Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed"

A Philosophical Guide

Alfred L. Ivry

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780226395265
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

A classic of medieval Jewish philosophy, Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed is as influential as it is difficult and demanding. Not only does the work contain contrary—even contradictory—statements, but Maimonides deliberately wrote in a guarded and dissembling manner in order to convey different meanings to different readers, with the knowledge that many would resist his bold reformulations of God and his relation to mankind. As a result, for all the acclaim the Guide has received, comprehension of it has been unattainable to all but a few in every generation.Drawing on a lifetime of study, Alfred L. Ivry has written the definitive guide to the Guide —one that makes it comprehensible and exciting to even those relatively unacquainted with Maimonides' thought, while also offering an original and provocative interpretation that will command the interest of scholars. Ivry offers a chapter-by-chapter exposition of the widely accepted Shlomo Pines translation of the text along with a clear paraphrase that clarifies the key terms and concepts. Corresponding analyses take readers more deeply into the text, exploring the philosophical issues it raises, many dealing with metaphysics in both its ontological and epistemic aspects.

The Guide of the Perplexed: Paraphrases and Analyses

4

Wrestling with Language (Guide Part I, Introduction and Chapters 1–68)

Paraphrase

The Guide is composed of three parts, each part having an introduction. The theme Maimonides presents in the first introduction, reprised in the introduction to the third part, is that it is his intention to “explain what can be explained” of the “Account of the Beginning” (ma‘aseh bere’shit) and the “Account of the Chariot” (ma‘aseh merkavah).1 He identifies these rabbinic terms with “natural science” and “divine science” respectively, i.e., physics and metaphysics (“divine” in that it deals with God and beings of the celestial realm).

In the third introduction, Maimonides acknowledges that this inquiry is the “chief aim” of his work, while in the first introduction he subsumes it within the category of allegorical explanation or exegesis, “the explanation of very obscure parables occurring in the books of the prophets.” Maimonides deems this explanation of parables “not explicitly identified as such” to be the “second” purpose of the book, the first being “to explain the meanings of certain terms occurring in books of prophecy.”2

Maimonides thus intends the Guide to be a lexicological as well as philosophical study, the former intended to pave the way for the latter. His study of the multiple usages a term may convey, and of the parabolic or allegorical interpretations scriptural pronouncements may harbor, legitimates the philosophical inquiries he wishes to pursue. In both introductions Maimonides is careful to say he intends to examine terms and parables in the books of the prophets, not in the Torah itself, though he does both.3 He may have wanted initially to ease his readers’ anxieties about what they might have viewed as tampering with Holy Writ. As we will see, he has no compunction about insulting those who engage primarily in the study of Talmud, even though that too was highly revered as expressive of God’s will.

The first introduction, then, alerts the reader to what will be an exegetical tour de force that will transform the Bible into a philosophical text. Maimonides knows that not everyone will be satisfied with his interpretations of the words of Scripture, and that it is best for him (politically and personally) to be brief (employing “chapter headings” rather than full disquisitions) and discreet, scattering his true views within different contexts. He justifies this with a talmudic injunction not to transmit knowledge of the secrets of the Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot to the public at large, actually, not to more than one or two persons at a time.4 The Guide is meant for a very restricted audience, though Maimonides knew it would be read by many whom he considered unprepared for it. He thus deliberately makes it difficult to digest, and in a special request (waṣiya)5 commands the reader not to divulge—or critique—any of the novel ideas he may have encountered in the book. Maimonides pleads for people who are put off by the book to ignore it or give it a positive assessment, even if that involves a “far-fetched interpretation.”6

Yet Maimonides is prepared to risk a negative reaction to his book for the sake of the truth and for the enlightenment of the select (and philosophically alert) few. Maimonides is sure this kind of reader, a person devoted to the Law yet perplexed, will benefit from the book, finding “rest” from his doubts and achieving perfection (yakmal wa yaṣtariḥ). For the moment he does not spell out exactly what he means by “perfection,” but it will become clear that it is the summum bonum of both the philosophers and the adherents of religion: a state of knowledge that becomes a state of being, an intimacy with the true nature of being and its author, and the inexpressible joy that ensues.

Maimonides concludes his untitled introduction to part 1 of the Guide with an explicit “Introduction” (muqaddama), in which he lists seven kinds of contradictory or contrary statements, at least one of which can (supposedly) be found in any written work. The causes for these conflicting statements include (1) references to diverse but unidentified sources; (2) unstated authorial changes of opinion in the same composition; (3) unstated changes in the style of the work, shifting registers between literal and allegorical meanings; (4) claims not made explicit and not in their proper place, due to a “certain necessity” (li-ḍarura mā); (5) the difficulty of the material, causing the subject to be taught simplistically and illogically at first; (6) the inattention of the author to the fact that a contradiction exists, due to the number of premises needed to make it evident; (7) the necessity to reveal only part of the discourse of “very obscure matters” (umūrun ghāmidhatun jiddan), where “obscure” can also mean secret. In this case, necessity dictates using contradictory premises when discussing the issue in different places, the common person7 to be unaware of the contradiction.

Chapters 1–30—with the exception of chapter 2—and chapters 37–45 of part 1 of the Guide are given over to reframing the anthropomorphic depictions of God that abound in the Bible. Maimonides’ first target is scriptural references to the body of God, His eyes and ears, hands, feet, and face. These cannot be understood literally, Maimonides insists, for His God, by a definition he has yet to spell out here, is incorporeal.

God, therefore, can neither see nor be seen, neither hear nor be heard, i.e., speak, at least not physically, not as these terms are used in a literal sense.8 They are to be understood as metaphors denoting God’s apprehending presence and His providential regard. A similar meaning is to be attached to all scriptural images that capture God in any particular state of being, whether sitting, standing, rising, coming, or going.9 Motion of any sort—as well as rest from motion—is foreign to God’s nature for Maimonides, in that it can occur only to a body that has magnitude.10

Paradoxically, Maimonides believes the Bible’s dynamic depictions of the deity are meant to convey the image of an unchanging, stable, and permanent state of being. This is a function of God’s incorporeal and perfect nature, where perfection is measured by a totally uncaused and unaffected singularity of being. The providence God shows the world, like His apprehension of it, is not, therefore, for Maimonides an ad hoc response to particular individuals or circumstances. Rather, providence is expressed by the presence of permanent species that ultimately owe their being to God.11

Surprisingly, given Maimonides’ soon to be revealed aversion to positive predication of God, he identifies Him in the very first chapter of part 1 with intellectual apprehension (idrāk ‘aqlīy), His essence being what we could best understand as an active intellect. This is also the feature that distinguishes homo sapiens from other animals and explains for Maimonides why man is said, in Genesis 1:27, to be created in the “image” (ẓelem) of God. Though Maimonides says the apprehensions of the two intellects are dissimilar, he claims, based on the biblical passage, that they are “conjoined.”12

Maimonides does not dwell on this issue here, however important it is; rather he devotes much effort in the following chapters to denying the literal meaning of every other term predicated of the deity in the Bible. He sees each as carrying with it the stigma of corporeality and thus regards it as compromising the pure unity of God’s being.

The second chapter of part 1 is also somewhat anomalous, in that it again introduces a topic that Maimonides does not develop until much later, and that is theodicy, the defense of divine justice. Maimonides broaches this issue through a dazzling exegesis of the third chapter of Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve in Eden, their fall and expulsion.13 As Maimonides tells it, he was challenged to justify God’s apparent act of creating man initially without his noblest and defining feature, the intellect and the intellectual ability to distinguish between good and evil, God actually forbidding man to acquire this knowledge, only to grant it as part of his punishment for disobeying Him.

Maimonides’ response, couched in unusually vituperative terms to an anonymous challenger,14 reveals much of Maimonides’ attitude toward mankind, the human condition, epistemology, and politics. It also reveals his ability to disguise his negative attitude toward depicting God in human terms, for he seems to accept the terms of the biblical story literally.

Accordingly, Maimonides distinguishes between Adam before the fall and after it, i.e., between prelapsarian and postlapsarian man. For Maimonides, it is inconceivable that God would have made man without the feature that is his ultimate perfection, with which he was created in the image of God. Thus, Maimonides says that originally Adam had a perfect intellect, which is to say an intellect devoted solely to questions of truth and falsity, what the philosophers described as a speculative or theoretical intellect. Though Maimonides does not say so here, it was a given among philosophers that such an intellect can entertain only propositions subject to demonstrable proofs requiring universally acceptable logical premises and undeniable conclusions. Prelapsarian Adam was thus created to be an ideal (and socially disinterested) scientist/philosopher.

The intellect that man acquired after the fall, for Maimonides, is generally referred to (though not by Maimonides here) as the practical intellect. It is that faculty which considers propositions for which no universal scientific judgment is possible, the premises being based on commonly accepted views that may be true or false, but that must be considered from the viewpoint of their social or moral utility as good or evil, or as Maimonides calls them, “fine and bad,” al-ḥasn and al-qabīḥ.15

This is the punishment Maimonides would have us believe God meted out to Adam and his descendants: to wallow in moral and political issues for which no necessarily true or false judgment is possible; to construct a society in which judgments of good and bad are based on conventions the truths of which are probabilistic at best. For Maimonides, this is the human condition for which man and not God is responsible, the political and moral sphere that God had intended to spare Adam.

The logic of Maimonides’ exegesis here raises questions, both within the chapter itself,16 and in relation to Maimonides’ later insistence on a God who is unchanging and unaffected by human behavior. Maimonides must, therefore, consider the entire story as a parable devoted to distinguishing between the theoretical and the practical intellect, and to assigning responsibility for each to God and man, respectively.17 For Maimonides, the most that God could be said to have done for man is to have given him the potentiality to create his own social and moral universe, a potentiality that Maimonides imagines God ideally had not wanted man to develop. Where this leaves the Torah and its laws, and the entire sphere of ethics and politics for Maimonides, remains to be seen.18

Chapters 28–36 of part 1 contain abbreviated remarks on a variety of topics, foreshadowing more expansive and reasoned expositions later. In chapters 31 and 32 Maimonides makes the point, often reiterated elsewhere, that there are limits to what the human intellect can apprehend, assertions about things concerning which demonstrative proofs cannot be given. Maimonides is thinking mostly of metaphysical propositions and, relying on a cryptic talmudic passage, praises Rabbi Aqiba for recognizing the limits of such speculation.19 Though he enumerates various reasons why most people do not make sufficient use of their intellects, Maimonides does not want to impugn the integrity of the intellect itself and closes chapter 32 with reference to later chapters20 in which he will give a “precise account” (taḥrīr) of the essence of the intellect.

In chapters 33 and 34 Maimonides emphasizes the danger and difficulties inherent in embarking on the study of metaphysics without proper training and natural aptitude. Reflecting the biases of his time, Maimonides believes all young people and women, as well as most men, are naturally incapable of understanding the subject, and that is one reason the Torah presents scientific truths in popular, nonscientific terms. As Maimonides puts it, “the Torah speaks in the language of man.”21 This is necessary for most people, however much a literal reading of the text may mislead them. It is necessary too, to tolerate false beliefs in order to keep the “secrets” of physics and metaphysics, ma‘aseh bere’shit and ma‘aseh merkavah, inviolate.

Maimonides, however, draws the line at statements that attribute corporeal attributes to God. Everyone—“children, women, stupid ones, and those of a defective natural disposition”—must be compelled to disavow that belief, as well as the concomitant belief in a deity that is affected by anything (and thus subject to change). Children (as well as everyone else) must be “made to accept on traditional authority [taqlīd] 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.”22 Such terms as “existence,” “life,” and “knowledge” mean something entirely different when predicated of God and of man. As Maimonides says of existence, it “can only be applied equivocally to His existence and to that of things other than He.”23

Maimonides is very insistent on this issue: the belief in divine corporeality and its entailments is a cardinal sin for him, one that warrants death to the person holding the false belief.24 Such a person is an infidel in Maimonides’ opinion, worse even than an idolater who uses a statue as an image of, and an intermediary to, the one God.

The vehemence of Maimonides’ belief in the necessity of negating God’s corporeality, using as a proof text the genocidal command of Deuteronomy 20:16, is striking. It is a sign of the critical importance this principle has in Maimonides’ philosophy and faith, extending beyond theoretical tenets to practical and political ramifications. Clearly, he felt not only that the monotheistic idea was threatened by misunderstanding the nature of God, but that the Jewish people, Maimonides’ own flock, were exposing themselves to corruption and ruin with this misapprehension. As Maimonides says, “necessity” (aḍ-ḍarūra) required that the masses (al-jumhūr) be “guided” to the belief in the existence of God and in His possessing all the perfections, particularly life, power, and knowledge.25 This necessity for Maimonides is as much a political imperative as it is a metaphysical one.

So agitated was Maimonides over the infidelity, as he saw it, of those who believed in a corporeal God that he threatens them with God’s anger, jealousy, and the “fire of His wrath,” forgetting, as it were, that these were part of the package of attributes and actions that he wanted everyone to deny God has.26

In chapter 34, Maimonides, following what he regards as an accepted, demonstrated truth, asserts that “the moral virtues are a preparation [ṭauti’a] for the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Background
• The Guide of the Perplexed: Paraphrases and Analyses
• Notes
• Additional Recommended Readings
• Bibliography
• Index