theodicy 85 n. 12; 89 n. 77; 200; 208 n. 45 Emunot ve-De‘ot 91 n. 107 2.1 208 n. 54 4.1 205; 209 n. 75 Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.13 86 n. 38

Shemtov ben Joseph Ibn Shemtov on Guide I 68 146 n. 23; 149 n. 78 Spinoza Cogitata Metaphysica (CM) 1, 5 100; 110 nn. 10, 13 Ethica E1Appendix 102 E2P1 100; 110 n. 15 E2P7 100; 110 n. 16; 147 n. 35 E2P17 103; 110 n. 21 E2P17S 107; 111 nn. 38–39 E2P43 103 E2P49 104; 110 n. 23 E3D3 105; 110 n. 31 E3P22S 106 E3P9Dem. 106; 111 n. 37 E3P27Dem. 106; 111 n. 36 E3P49 108; 111 n. 42 E3P27C1 106 E3A Def. 20Exp. 106; 111 n. 33 E4P18 105; 110 n. 30 E4Appendix 105; 110 n. 29 Letters 6 21

110 n. 26 95; 105–6; 111 n. 32

Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione 101; 103; 108; 110 n. 18; 111 n. 41 21 97; 109 n. 4 21–22 9; 110 n. 9 44 110 n. 24 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 105 8 197; 207 n. 20 13 194; 206 n. 5 Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus 147 n. 35 Zohar on Bereshit 2:16 92 n. 110

Subject Index

providence, 9, 175 n. 35 psychology, xiii, 52–55, 59 n. 21 teleology, 198–99 virtue, 79, 82–83, 90 n. 92, 92 n. 110, 93 n. 135 Aristotelianism, xi, 13, 51, 72, 113, 120, 129, 146–47 n. 35, 162, 171 ark, 27, 40 Ash‘arites, 9, 175 n. 35 Asher, Saul, 156 Asnawi, Ahmad, 10 n. 2 authenticity, 158–59, 178 n. 87, 183–84 Averroes. See Ibn Rushd. Avicenna. See Ibn Sina.

Adam and Eve, 6, 80 Agent Intellect (Active Intellect), 54–56, 59 n. 26 conjunction, xiii–xiv, xvi, 56–57, 60 nn. 34, 36, 113–52, 200 agnosticism, xiii, 51 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 54, 59 n. 21, 119–20, 145 n. 22, 146 n. 30 Altmann, Alexander, 52, 60 n. 34, 146 n. 30 Rambam anthologies, xvi, 157, 165–73, 174 n. 19, 177 nn. 62, 68, 178 n. 87 amphiboly, 4–7, 11 n. 15. See also equivocal terms. t’munah, 6–7 Anan, 66, 85 n. 21 anger, 6, 28, 78–79, 81, 83 anthropomorphism, xii, xvii, 3–7, 22, 63, 130, 208 n. 54 Aquinas, Thomas, 201, 207 n. 30, 208 n. 49 Aristotle, 1, 41, 197–200 categories, 149 n. 73 contemplation, 42, 92 n. 125 epistemology, xv, 30, 98, 118–19, 127, 134, 136–37, 140–42, 145 n. 22, 146 nn. 26–27, 149 n. 78 eternity, 7–8 and Heidegger, 175 n. 22 human good, 79–81, 168 and Maimonides, 28, 156, 205

Baḥyā ibn Pāqūda, xiv, 62, 64–71, 74–75, 85 n. 19, 91 n. 103, 144 n. 4 Barth, Karl, xvii, 172, 185–86, 191 nn. 17, 22–23, 192 n. 42 Ben Sira, 66–67, 69, 85 nn. 19, 24–25 biblical exegesis, xi–xii, 25, 148 n. 69. See also Torah. in the Guide, 1–12, 193, 208 n. 54 Buber, Martin, 154, 162, 173 n. 7 chance, 9, 65, 71, 74, 93 n. 148, 198–99. See also Aristotle. charity, xiii, 38, 44–45, 48, 77, 90 n. 92 cognition, 53, 55–58, 159, 166 and mysticism, 113, 116, 119–125, 133–34, 138–40, 144 n. 8 237

238

S U BJ EC T I N D E X

Cohen, Hermann, xvi, 114, 117, 122, 156, 174 n. 13 commandments, xi–xii, 19, 27, 31 n. 12, 70, 78, 203, 209 n. 71. See also Torah. and accommodation, 102–03, and education, xvii, 31 n. 12, 34 n. 49, 123, 187 enumeration, xi, 2 and love of God, xii, 14–16, 187–88 ta‘amei ha-mitzvot, xvii–xviii, 18, 166, 168, 200–04 community, xvii, 25–26, 77, 157–58, 168, 172 contemplation, 15–17, 22, 30 n. 4, 42, 80–81, 92 n. 125, 113, 123–25, 132, 136, 141, 147 n. 41, 149 n. 73, 200 covenant, 117, 157, 172–73. See also destiny. creation, 7–8, 74–76, 88 n. 77, 91 n. 106, 162, 166, 198–202, 205. See also Ma‘aseh B’reshit. Davidson, Herbert, 10 n. 2, 52, 58 n. 5, 59 n. 26, 146–47 n. 35 Descartes, Rene, 97, 146 n. 31 destiny, xvi–xvii, 52, 155–60, 165–73, 174 n. 17, 194 duty, 28, 38–39, 72, 76–77, 121, 156. See also commandments. ecstasy, xiii, 115, 126, 132, 144 n. 4 and festivity, 40, 42 Eden, 6, 190 election, xii, 13. See also destiny. Eliphaz, 6 Enlightenment, 122, 125–27, 148 n. 60, 156, 158, 167, 173, 185. See also Haskalah. Epicurus, 9, 83, 175 n. 35 equivocal terms, 4–7, 101, 117–18 eschatology, 159, 163. See also messianism. esotericism, xvi, 96, 153–54,189 eternity, 25, 43, 55–57, 60 n. 34, 80, 143, 149 n. 78

of the world, 7–8, 166 ethics, 52, 54, 74, 76, 78–79, 90 n. 92, 105, 109, 123–25, 141–42, 156, 160, 162, 164–65, 170– 72, 174 n. 13, 177 n. 68, 186, 189–90 eudaimonia, xiii–xiv, xvi, 37, 79- 81, 125, 141–42. See also Aristotle, good life, human good. evil, 6, 17, 46, 158–60, 174 nn. 17–18 existentialism, xvi, 158–60, 166–73, 175 n. 22, 178 n. 87 faith, 88 n. 67, 156, 159, 171, 174 n. 17, 187–89 creed, xiii–xiv, 30, 156 and medicine, 62, 66, 75, 85 n. 13 and reason, ix–x, 160–61 al-Fārābī, xi, xiii, 1, 62, 91 n. 106 and psychology, 52–56, 59 n. 13 fate, 64–66, 91 n. 103, 158, 169–70 free will, xiii–xiv, 9, 53, 71, 160 Galen, 61–63, 71–73, 78, 87 nn. 51, 53, 56, 59, 88 n. 60, 90 nn. 95, 101, 91 nn. 105–06 al-Ghazālī, 52, 64, 67, 72, 85 n. 13, 86 n. 28 Glatzer, Nahum, xvi, 155–79 God. See also anthropomorphism, transcendence. attributes, 3–5, 46, 73–74, 122, 127, 149 n. 79, 162, 166, 174 n. 13, 190 and ethics, 156, 174 n. 13, 190 existence, 4, 7–8, 54–55, 117, 124, 162, 166, 193–96, 206 n. 4 and human knowledge, xii, 15–16, 19, 31 n. 8, 33 n. 46, 40, 42–48, 73–74, 82–83, 113, 121, 123, 141–42, 162–63, 185–86, 205 image, xii–xiv, xvi, xviii, 56, 64, 130, 139, 141, 205 incorporeality, 3–4, 7–8, 120, 124, 127, 130, 162 love, xii, 14–16, 18, 20, 24–25, 30 n. 4, 31 nn. 8, 13, 33 n. 46,

S U BJ EC T I N DE X

40, 42, 46, 113–14, 120, 124, 187–88, 191 n. 24 power, 9, 47, 67–68 uniqueness, 4–5, 117, 125, 130 wisdom, xii, xviii, 9, 15–16, 22, 27–29, 58, 74, 76, 80–81, 125, 200, 202, 204 good, 57, 73, 111 n. 35, 156, 200, 207 n. 27 and evil, 6, 158, 170, 174 nn. 17–18, 200 good life, 71, 74, 79–84, 108. See also Aristotle, eudaimonia, and human life. Guttmann, Jacob, 145 n. 20 Guttmann, Julius, xvi, 156 habituation, xv, 48, 82–83, 100–01, 104, 107–09, 142. See also Aristotle, virtue. halakhah, x–xii, 10, 19, 30, 162, 164–66, 184–85, 190, 194. See also rabbinic law. and health, 76–78 and joy, 37–39, 44, 49 and positivism, 17–18 Halakhot G’dolot, 2 Haman, 46 Hanukkah candles, 2 Haskalah, xvi, 125, 155–56. See also Enlightenment. Hebrew language, xii, 13, 17, 20–21, 29, 32 n. 26, 164–65 Heidegger, Martin, xvi, 175 n. 22, 178 n. 87 being and evil, 160 destiny, 158, 167–71 Hippocrates, 61–63, 87 n. 51, 90 nn. 95, 91 n. 105, 101 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 156 holocaust. See Shoah. human life, xiv, 70–76, 81, 124, 200, 205. See also Aristotle, eudaimonia, good life. humanism, xvi-xvii, 171, 190 biblical, xiv, 71, 77 Ibn Hindu, 68–69

2 39

Ibn Rushd, x, 1, 3, 58, 59 n. 22 Ibn Sina, xi, 1, 54–55, 58, 120, 122, 144 n. 4, 146 n. 31, 147 nn. 41–42 medicine, 61–63, 84 n. 1, 86 n. 41, 91 n. 106 idolatry, 4, 23, 25, 32 n. 39, 33 n. 40, 76, 79, 197, 207 n. 25. See also anthropomorphism. and politics, xvii, 181, 186, 188–90 Ikhwān al-Safā’, 70, 86 n. 45 imagination, xi, xiii–xiv, 6–8, 17, 52–53, 55, 57, 82–84, 95–112 and prophecy, 10, 121, 124 imitatio Dei, xiii–xiv, xviii, 16, 48, 72, 170, 200 immortality, 25, 34 n. 50, 60 n. 42, 79–80, 121, 131, 142, 159 and individuality, xiii–xiv, 52, 56–58, 138, 147 n. 41, 151 n. 101 intellect, xiii, xv–xvi, 9, 17–18, 25, 34 n. 55, 51–60, 95, 97–98, 100, 108, 110 nn. 14, 24, 200. See also Agent Intellect. and human perfection, 45, 48, 56, 98–99, 113–52, 166, 169, 171, 187, 189 and prophecy, xviii, 6–7, 10, 56, 74 and virtue, 45–48, 79–83 Job, 6, 65–66, 89 n. 81, 200 Jonathan ben Uziel, 4 joy, xii–xiii, 37–50, 81, 106–07, 109, 111 n. 35, 113, 123, 144 n. 4 Kalām, theology, xiii, xv, 7, 53, 97, 199. See also Ash‘arites, Mu‘tazilites. Kant, Immanuel, 156, 189, 194, 207 n. 27 208 nn. 40, 42 and Maimon, 128, 133, 135, 138–40, 142, 146 n. 23, 147 n. 51, 150 n. 84, 151 nn. 102, 109 Karaites, 66, 85 n. 21 language, xi, xiv–xv, 95–112, 189, 202. See also Hebrew language. Luzzatto, Samuel David, 156. Leibowitz, Yeshayahu, xvi-xvii, 181–192

24 0

S U BJ EC T I N D E X

love, xv, 106–8. See also God. Ma‘aseh B’reshit and Ma‘aseh Merkavah, 7, 27–28 Maimon, Salomon, xi, xv–xvi, 113–152 al-Makkī, 67, 88 n. 74 mathematics, ix, xvi, 61, 81, 141–43, 149 n. 73 medicine, ix–xi, xiv, 61–94 Mendelssohn, Moses, 147 n. 35, 150 n. 94, 156 messianism, 17, 80, 124, 161–63, 176 n. 47 and festivals, xiii, 42–49, 50 nn. 14, 19 and politics, 156, 159, 179 n. 94, 182–83 metaphor, 4–5, 7 mezuzah, 14–15, 23–25, 33 nn. 41, 47, 34 n. 49, 75 mission, 157–59, 163, 173. See also destiny, election. mitzvot. See commandments. Moses, 46, 56, 74, 79, 113, 144 n. 4, 170, 178 n. 90, 196, 200. See also Torah uniqueness, xviii, 2, 6–7, 9–10, 12 n. 27, 120–21, 123, 125, 202–204 Mu‘tazilites, 9, 175 n. 35 mysticism, xv–xvi, 13–14, 30 n. 2, 40, 64, 72. See also Agent Intellect, conjunction. rational/philosophical, xv, 113–152

order natural, xvii, 70, 76, 104, 193, 196– 99, 202, 205 political, 80, 159–72, 174 nn. 17–18, 176 n. 52 Pesaḥ, xiii, 38, 40 pietism, 62, 64, 66–70, 75, 79 Plato, xiv, 50 n. 24, 75, 77, 83, 86 n. 46, 96, 98–100, 134, 167, 175 n. 22, 184, 201–02 and the Good, 48, 156 politics, and religion, xiii–xvii, 96–97, 105, 109, 153–86, 189–90, 196 predestination, 160, 169–70. See also fate, providence. prejudice, xv, 96–97, 99–102, 104, 107– 08, 109 n. 5 prophecy, xi, xvii, 8, 10, 12 n. 27, 156–57, 203. See also Moses, Torah. providence, 8–9, 43, 46–49, 62, 64–67, 70, 120, 123, 160, 166, 169– 70, 186. See also fate, God, predestination. psychology, xi, xiii–xv, 51–60, 74, 78–79, 81–84, 88 n. 70, 92 n. 125, 102–03, 108 Purim, xiii, 2, 37, 43–49 Qur’an, 3, 64, 67, 69, 88 n. 77

naturalism, xii–xiii, xviii, 13, 61–94 Nazism, xvi, 87 n. 59, 153–79, 186–87. See also Shoah. negative theology, 4–5, 127 Newtonian physics, 205–06 Neoplatonism, ix, 13, 51, 126, 129. See also Agent Intellect. nominalism, xii, xiv–xv, 13, 98, 105–06

rabbinic law, xi–xii, 1–3, 10, 76–77, 203–04, 209 n. 71. See also Halakhah. al-Rāzī, Muḥammad ibn Zakariyā’, 61–63, 72, 77, 83, 84 n. 6, 92 n. 113, 93 nn. 136, 146 Redeverbot, 155, 173 n. 7 responsibility, 13, 64, 68, 77, 93 n. 148, 160, 162, 169–70. See also duty, commandments. and community, xvii, 188 revelation. See prophecy.

Onqelos, 4, 6, 33 n. 47 opinion, xi, xv, 56, 95–104, 107–09, 109 n. 5, 187

Sa‘adiah Gaon, 82, 85 n. 12, 89 n. 77, 91 n. 107, 93 nn. 135–36, 208 nn. 45, 54

S U BJ EC T I N DE X

Schmitt, Carl, xvi, 159, 162–63, 166–67, 169, 171–72, 174, 176 n. 44 Schneider, Lambert, 154 Schocken, Salman, 155 Schocken Verlag, xvi, 153–79 serpent, 6, 69 Shabbat, 76, 92 n. 125 Shavuot, xiii, 38 sh’khinah, 13, 21–23, 32 nn. 30–31, 43–45, 47–48 Shoah, xi, 182. See also Nazism. Simmel, Georg, 157–58 Simon, Ernst, 155 sin, xii, 6, 13, 40, 79, 85 n. 19, 164 skepticism, xiii, xvi, 51, 86 n. 38, 103, 115, 126–27, 131, 135–43, 147 n. 51 slaves, 3, 17, 22–23, 32 n. 35, 33 n. 40, 92 n. 125 soul, 43, 91 n. 105, 118–19, 123, 127–28, 132, 134, 141–43, 146 nn. 26, 28, 147 nn. 41–42, 159, 168, 187. See also psychology. Spengler, Oswald, 158 Spinoza, xi, xiv–xvi, 95–112, 115, 133, 151 n. 102, 194, 197 Stoics, 64, 70, 75, 125 Strauss, Leo, xvi–xvii, 96, 153–54, 156– 57, 159, 171, 184 Strauß, Ludwig, xvi, 157–65 Sukkot, xiii, 38–48 superstition, xii–xv, 30, 63, 65, 67, 75, 96, 100–02, 206

241

syllogism, 8, 10, 91 n. 106, 129 teleology, xv, xviii, 102–03, 158, 162, 198–206. See also destiny. theodicy, 158–59, 174 nn. 17–18 Torah, xi–xii, 2, 4, 13–36, 74, 78–83, 89 n. 82, 90 n. 97, 167–73, 187–89. See also biblical exegesis, commandments, Moses, rabbinic law. as divine creation, xvii–xviii, 194–209 and philosophy, 7, 9–10, 156 and human language, 101, 105 totalitarianism, and philosophy, 154, 167, 171 transcendence, xii, xviii, 13, 73, 80, 115, 121, 126, 129, 131, 141–43, 162–63, 166–67, 172, 185–87, 194, 199–201 universalism, xvi, 13, 23, 29 virtue, 45, 47–48, 51, 64–65, 73, 78–82, 86 n. 46, 93 n. 135, 123. See also Aristotle. Weimar Republic, 155, 157, 172 Yom Kippur, 76, 206 n. 3 Zionism, xvi–xvii, 155, 164, 174 n. 17, 181–192


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Living Root: A Memoir (S U N Y Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture)

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Darwin And the Nature of Species (S U N Y Series in Philosophy and Biology)

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