MAIMONIDES
(1135–1204)

Maimonides was the most celebrated Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages. "Maimonides" is the Latinized cognomen of Moses son of Maimon. Also called RaMBaM, the acronym for Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, he was born in Córdoba, which belonged at that time to Muslim Spain. His father, Maimon son of Joseph, was a distinguished scholar versed in traditional Jewish lore. At the age of thirteen, Maimonides left his native town after it was conquered by the army of the Almohads, an intolerant Muslim sect. After various journeys he and his family settled in northern Africa, under the oppressive rule of the Almohads. In 1165 they went to Egypt, where Maimonides became a court physician and leader of the Jewish community. He died in Cairo.

Maimonides was and is regarded as an outstanding authority on Jewish religious law, the Halachah. His writings in this field include a commentary in Arabic on the Mishnah that contains a treatise on ethics known as "Eight Chapters" and a list of the thirteen fundamental dogmas of the Jewish faith as established by Maimonides; another of these works, known under the two titles Mishnah Torah and Yad Hazakah, is a voluminous codification of the Law written in Hebrew, whose first portion, the "Book of Knowledge," expounds a system of religious beliefs and is markedly influenced by philosophy.

The fact that a considerable portion of Maimonides' activity was devoted to legal doctrine is by no means irrelevant in a consideration of his philosophical attitude. In a sense this was a practical activity that can be assimilated to that of a statesman; it was accordingly consonant with Maimonides' Platonizing contention that certain superior individuals are able to combine a mode of existence given over to contemplation and intellection with a life of action.

Maimonides also wrote several medical treatises in Arabic. One of them, known as Moses' Chapters (Fuṣūl Mūsā ), contains a critique of Galen, part of which deals with the Greek physician's animadversions on the Law of Moses. He also composed two popular tracts, "Treatise on Resurrection" and "Epistle to Yemen," the latter treatise rebutting the claims of a pseudo Messiah who had appeared in Yemen. Maimonides is also the author of one philosophical treatise on logic, composed in his early youth.

Guide of the Perplexed

Maimonides' reputation as a philosopher rests squarely upon his Guide of the Perplexed (Dalālat al-Hāirīn in Arabic), a work that its author did not regard as being of a philosophical nature. The "perplexed" to whom the Guide is supposed to have been addressed are men who are well grounded in the Jewish religious tradition and have some knowledge of certain philosophical sciences; the disciple to whom Maimonides addresses the "Introductory Epistle" at the beginning of the Guide is said to be conversant with logic and mathematics but not with physics or metaphysics. These semi-intellectuals are regarded by Maimonides as being in a state of mental confusion because they consider that the theses of the Greek sciences contradict religious faith. The word hayra, "perplexity," which is connected with the participle hāʾirīn figuring in the title of the work under discussion, appears to have served as a technical term denoting the state of mind induced by a tug of war between two opposed beliefs. Both al-Farabi and, in the generation before Maimonides, the Jewish philosopher Abraham ibn Daʾud also used the term perplexed to describe people who hesitate between the conflicting claims of philosophy and religion. In one passage of the Guide Maimonides seems to indicate that his purpose in writing the work was to help such of the perplexed as were endowed with the requisite intellectual capacities to achieve a full knowledge of philosophical truths without giving up the observance of the religious commandments.

Maimonides, however, like his contemporary Averroes, was convinced that philosophy could constitute a terrible threat to the social fabric if a vulgarized version of its doctrines were to spread among ordinary people and destroy simple faith in authority. Systematic treatises, giving a step-by-step account of the Aristotelian doctrines, avoided this danger through recourse to technical terms and logical argumentation, which were incomprehensible to noninitiates. Maimonides employed another method, set forth in his introduction to the Guide. In the case of this work his very considerable gift for literary composition, which had enabled him to succeed in the extremely difficult task of producing a well-ordered code comprising the whole of Talmudic law, was called upon to disarrange and make a jumble of the systematic expositions of Aristotle and the Aristotelians. Maimonides makes it quite clear that in order to make understanding more difficult, he carefully tore apart conceptions that belong together. The reader is thus faced with the challenge of reconstructing the original whole out of pieces dispersed in various portions of the Guide. Maimonides even states that on certain points he deliberately makes two contradictory assertions. These and other precautions, which were intended to confuse readers of insufficient intellectual caliber or preparation, have turned the Guide into an enigma; any solution of the enigma can be impugned by an appeal to some statement of Maimonides' that may or may not have been meant to be taken at its face value.

Influences on Maimonides

There is a question whether the Guide was meant to be an apologetic attempt to render religion intellectually respectable by exposing the limitations of human reason, beyond which lies the domain of faith in things that may be true although they are unknown to philosophers; or, alternatively, whether it was meant to demonstrate that religion has a purely practical use. If the latter, then Maimonides meant to say that theoretical truth is essentially, although perhaps not completely, revealed by philosophy and to deny that religion has anything to offer except, in the most favorable cases, myths and parables to be interpreted with the help of scientific knowledge. A knowledge of the philosophical authors whose influence was avowed by Maimonides or may be discerned in his work may help to determine what actually was the main object of the Guide.

In a letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon, who translated the Guide into Hebrew, Maimonides wrote that he considered Plato's writings to be superseded by those of Aristotle, which are the root and foundation of all philosophy. Nevertheless, he thought that Aristotle should be studied only with the help of the commentators Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistus, and Averroes (a contemporary of Maimonides, who was not acquainted with the Muslim philosopher's commentaries at the time the Guide was written). Maimonides esteemed al-Farabi above all the other Islamic philosophers (a typical attitude of the philosophers of Spain), and also praised Ibn Bājja, the Muslim Spanish Aristotelian. His reaction to Avicenna, who was the dominant philosophical influence in the Islamic East, was ambivalent.

Maimonides does adopt certain conceptions of Avicenna's. Thus, his view that existence is an accident derives from Avicenna's fundamental doctrine that essences per se are neutral with respect to existence, which supervenes on them as an accident. However, in points that have an obvious bearing on religious beliefs, Maimonides sometimes does not hesitate to prefer Aristotelian notions, although they appear to be incompatible with the Jewish tradition prevalent in his time, to views that are more easily reconcilable with this tradition and that, through Avicenna's adhesion, were given the hallmark of philosophical respectability. To cite an outstanding example, Maimonides holds no brief for Avicenna's opinion that the individual human soul survives the death of the body and is immortal. Like Alexander of Aphrodisias and other Aristotelians, he considers that in man only the actual intellect—which lacks all individual particularity—is capable of survival. In adopting this view, Maimonides clearly shows that, at least on this point, he prefers the philosophical truth as he sees it, however opposed it may seem to be to the current religious conceptions, to the sort of halfway house between theology and philosophy which, in the severe judgment of certain Spanish Aristotelians—notably Averroes—Avicenna had sought to set up.

To cite another instance, Maimonides does not give the slightest indication of recognizing, as Avicenna did, the mystical ecstatic way to God as being on the same level as the way of the intellect (the Muslim philosopher may have claimed even more for it than simple equality). According to the Guide, the religious commandment enjoining the love of God entails the duty of knowing whatever may be known of him, for love is proportionate to the knowledge man has of the beloved.

Theory of Divine Attributes

What kind of cognition of God is possible to man? The Guide sets forth at considerable length and with stronger emphasis than in Avicenna the doctrine of negative theology. According to this doctrine, nothing positive can be known about God, who has nothing in common with any other being. No predicate or descriptive term can legitimately be applied to him unless it is given a meaning that is wholly different from the one the term has in common usage and is purely negative. All statements concerning God considered in himself should, if they are to be regarded as true, be interpreted as providing an indication of what God is not. This applies even to the statement that God exists. Maimonides maintains that progress in this kind of negative knowledge is of considerable value, for it does away with false ideas concerning God.

On the other hand, the positive knowledge that man is capable of is concerned with quite a different domain; it deals not with God in himself but with his governance of nature, or, in other words, with the order obtaining in the cosmos and determining the events that occur in it. According to Maimonides' interpretation of Exodus 33, only this knowledge is granted to Moses, and such are the limitations of human science. As far as this conception is concerned, the acts of God may be identified with the operations of nature (or with historical happenings brought about by natural causes). Maimonides' view of the world being by and large Aristotelian, these operations are subject to the rule that they do not destroy but, rather, safeguard the perpetuity of the immutable order of nature, including the preservation of humankind and of the various other species of living beings.

Some of the operations of God (or of nature) seem, from the human point of view, to be beneficent, for instance, the operation that instills into progenitors the impulse to care for their young; others, such as earthquakes or large floods, seem destructive. Because of the anthropomorphic tendency, men witnessing happenings of the first kind speak of God as being merciful and may impute havoc and death to God's being vengeful. These are two of the so-called divine attributes of action. Quite evidently they are not concerned with the essence of God but reflect a purely human evaluation of God's, or nature's, actions. In contrast with other medieval Aristotelian philosophers, Maimonides does not recognize the divine attributes of relation.

Divine Intellection

As the Aristotelian system of physics requires, and as Maimonides demonstrates by means of a number of proofs taken over from earlier philosophers, this world is dependent upon God (who is the Prime Mover); but, contrary to Aristotle's conception (already modified by some of the late Greek Neoplatonists, whose views reached Maimonides through the Islamic philosophers), God is regarded as the efficient and formal as well as the final cause of the cosmos. This God is pure intellectual activity, to which (in Maimonides' view as well as in Aristotle's) man's intellection bears a certain resemblance. Indeed, Maimonides seems to go out of his way to point out this similarity. In this connection a comparison between a statement of his and one of al-Farabi's is instructive. In accordance with the doctrine of Book A of Aristotle's Metaphysics, the Muslim philosopher states quite unequivocally that it is because God intellects only himself that the subject, object, and act of divine intellection are identical. Maimonides, too, maintains this threefold identity with regard to God (Guide, Part I, Ch. 68); but he points out that it exists equally in the case of man's intellection of any object, for instance, a piece of wood, because according to an opinion of Aristotle, the actual intellect is identical with the object cognized by it. (This opinion was apparently quite unconnected with Aristotle's conception of God.) This comparison of man's cognition to God's, which argues similarity between the two, appears to be incompatible with Maimonides' negative theology. This point had already been made in the Middle Ages and must be taken into account in any interpretation of the Guide.

Furthermore, the fact that Maimonides uses as an example the intellection of a piece of wood seems to suggest that, unlike Aristotle and al-Farabi but in accordance with many of the medieval Aristotelians, he tends to believe that God cognizes not only himself but all the intelligibles. Since cognition involves identity, this conception would appear to entail the identification of God with the intelligible structure of the universe, 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 logical corollaries "pantheism" would therefore be to go beyond the evidence.

Origin of the World

A main theme of the Guide concerns the contradiction between the idea of God upon which Judaism is founded and the philosophical view of God. The philosophical view for Maimonides is the conception of God as an intellect rather than as described by the speculations of negative theology. Maimonides is fully aware of the crucial character of the issue and of the impossibility of achieving a true reconciliation between the philosophical and the religious points of view. He remarks in the Guide (Part II, Ch. 20): "For to me the combination between [the world] existing in virtue of necessity and being produced in time in virtue of a purpose in the world … comes near to being a combination of two contraries." Maimonides points out the "very disgraceful conclusions" that follow from the first opinion:

Namely it would follow that the Deity, whom everyone who is intelligent recognises to be perfect in every kind of perfection, could as far as all beings are concerned, produce nothing new in any of them; if He wished to lengthen a fly's wing or shorten a worm's foot, He would not be able to do so. But Aristotle would say that He would not wish it and that it is impossible to will something different from what is; that it would not add to His perfection, but would perhaps from a certain point of view be a deficiency. (Guide, Part II, Ch. 22)

In Maimonides' interpretation of the Aristotelian position, God's will is assimilated to the divine Intellect, which is identical with God himself, and the world may be regarded as something like an intellection necessarily produced by this Intellect. A consequence of Aristotle's theory as understood by Maimonides is that every characteristic of things existing in the world must be supposed to have a cause grounded in the natural structure of the universe (as opposed to a supernatural cause not determined by this structure). It may be added that as far as bodies are concerned, Maimonides seems to believe that in cases in which a mechanistic explanation can be found, it might provide such a cause. If this were accepted, it would mean that no part of the natural order could be, or could ever have been, different from what it actually is, for its existence is guaranteed by the immutability of divine reason. In other words, the world could not have been created in time.

From this point of view Maimonides is quite consistent in describing temporal creation as the greatest of miracles and in stating that if this is admitted, the intellectual acceptance of other direct interventions of God in the natural course of events does not present any difficulties. Since it serves Maimonides' purpose to make out the best case possible for what he designates as the religious conception of God, he attempts to show that a structure of the universe that is necessary, because it is rationally determined in every respect, does not exist—or at least he seems to do so. In fact, he does not go beyond the demonstration, made at some length, that as far as the heavenly spheres are concerned, Aristotelian physics (although it gives satisfactory explanation of the phenomena of the sublunar world) is incapable of propounding a comprehensive scientific theory that can be regarded as certain and that provides cogent proof for the assumption that the cosmic order could not be different from what it actually is. In this critique of Aristotle's celestial physics he is helped by the much-debated discrepancy that exists between Aristotle's natural science and the Ptolemaic system.

Maimonides also puts forward an argument of somewhat different character. He points out that man's knowledge of the order of nature is based on the empirical data of which he is cognizant. It is, however, conceivable that the existence of the data that are known to man had a beginning in time. No man who studies this problem should ignore this possibility, for if he does so, his case would be analogous to that of a person who disbelieves on empirical grounds—because he has met only adults—that human beings are brought into the world through birth after having been embryos.

Maimonides' critique of the inconsistencies and the insufficiency of the Aristotelian physics is pertinent within its scheme of reference. However, the doctrine of the eternity of the world does not rest exclusively upon physical theory. It is also corollary to the conception of God as Intellect, and Maimonides is aware of this. It is certainly significant, and it may be a deliberate omission, that when Maimonides is dealing with the problem of the eternity of the world in the Guide, he does not mention this conception although other portions of the work prove he had adopted it. Thus he does not allude to God as Intellect when he proclaims in the Guide (Part II, Ch. 25) that he does not accept the doctrine of the eternity of the world for two reasons: (1) because it has not been demonstrated; (2) because its adoption would be tantamount to destroying the foundations of the Law, for it would mean denying the claims of the prophets and rejecting the belief in miracles.

Sources of Knowledge

That Maimonides rejected the doctrine of the eternity of the world partly because (as his second reason) it would have destroyed the foundations of religious law may appear to affirm the claim of religious belief to have a decisive voice in theoretical questions that are of paramount concern to it. That is, it may appear to affirm this claim, provided that the intellect is unable to reach a fully demonstrable conclusion with regard to the moot points. Clearly such a claim can have far-reaching implications. It could be argued that this position leads to the recognition of suprarational theoretical truths or, alternatively, to the assertion of validity of conclusions in the sphere of theory adopted only on the basis of practical reason. Maimonides himself, however, does not at all countenance such a demotion of theoretical reason. In the Guide (Part I, Ch. 2) he explains the superiority of theoretical reason, which is concerned with the difference between truth and falsehood, over practical reason, which deals with the distinction between good and evil. His allegorical interpretation of Adam's fall entails the conclusion that practical reason has the comparatively lowly function of curbing the appetite to which man is prone when he is not given over to theoretical contemplation.

As for prophecy and divine revelation, they cannot be regarded as sources of supraintellectual knowledge conceived as being independent of, and superior to, the system of sciences produced by theoretical reason. This comes out clearly in Maimonides' description of the characteristics peculiar to prophets. According to him, prophets must have both an outstanding intellectual capacity and an outstanding imaginative capacity. Given these two preconditions, and suitable conduct, prophecy is a natural phenomenon; the gift of prophecy can be withheld from a person having the required qualifications only by means of a miracle. The intellectual capacity of prophets is similar at least in kind to that of the philosophers; it enables them to receive what Maimonides terms a "divine overflow," an influx coming from the Active Intellect, which, according to the interpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine adopted by Maimonides, brings about the actualization of man's potential intellect. The Active Intellect is the last of the ten incorporeal Intellects; its special sphere of action is the sublunar world.

There is no suggestion that the conclusions reached by the prophets through the use of the intellect are in any way different from those of the philosophers, though the prophets may reach them more rapidly; all prophets are philosophers. This clearly applies also to Moses, in spite of a statement in the Guide that none of the author's assertions about the prophets pertain to Moses. In other writings Maimonides describes Moses as having attained union with the Active Intellect; according to the conception of certain Islamic Aristotelians, union with the Active Intellect represents the highest goal and is reached by the great philosophers.

Imagination is inferior to intellect for Maimonides, who was on this point an orthodox Aristotelian. Imagination enables the prophet to see veridical dreams and visions, for the divine overflow spills over from the intellectual to the imaginative sphere. But it certainly does not give access to a supraintellectual truth. In fact the superiority of Moses over all other prophets is, according to Maimonides' interpretation, partly the result of the circumstance that in his prophecy he did not have recourse to imagination.

Political Philosophy

Religious revelation thus 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, Part 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 the capacity for government and for legislation. Those who have only a strong imagination, unaccompanied by proportionate intellectual powers, are not interested in the intellectual education of the members of the state which they found or govern. On the other hand, the foremost example of an ideal lawgiver is Moses.

The law instituted by Moses had to take into account the historical circumstances—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 for the people. In spite of these difficulties, however, Moses succeeded in establishing a polity to which Maimonides, in the "Epistle to Yemen," applies the term al-madīna al-fādila ("the virtuous city") used by the Muslim philosophers to designate the ideal state of Plato's Republic —a work that, perhaps mainly through the mediation of al-Farabi, had a considerable impact on Maimonides' political thought.

Moral Philosophy

The polity is not alone in regulating men's actions in the best possible way. The Scriptures by which the polity is ruled also contain hints that may guide such human individuals as are capable of understanding its hints to philosophical truths. Some of these truths are to be discovered in the beliefs taught to all those who profess Judaism; these dogmas are for evident reasons formulated in a 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, 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 prayer of someone wronged or deceived (Guide, Part III, Ch. 28). The morality suited to men of the common run aims at their exercising a proper restraint over the passions of the appetite; it is an Aristotelian middle-of-the-road morality, not an ascetic one. The ascetic overtones that are occasionally encountered in the Guide concern the philosopher rather than the ordinary man.

There is a separate morality for the elite, which is or should be called upon to rule, to which Maimonides alludes in the Guide (Part I, Ch. 54; Part III, Chs. 51 and 54). This ethical doctrine is connected with Maimonides' 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, the only knowledge of God possible. This supreme goal can be reached through a study of natural science and of metaphysics, which appears to signify that the highest perfection can be attained only by a man who leads the theoretical life—the man whose superiority was proclaimed by Aristotle. However, Maimonides is at pains to show—and this seems to be a Platonic element in his doctrine—that the theoretical life can be combined with a life of action, as proved by the examples of the patriarchs and of Moses.

What is more, a life of action can constitute an imitation of God. For the prophetic legislators and statesmen endeavor to imitate the operations of nature, or God (the two are equivalent; the expression "divine or natural actions," which occurs in the Guide, may have been in Benedict de Spinoza's mind when he first spoke of Deus sive natura ). Maimonides emphasizes two characteristics that belong both to the actions of God-nature and to the actions of superior statesmen. First, however 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 actuated 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 should 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 politically correct course of action by the fact that it hurts individuals.

The imitation of the works of God (or of nature) by the prophets means (Guide, Part III, Ch. 32) that the prophets imitate in leadership the indirect and complicated way through which nature obtains its desired results, as seen, for instance, in the extremely intricate mechanism of living organisms. Maimonides calls this indirect method a "gracious ruse" of God and his wisdom; he may have taken the expression over from Alexander of Aphrodisias's work "Principle of the All" (extant only in Arabic translation). It is reminiscent, not only on the verbal plane, of G. W. F. Hegel's "Cunning of Reason." According to the Guide, Moses used the indirect method in making the sons of Israel wander for forty years in the desert instead of leading them straight to the land of Canaan, for he wanted the people to shed slavish habits and acquire in the hard school of the desert the warlike virtues necessary for conquest. He also used it in adapting the commandments to the historical and geographical circumstances.

Influence of the Guide

The Guide was first translated into Hebrew in Maimonides' lifetime, by Samuel ibn Tibbon and a little later by al-Harizi. Its first translation into Latin was also produced in the thirteenth century. Maimonides' injunction to follow his example in writing the Arabic text of the work only in Hebrew characters (and thus to prevent its being read by non-Jews) was not always observed. The work is mentioned by some later Muslim writers but does not appear to have had more than a very slight impact on Muslim thought.

In the period after Maimonides the Guide was the fundamental text of medieval Jewish thought and was much debated. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was violently denounced for being antireligious and as vehemently defended against this charge; commentaries upon it were written by Shem-Tov Falaquera, Joseph ibn Kaspi, Moses of Narbonne, Isaac Abravanel, and others, and its theses are discussed at length in such capital philosophical works as Gersonides' Milhamot Adonai (The wars of the Lord) and Hasdai Crescas's Or Adonai (Light of the Lord). At first blush it is therefore rather surprising that among Jewish philosophers, relatively few of Maimonides' disciples have been content to adopt his apparently agnostic attitude toward fundamental metaphysical problems and thus to leave what he believed to be a necessary loophole for religious belief. In fact, no doubt partly because of the unsystematic mode of exposition of the Guide, some philosophically minded commentators (notably Moses of Narbonne) expounded Averroes's conceptions rather than Maimonides' in their commentaries on the Guide. Other commentators—for example, Abravanel—often criticized him from a traditionalistic religious point of view.

The Guide had a strong influence on later Jewish philosophers, many of whom owe their introduction to philosophy to the Guide. This can be seen in Spinoza (a considerable portion of the Tractatus Theologico-politicus is devoted to a critique of Maimonides, although the explicit references to him are few) and in Salomon Maimon, who wrote a commentary on the Guide.

The influence of Maimonides on the medieval Christian Schoolmen seems to have been considerable; the matter has not yet been sufficiently investigated, though several studies dealing with the subject do exist. It may be noted that by elaborating the doctrine of suprarational truths the systems of Thomas Aquinas and of other Scholastics found a way of legitimating from a theoretical point of view Maimonides' decision to opt for the belief in temporal creation, because the existence of religion hinged on this belief's being generally accepted.

See also Alexander of Aphrodisias; al-Fārābī; Averroes; Avicenna; Crescas, Hasdai; Ethics, History of; Galen; Gersonides; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; Ibn Bājja; Jewish Philosophy; Maimon, Salomon; Medieval Philosophy; Plato; Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch) de; Thomas Aquinas, St.

Bibliography

works by maimonides

Le guide des égarés. Edited by Salomon Munk, 3 vols. Paris: A. Franck, 1856–1866. Arabic text and French translation, with many detailed notes. The French translation has been reedited. Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve, 1960.

The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated with an introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Introductory essay by Leo Strauss.

works on maimonides

Altmann, Alexander. "Das Verhältnis Maimunis zur jüdischen Mystik." Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 80 (1936): 305–330.

Baron, Salo, ed. Essays on Maimonides: An Octocennial Volume. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941.

Diesendruck, Z. "Maimonides' Lehre von der Prophetie." In Jewish Studies in Memory of Israel Abrahams, edited by G. A. Kohut, 74–134. New York: Press of the Jewish Institute of Religion, 1927.

Diesendruck, Z. "Die Teleologie bei Maimonides." Hebrew Union College Annual 5 (1928): 415–534.

Epstein, I., ed. Moses Maimonides: 1135–1204. London: Soncino Press, 1935.

Guttmann, Jakob. Der Einfluss der Maimonideschen Philosophic auf das christliche Abendland. Leipzig, 1908.

Rohner, A. Das Schöpfungsproblem bei Moses Maimonides, Albertus Magnus, und Thomas von Aquin. Münster: Aschendorff, 1913.

Roth, Leon. The Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides. London, 1948.

Strauss, Leo. Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952. Includes "The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed," also published in Baron's Essays on Maimonides (see above).

Strauss, Leo. Philosophic und Gesetz. Berlin: Schocken, 1935.

Strauss, Leo. "Quelques Remarques sur la science politique de Maimonide et de Farabi." Revue des études juives 100 (1936): 1–37.

Wolfson, H. A. "Hallevi and Maimonides on Design, Chance, and Necessity." Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 11 (1941): 105–163.

Wolfson, H. A. "Hallevi and Maimonides on Prophecy." Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 32 (1941–1942): 345–370, and n.s., 33 (1942–1943): 49–82.

Wolfson, H. A. "Maimonides and Halevi." Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 2 (1911–1912): 297–337.

Wolfson, H. A. "Maimonides on Negative Attributes." In Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, edited by A. Marx et al., 419–446. New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945.

Wolfson, H. A. "Maimonides on the Internal Senses." Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 25 (1934–1935): 441–467.

Wolfson, H. A. "The Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic Theories of Creation in Hallevi and Maimonides." In Essays in Honour of the Very Rev. Dr. J. H. Hertz, edited by Isidore Epstein, Ephraim Levine, and Cecil Roth, 427–442. London: E. Goldston, 1942.

Shlomo Pines (1967)