Maimonides, Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon

MAIMONIDES, RABBI MOSES BEN MAIMON

also known by the acronym RaMBaM (b. Córdoba, Spain, 1135 or 1138; d. Cairo [or Fuṣāṭt], Egypt, 1204)

medicine, codification of the Jewish law, philosophy.

Maimonides was the foremost representative of the school of thought that is designated as Jewish Aristotelianism. In consequence of the invasion of Muslim Spain by the Almohads, his family left Córdoba while he was a child and after an interval settled in 1159/1160 in Fez, Morocco, a country which, like Andalusia, was ruled by the Almohads. He lived there until 1165. Maimonides received his philosophical, scientific, and legal training in Spain and the Maghreb and prided himself on belonging to the Andalusian (rather than the Oriental) school of philosophy. It is also probable that the dogmas of the Almohad creed had some influence on his formulation of the thirteen fundamental Jewish religious principles. In 1166 Maimonides settled in Egypt, at first in Alexandria and then in Fuṣtāṭ, near Cairo. In Egypt he was court physician and (either official or unofficial) head of the Jewish community. His works, with very few exceptions, were written in that country, where he spent the rest of his life.

Maimondies’ writings may be classed according to their genres:

1. The legal works, the most important of which are his commentary on the Mishnah, written when he was still young, and his codification of the Talmudic law, known as Mishnah Torah or Yad Hazaqa (“A Strong Hand”). Certain portions of both these works treat of philosophical doctrine.

2. Popular or semipopular theological works destined for the general Jewish reader, such as the “Treatise on Resurrection.”

3. A systematic philosophical text, the Maqāla fīsinā at al-manṭiq, the only one written by Maimonides; it is a treatise on logic, and perhaps his earliest work.

4. The Guide of the Perplexed, completed a short time before Maimonides’ death, which is in a class by itself. It deals in an unsystematic way with physics and metaphysics but also is concerned with the presuppositions and the imperatives of politics, religious belief and the religious commandments, and the final end of man. It is intended for the perplexed, that is, for those versed in Jewish lore who also have a smattering of and a capacity for philosophical knowledge and are thus in danger of abandoning the observance of the religious law.

5. A number of medical treatises, written in the last period of his life.

6. A very extensive correspondence, consisting of letters and rabbinical responsa addressed to notables of Jewish communities in various countries of the Islamic world and outside it—for instance, in the south of France.

All the main works of Maimonides, except Mishnah Torah, which is in Hebrew, were written in Arabic.

Maimonides affirmed that he did not intend to expound novel philosophical views; he attempted to show, inter alia, (1) that the teaching of philosophy need not, if the necessary precautions are taken, result in the disruption of society and the destruction of the Jewish religion and (2) that philosophy enables man to attain his final end, which is the perfection of his intellect.

We have firsthand evidence of the esteem in which Maimonides held various philosophers. In a letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon, the translator of the Guide into Hebrew, he had very high praise for Aristotle—who should, however, according to him, be read together with his commentators. It may be noted in this connection that Alexander of Aphrodisias appears to have had a significant influence on Maimonides.

The most trustworthy Muslim philosophers were, in Maimonides’ opinion, al-Fārābī and Ibn Bājja. Ibn Sīnā was regarded as less reliable, although Maimonides used him freely; Ibn Sīnā sometimes provided him with the theological or semitheological terminology necessary for his purposes. According to the letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon, the study of Plato is much less useful than that of Aristotle; but, like that of al-Fārābī, Maimonides’ political philosophy derived to a considerable extent from Plato’s writings. The precautions taken by Maimonides in the Guide to avoid troubling the religious readers who lacked the capacity states, unsystematic exposition and deliberate recourse to self-contradiction. To cite an important example, he set forth three conceptions of God which appear to be mutually incompatible.

The first of these conceptions is the God of Maimonides’ brand of negative theology. This theology is different in an important respect from that of most Neoplatonists because, contrary to most of them, Maimonides did not admit mystic union, that is, an ecstatic experience of God which transcends the intellect but which man is able to achieve. Maimonides’ negative theology stressed the impossibility of making a correct positive statement about the essence if God. Apparently, positive assertions can be regarded as true only if they are given a negative meaning. For instance, the statement “God is wise” signifies that He is not unwise. Maimonides denied—and was, because of this, taken to task in the fourteenth century by the Jewish philosopher Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides)— that this assertion may, when applied to God, have a positive content. Maimonides’ conception of the unknowability of God, of there being nothing in the created world that is similar to or has a trace of Him, and the doctrine of negative attributes that fits in with these other points result in the recognition that it is impossible to transform God into an object of science. Metaphysics is thus deprived of its main object (or, according to another opinion, of one of its main objects).

A philosopher can, nevertheless, acquire the only knowledge of God of which man is capable: a knowledge of His activity. This is tantamount to a knowledge of the natural order or events, the expressions “divine actions” and “natural actions” being interchangeable. It appears to follow that it is in studying natural science and metaphysics that man achieves the only knowledge of God granted to him. It is admittedly a very limited knowledge, for an examination of the “divine” events are regarded as proceeding from certain dispositions in God; for instance, the care of parents for their offspring is said to be due to God’s beneficence or mercifulness, and earthquakes and floods to His vengefulness.

Maimonides—who in this matter followed, at least as far as terminology is concerned, a well-established tradition—designated mercifulness, vengefulness, and other terms of this kind, when applied to God, as attributes of action. Such attributes represent an evaluation of the impact of natural (and perhaps also of historical) events on man or human society; they should not be taken as referring to God’s essence.

A second conception of God expounded by Maimonides is the Aristotelian one. God is an intellect, that is, the subject, the object, and the act of intellection. Like other Aristotelian philosophers, Maimonides considered that these three form a unity. He follows such predecessors in considering, in disagreement with the tenor of Aristotle’s text, that God’s knowledge is not confined to Himself only. He may be held to know the specific forms and the natural order—or, in other words, the system of sciences. Since Maimonides adopted the Aristotelian view that the knower and the object of his knowledge are identical, this means that in his view (as in that of other medieval Aristotelian philosophers) God may be equated with a self-cognizant system of sciences, a conception which has a striking similarity to Hegel’s interpretation of Aristotle’s God (in the concluding portion of his Encyclopedia ). It may be noted that according to Maimonides, God does not know individuals as such, that is, in their separate existence, but only in virtue of being their cause. It seems probable that this formula, like other theological traits in Maimonides’ writings, may be derived from Ibn Sīnā (see Ibn Sīnā’s Kitāb la Shifā ;, in al-Ilāhīyāt, II, M. Y. Moussa, S. Dunya, and S. Zayed, eds. [Cairo, 1960], p. 359).

In contradistinction to his Aristotelian predecessors, Maimonides appears to have set store by a comparison which indicates a similarity between God conceived as an intellect and the human intellect. This comparison Contrasts—perhaps intentionally—with the extreme negative theology of what has been designated as his first conception of God; the extremism of this theology goes much beyond the analogous views expressed by the Muslim Aristotelian philosophers.

A third conception affirms the existence of a divine will, a notion that had been elaborated by al-Ghazālī and some earlier Mutakallimūn. Hence Maimonides thinkers. As we shall see, however, his views were markedly different from theirs.

A God not endowed with will is, according to Maimonides, an altogether powerless God, who is not able to lengthen the wings of a fly. This idea is wholly unacceptable for religion. In this context the question of whether the world had or has not been created in time becomes crucial. Temporal creation would mean an intervention of God in the course of events or, in other words a miracle, the greatest of miracles; if this were admitted as possible, there would be no difficulty in accepting lesser ones.

No problem would arise if Maimonides were prepared to follow the example of the Mutakallimūn in denying the existence of a natural order and causality; this would mean complete rejection of Aristotelian physics. This he refused to do, and instead found another solution. He argued that the natural sciences are absolutely correct within certain limits but ought not to go beyond these limits. For there are spheres of knowledge the investigation of which transcends the powers of man; as far as science is concerned, certain questions are insoluble, the question of whether the world has been created in time being one of them. Given this fact, Maimonides chose the hypothesis of temporal creation, for the reason that the religious tradition, including the belief that Israel was chosen by God, can be explained and justified only in the light of this hypothesis. Thus the latter may be considered as a practical postulate required for the preservation of religion, and not as a theoretical truth.

Maimonides’ emphasis on the limitations of human science is perhaps his most significant contribution to general—as distinct from Jewish—philosophical thought. Like Kant, he pointed out these limitations in order to make room for belief. He accepted Aristotelian physics insofar as it is concerned with the sublunar world; in his view it provides an example of a perfect scientific theory. It may be noted that in this connection he apparently preferred a mechanistic explanation. He certainly played down the role of final, as compared with efficient, causes in natural science.

Human science cannot, however, provide a satisfactory theory for the world of the heavenly spheres. Following his Muslim predecessors (see, for instance, Ibn Sīnā, Risāla ft’l-Ajrām al-’ulwiyya, in Tis’ Rasā’il [Cairo, 1908], p. 49), Maimonides posed some questions concerning this celestial world which, according to him, may be insoluble. For instance, he asked whether, given the difference between the stars and the spheres, one should not admit, in opposition to Aristotle’s views, the existence of more than one kind of matter in the celestial world. A much more intractable problem was constituted by the flagrant contradiction between the Ptolemaic system, with its recourse to epicycles and eccentrics, and Aristotelian physics.

Unlike his contemporary Ibn Rushd, Maimonides did not believe that a correct system of astronomy was known in Aristotole’s time and had since been forgotten, for the considered that at that time knowledge of mathematics was still very imperfect. Nor did he accept any of the attempts made by Muslim philosophers and astronomers to work out an astronomical system compatible with Aristotle’s physics. The contradiction between astronomy and physics served his purpose. It proves, according to him, the limitation of human knowledge: man is unable to give a satisfactory scientific account of the world of the spheres.

This line of argument (insofar as it shows that the claim of science to propound an all-embracing, coherent, and true system of nature is untrue) concerns the problem of temporal creation only indirectly. The following reasoning, on the other hand, impinges directly upon this question. Maimonides argued that one should not extrapolate beyond certain limits from the knowledge of the natural order obtaining now, for there may have been a beginning prior to which another order may have existed. In this context Maimonides cited the example of a person who, not knowing the facts of birth, denies the possibility of human beings having first existed as embryos. According to him, the Aristotelian affirmation of the eternity of the world is based on a similar extrapolation.

Maimonides held no brief for Ibn Sīnā’s opinion that the individual human soul survives the death of the body and is immortal. Like Alexander of Aphrodisias and other Aristotelians, he considered that in man only the actual intellect—which lacks all individual particularity—is capable of survival. In adopting this view, Maimonides clearly showed that at least on this point, he preferred the philosophical truth as he saw it, however opposed it may seem to be to the current religious conception, to the sort of halfway house between theology and philosophy, which—in the severe judgment of certain Spanish Aristotelians—Ibn Sīnā, who was the dominant philosophical influence in the Muslim East, sought to establish.

Mamonides did, however, adopt certain conceptions of Ibn Sīnā. Thus, his view that existence is an accident derives from Ibn Sīnā’ Fundamental tenet that essences per se are neutral with respect to existence, which supervenes on them as an accident.

According to Maimonides, all prophets are philosophers, that is, men whose intellect is actualized. But in contradistinction to other philosophers, prophets have a highly developed imaginative faculty. Prophecy is a natural phenomenon.

This description of prophets does not, according to Maimonides’ statement, apply to Moses, whose status is higher. In a popular treatise Maimonides refers to Moses’ achieving union with the active intellect; such a union (or, to be more precise, a near union) is, according to Ibn Sīnā’s De anima, F. Rahman, ed. [Oxford, 1959], pp. 248–250), whereas, according to Ibn Bājja, it is attained by the great philosophers without the stimulation of such a faculty.

Religious revelation does not procure any knowledge of the highest truth that cannot be achieved by the human intellect; it does, however, have an educative role—as well as a political one. In Maimonides’ words, “The Law as a whole aims at two things: the welfare of the soul and the welfare of the body” (Guide of the Perplexed, pt. III, ch. 27).

Because of the great diversity of human character, a common framework for the individuals belonging to one society can be provided only by a special category of men endowed with a capacity for government and for legislation. Those who have only a strong imagination, unaccompanied by proportionate intellectual education of the members of the state which they found or govern. Moses, on the other hand, is the ideal lawgiver.

The law instituted by Moses had to take into account the historical circumstances—such as the influence of ancient Oriental paganism—and had to avoid too great a break with universal religious usage. To cite one example, sacrifices could not be abolished, because this would have been an excessively violent shock. In spite of these difficulties, Loses succeeded in establishing a polity to which Maimonides in the “Epistle to Yemen” (a popular work)applied the expression al-madinā al-fāḍila (“the virtuous city”), used by the Muslim philosophers to designate the ideal state of Plato’s Republic.

Not only does the Mosaic polity regulate men’s actions in the best possible way, but the Scriptures by which this polity is ruled also contain hints toward philosophical truth that may guide such men as are capable of understanding them. Some of these truths are to be discovered in the beliefs taught to all who profess Judaism; these dogmas are, for evident reasons, formulated in language adapted to the understanding of ordinary, unphilosophical people. There are, however, other religious beliefs that, although they are not true, are necessary for the majority of the people, in order to safeguard a tolerable public order and to further morality. Such are the belief that God is angry with those who act in an unjust manner and the belief that He responds instantaneously to the prayers of someone wronged or deceived (Guide of the perplexed, pt. III , ch. 28). The morality suited to men of the common run aims at their exercising a proper restraint over the passions or the appetites; it is an Aristotelian middle-of-the-road morality, not an ascetic one. The ascetic overtones which are occasionally encountered the Guide concern the philosopher rather than the ordinary man.

There is a separate morality for the elite, which rules or should rule (see the Guide, pt. I , ch. 54; pt. III , chs. 51, 54). This ethical doctrineis connected with his interpretation of what ought to be man’s superior goal, which is to love God and, as far as possible, to resemble Him.

From the point of view of negative theology, love of God can be achieved only through knowledge of divine activity in the world. This appears to signify that the highest perfection can be attained only by a man who leads the theoretical life. Maimonides was at pains, however, to show that the theoretical life can be combined with a life of action, as proved by the examples of the patriarchs and Moses. Moreover, a life of action can constitute an imitation of God. For the prophetic legislators and statesmen endeavor to imitate the operation of nature and God (the two being equivalent). Maimonides emphasized two characteristics that belong to both the actions of God-nature and the beneficent or destructive—or, in ordinary human parlance, however merciful or vengeful—the actions in question appear to be, neither God nor the prophetic statesman is activated by passions. Second, the activity of nature (or God) tends to preserve the cosmic order, which includes the perpetuity of the species of living beings; but it has no consideration for the individual. In the same way, the prophetic lawgivers and statesmen, who in founding or governing a polity imitate this activity, must have in mind first and foremost the commonweal, the welfare of the majority, and must not be deterred from following a political course of action by the fact that it hurts individuals.

On the whole, Maimonides’ medical treatises have been less thoroughly studied than his speculative and legal work. Like other medieval physicians he recognizes Galen as his master. Nevertheless, in a medical treatise entitled Moses’ Chapters on Medicine he charged Galen with forty contradictions and also taxed him with ignorance in philosophical and theological matters. According to Maimonides, his criticism of Galen was independent of that of al-Rāzī, who wrote a work polemizing against Galen.

Two Hebrew versions of the Guide (by Samuel ibn Tibbon and al-Ḥarizi) were prepared a short time after the work was written. It had many Hebrew commentators of various and sometimes conflicting views; and because of its impact, it is certainly the most important work of Jewish medieval philosophy. In the period from 1200 to 1500 it provided most Jewish philosophers with a scheme of reference in relation to which they could formulate their own positions. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was vehemently denounced as antireligious—and was as vehemently defended.

Spinoza knew Maimonides well, polemizing against him but influenced by him particularly in the Tractatus theologico-politicus. Solomon Maimon wrote a commentary on the Guide. The Guide was translated from Hebrew into Latin in the thirteenth century and exerted, especially with regard to the problem of the eternity of the world but also on many other points, a considerable influence on Scholastic philosophers. This influence is very much in evidence in the works of Thomas Aquinas. In the postmedieval period, Maimonides influenced Jean Bodin and impressed Leibniz.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Bibliographies of Maimonides’ works are in J. I. Gorfinkle, “A Bibliography of Maimonides,” in Moses Maimonides 1135–1204, I. Epstein, ed. (London, 1935), 231–248; L. G. Levy, Maimonides (Paris, 1911), supp. in Cahiers juifs, 2 (1935), 142–151; and G. Vajda, Jüdische philosophie (Bern, 1950), pp. 20–24. See also M. Steinschneider, Die arabische Literatur der Juden (Frankfurt, 1902), pp. 199–221.

Works by Maimonides are Guide of the Perplexed: Le guide des ègarè, Salomon Munk, ed., 3 vols. (Paris, 1856–1866), Arabic text and French trans. with many detailed notes, French trans. also re-ed. (Paris, 1960), also available in English as The Guide of the perplexed, trans. with intro. and notes by Shlomo Pines (Chicago, 1963), intro. essay by Leo Strauss; “Magāla fi sinā’at al-mantiq” (Maimonides’ treatise on logic), an incomplete Arabic text and the Hebrew versions edited, with an English trans., by I. Efros, in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 8 (1937–1938)—the complete text of the Arabic original of his treatise was found and edited, with a Turkish trans., by Mubahat Türker, in Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve tarih-cogˇrafya Fakültesi Dergisi, 18 (1960), 14–64; “Treatise on Resurrection”, original Arabic and Samuel ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew trans. edited by J. Finkel, in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 9 (1939), 1–42, 60–105; “Thamāniyat Fusūl,” an exposition of ethics, Arabic text edited, with a German trans. by M. Wolff (Leiden, 1903); Responsen und Briefe des Maimonides, A. Lichtenberg, ed. (Leipzig, 1859); and Teshubhot Ha-Ramban (“Responsa of Maimonides”), 3 vols., J. Blau, ed. (Jerusalem, 1957–1961).

II. Secondary Literature. Works on Maimonides are Alexander Altmann, “Das Verhāltnis Maimunis zur jüdischen Mystik,” in Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, 80 (1936), 305–330; Salo Baron, ed., Essays on Maimonides: An Octocentennial Volume (New York, 1941); H. Davidson, “Maimonides Shemonah Perakim and Alfarbi’s Fusūl Al-Mdani,” in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 31 (1963), 33–50; Z. Diesendruck, “Maimonides’ Lehre von der Prophetie,” in G.A. Kohut, ed., Jewish Studies in Memory of Israel Abrahams (New York, 1927), pp. 74–134; and “Die Teleologie bei Maimonides,” in Hebrew Union College Annual, 5 (1928), 415–534; I. Epstein, ed., Moses Maimonides : 1135–1204 (London, 1935); Jakob Guttmann, Der Einfluss der Maimonideschen Philosophie auf das christliche Abendland (Leipzig, 1908); S. Pines, “Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologica Politicus. Maimonides and Kant,” in Scripta universitatis atque bibliothecae hierosolymitanarum, 10 (1968), 3–5; A. Rohner, Das Schöfungsproblem bei Moses Maimonides, Albertus Magnus, und Thomas von Aquin (Münster, 1913); Leon Roth, The Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides (London, 1948); and Leo strauss, philosophie und Gesetz (Berlin, 1935); “Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Maimonide et de Farabi,”in Revue des études juives, 100 (1936), 1–37; and Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago, 1952), which includes “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed ” (pp.37–94), also in Baron’s Essays on Maimonides (see above), 37–91.

See also the following works by H.A. Wolfson: “Maimonides and Halevi,” in Jewish Quarterly Review 2 (1911–1912), 297–337; “Maimonides on the Internal Senses,” ibid.,25 (1934–1935), 441–467; “Hallevi and Maimonides on Design, Chance, and Necessity,” in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 11 (1941), 105–163; “Hallevi and Maimonides on Prophecy,” in Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s. 32 (1941–1942), 345–370, and n.s.33 (1942–1943), 49–82; “The Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic Theories of creation in Hallevi and Maimonides,” in I. Epstein, E. Levine, and C. Roth, eds., Essays in Honor of the Very Rev. Dr. J.H. Hertz (London, 1942), pp.427–442; and “Maimonides on Negative Attributes,” in A. Marx et al., eds., Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume (New York, 1945), pp. 419–446.

Shlomo Pines