Why and What Is the Singular
When describing the greatest perfection of knowledge, virtue, and political unity in their works, Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza consistently emphasize that these perfections have a quality that is singular, i.e. irreducible and unique. These perfections are singular in that they do not have the status as merely one among many. These perfections can neither be fully reduced to nor exhaustively explained by images or rational universal concepts, since both kinds of explanation situate perfection in some sense as one among many. An imaginative explanation situates perfection as a common image or opinion equal to others, and a rational explanation relates any perfection to a universal metaphysical reality that is ideally indifferent in application or identical in status.
Even as philosophers committed to the necessity of reason, curiously, Maimonides and Spinoza argue that a discursive science built on universal demonstrations and concepts cannot fully express ultimate perfection, whether intellectual, ethical, or social. Both philosophers argue that explaining individuals and specific contexts through the use of abstractions which are drawn from those very same contexts would distort rather than fully express those specific concrete realities. For both, the complete suppression of natural individual circumstances so as to merely attain a universal transcendent ideal reality and perfection seems incomplete and unproductive for human perfection, i.e. the knowledge and the good of a concrete individual or society. Nevertheless, both philosophers consistently reject imaginative explanations as too errant, accidental, and disruptive to provide stability and activity for the perfection of individuals and society.
Despite their critiques of imaginative influences and the extrinsic material conditions that they involve, both philosophers argue that imagination and material conditions have an important part to play in whether an individual expresses perfection. Nonetheless, imagination and embodied conditions cannot express perfection merely as image or passive representation. Instead, imagination and one’s concrete form of living must be “transformed”1 into a singular expression that actively resists reduction to either errant image or a transcendental. Through this process, the actuality (or activity) present in passive modes of representation and concrete conditions may become intrinsic, necessary, and as (self-) active as possible, i.e. “perfect.”
However, a singular irreducible expression does not fully detach from concrete conditions and actualities; the activity intrinsic in a singular perspective concurrently relates to and expresses physical conditions in a most perfect way. As a result, singularity does not represent transcendence and a complete suppression of physical activities/actualities but, rather, a rendering of these activities/actualities under their most active and expressive perspective. The achievement of this mode of living cannot be merely reduced to the mere acquisition of correct opinions or universal truths, since these would again represent a passive, extrinsic mode of living and orientation. The mere having of knowledge is too static to express singular perfection. Thus, both emphasize that in order to achieve singular “moments”2 of perfection, one must not only acquire virtuous and intellectual truths but also must continually strive by these truths as maxims so that an intrinsic (philosophical) way of life actually determines and intrinsically guides one’s life. The continual enactment of knowledge and virtue is essential to perfection, which, again, implies concrete management of and support from one’s conditions/context, but more importantly, this enactment implies the constant appetitive commitment to live intelligently.
When individuals are able to perfect themselves with exceptional and careful self-management, they themselves become singular people. For both philosophers, these singular individuals have been commonly defined as prophets, sages, virtuous sovereigns, or perfect philosophers. For Maimonides and Spinoza, not only do these unique individuals express absolute singular knowledge, they also embody singular ethical-political virtue. Singular ethical-political virtue entails that a wise individual has managed their unique embodied historical, physical, and psychological conditions so as to generate and institute wisdom to perfect themselves and others. Whereas some have argued that for Maimonides and Spinoza, human perfection is solely derived from cognition of metaphysical truths,3 I argue that by examining the instances in which Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s address the singular, it reveals that historical, physical, psychological, and political conditions must be incorporated and properly managed to generate intellectual and ethical perfection. As a result, concrete conditions, such as history, politics, and ethical habituation, rather than being ancillary to metaphysical cognition, are primary or, at the very least, must be coordinated with metaphysical truth to generate intellectual and human perfection. A key claim that my work advances is that metaphysics and abstract reason alone cannot generate intellectual and human perfection. Rather, concrete conditions must be recognized as necessary for and, subsequently, included properly to achieve singular intellectual, ethical, and political virtue. Examining the singular allows us to see how each thinker is concerned more with the perfection of the complete individual, including the concrete sensible faculties and conditions.
A Skeptical Tradition
In general, this work aligns with a skeptical reading of Maimonides and Spinoza.4 Most notably, Shlomo Pines and, more recently, Josef Stern have argued that Maimonides’ philosophy is concerned primarily with a way of living that in some way must engage with concrete practices, conditions, and subjects such as ethics, politics, and psychology to achieve complete happiness and human perfection.5 Inspired by others, who see Spinoza’s philosophy as similarly concerned with ethical-political flourishing, such as Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, I read Spinoza as well from a skeptical perspective. Dobbs-Weinstein argues, as I do, that, for Spinoza, ethical-political flourishing must be concurrent with intellectual understanding so that together they generate complete perfection.6
As these and other scholars have detailed, a skeptical reading primarily entails that, for Maimonides and Spinoza, knowledge of metaphysical realities cannot be fully attained and verified by an embodied knower through demonstrative reason. In particular, universals that ground rational demonstrations are products of human embodied knowers abstracting from particulars, and these abstractions can neither fully guarantee nor fully capture a metaphysical reality as presented in the abstract content of a universal. Although I agree with a skeptical reading of these thinkers and will present skeptical interpretations of Maimonides and Spinoza in this text, nonetheless, this work does not claim that metaphysics per se is impossible for Maimonides and Spinoza. Instead, it follows the lead of Maimonides and Spinoza, who consistently argue that the cognition of metaphysical and rational truths is insufficient to generate complete happiness and perfection for individuals and communities. Throughout the text, I will demonstrate how they consistently return to the question of individual and social perfection from the perspective of the singular, which requires the “transformation” of concrete activities into an irreducible and unique expression. An important question that supports a skeptical reading is that if the attainment or cognition of metaphysical truths is so real and perfecting, why do both thinkers continually return to focus on concrete activities, and subsequently, highlight the difficulty in attaining perfection without proper and continual management of physical conditions?
Of course, by reading these two thinkers from a skeptical perspective, and emphasizing their shared focus on the singular, I draw these two thinkers rather close but so have recent scholars. In particular, Warren Zev Harvey has provided a seminal reading of Spinoza as a Maimonidean.7 Shlomo Pines, the originator of the skeptical interpretation of Maimonides, notes a close affinity between Maimonides and Spinoza: “[Spinoza] does Maimonides the honour, rarely or never vouchsafed to him in modern times, to disprove him […] [H]e is able to do this because he is prepared to adopt some of the presuppositions of Maimonides. He also pays [Maimonides] the, in a sense, greater compliment of adapting some of his ideas.”8 Recently, Jeffrey Bernstein has argued that Leo Strauss did not see Maimonides and Spinoza as radically opposed thinkers, but that for Strauss, Spinoza carries Maimonidean premodern thought into the modern era, thereby making Spinoza, to a considerable extent, premodern (i.e. Maimonidean).9
Despite these scholars’ works on the kinship between Maimonides and Spinoza, many others dispute a deep similarity between Maimonides and Spinoza. Chief among these critiques is Joshua Parens’ book, Maimonides and Spinoza: Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature.10 Additionally, a common view is that Spinoza’s critique of Maimonides in the Theological-Political Treatise reveals a profound rejection of Maimonides’ philosophy, particularly Maimonides’ view of religion and prophecy—an argument developed by Steven Frankel.11 Suffice it to say, given my previous argument that Maimonides and Spinoza share a focus on singular perfection, I believe both have similar views of human nature, contra Parens. Furthermore, in this work, I...