Jewish philosophy: Maimonides
Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides, became a hugely important figure in that great era of Moorish cultural flourishing, 12th century Spain (Cordoba). Maimonides adapted the ideas of Aristotle, was a significant influence on Thomas Aquinas, and became one of the leading Rabbinical scholars of his time, and perhaps of all time.
Introduction by Lynne Malcolm
Alan Saunders: Today we explore the life and ideas of the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period. Thanks for joining me today, Alan Saunders here with more of our special series on Jewish philosophy.
The sounds of medieval Moorish Spain, where for a few centuries Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in relative peace, and with a fair amount of intellectual cross-pollination.
Moses Maimonides is known as Rambam, the Hebrew acronym of his full title and name, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon. Today we'll just stick with the Greek form of the name, Maimonides. Maimonides adapted the ideas of Aristotle, was a significant influence on the great medieval Christian thinker, Thomas Aquinas and became one of the leading rabbinical scholars of his time, and perhaps of all time. To talk about him we're joined by Steven Nadler, co-editor of The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century. Steven is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And he's the author of, amongst much else, a biography of the great 17th century rationalist philosopher, Spinoza.
Steven, welcome to the show.
Steven Nadler: Well, thank you for having me.
Alan Saunders: So, let's set the scene. Maimonides was in his early teens when the Almohades conquered his hometown of Cordoba in 1148. The Almohades ordered all Jews, including Maimonides and his family, to convert to Islam, leave or be killed. His family chose exile, eventually going to Egypt via Morocco. Would you say Maimonides was born during the tail end of the culturally rich Moorish rule?
Steven Nadler: I would say so. It was a terrific golden age for Castilian and other Iberian Jewish communities. They had really become a part of the main culture. At this point, before the Almohades took over, there was a very cosmopolitan and relatively tolerant environment there, and Jewish intellectual and artistic culture thrived, as your listeners heard from the music you've just played them.
Alan Saunders: One of his contemporaries was the Muslim scholar Averroes, who also worked with the Arabic translations of Aristotle. So, was Maimonides then in some respects part of the zeitgeist of medieval Spain?
Steven Nadler: Absolutely. In fact, it's hard to speak of a single zeitgeist. In a sense Maimonides can be seen, as he ordinarily is, as a classical Jewish philosopher, but also very much a Muslim philosopher. The language he spoke in the street would've been Arabic. Hebrew was reserved for his dealings with the Jewish community, and communities elsewhere and also in the synagogue. But for the most part Maimonides both in Spain and in Egypt was a part of Arabic and Muslim culture. And that's reflected very much in his thought and in his ordinary concerns.
Alan Saunders: Just as there were various medieval Muslim scholars translating and rethinking the work of Aristotle, Maimonides also attempted to reconcile the teachings of the Torah with the teachings of Aristotle. What main forms did this attempt at reconciliation take?
Steven Nadler: It took various forms. In a way this was the central project, not just of Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages, but also of Christian philosophy and Muslim philosophy. How to reconcile philosophers from antiquity like Plato and Aristotle with sacred texts like Hebrew scripture, the gospels or the Koran. And you find within each religious philosophical tradition different approaches, some adopted a more mystical solution to the problem, that religious insight came not through rational thinking but through a kind of intuition, either through divine inspiration or some non-rational means. Other philosophers like Maimonides and Gersonides, a later medieval philosopher, Saadia ben Joseph and earlier medieval rationalists thought that Judaism itself can be placed on a very clear rational foundation. And, well, it's of course a difficult task, and subject to great many objections by more orthodox thinkers. Maimonides felt that at its heart Judaism was a rational religion, and it just needed the categories and language of Aristotle to make that clear.
Alan Saunders: Were his views accepted during his lifetime, or did he encounter significant opposition?
Steven Nadler: He encountered significant opposition, both within his lifetime, but especially afterwards. There was a great deal of resistance among rabbinical authorities, to what they considered to be an over-rationalisation of religion. I mean, it's one thing to try to make sense of religion in rational terms, but I think to his contemporaries, and especially to the rabbis who, within a century instigated the burning of his books, he had really made religion the handmaiden of philosophy. And Aristotle became as much a master of one's salvation, it would seem, as a belief in the Torah and God.
Steven Nadler: Sure. Philosophy, I think, by its nature, is the attempt to clarify the truth, discover the path towards a reasoned... reasoned conclusions about various questions of ethics, about happiness, about the nature of things. Metaphysics, about knowledge, about the world and about ourselves. And while there are, of course, various mystical streams in different philosophical traditions, to me, philosophy must proceed not by faith, not by mystical insight, but by bringing our rational faculties to bear on the most important questions that we confront.
I think Maimonides represents, perhaps, one of the finest syntheses of faith and reason. Taking the texts of Judaism, questions that are central to any observant Jew, and also problems that any religiously motivated person might feel, and try to come up with rational solutions to them. What is the nature of God, what is the nature of divine providence, how can I achieve happiness and well-being in a world which constantly puts up obstacles to my flourishing? The reason why I call Maimonides a radical rationalist is because he felt that the path to happiness and well-being -- and it's a path that in principle was open to any human being, Jewish or otherwise -- the path is through an intellectual understanding of the cosmos and of what a human being is, and how a human being properly exists within the laws of nature. There's a very naturalistic component to Maimonides' philosophy. For example, in the case of divine providence, I think many people, if you were to simply ask them, 'What does divine providence consist in?' would say that there's a God, it's a providential god, and this god intervenes on behalf of the faithful, he's a dispenser of reward and punishment, and holds in store eternal salvation for the chosen or the elect. Maimonides argued above all that we shouldn't anthropomorphise God in that way. We shouldn't think of God as some kind of practical, rational agent who acts in nature for the sake of certain ends.
Alan Saunders: But, presumably he didn't just think that God had set the universe in motion and then just left it to us to sort ourselves out. He must've believed in the miraculous interventions in the world, made by God, which are recorded in the Torah.
Steven Nadler: That's a difficult question to answer, in fact. And he certainly did not believe in a god who set the clock going and then sat back and watched things run. At least in the causal sense, Maimonides' god is a constant and ubiquitous presence. There's a kind of eternal emanative causality, such that everything that exists in nature and in the cosmos depends continuously on the constant causal activity of this being, this divine being. I don't think that Maimonides believed in miraculous, divine interventions that were violations or exceptions to the laws of nature. He does use the language of miracles, but if you read the Guide of the Perplexed closely, and that's his philosophical masterpiece, he seems to come fairly close to denying that miracles, in that sense, are possible; that everything can be explained through natural means. Now, I should say that the Guide of the Perplexed is a very unique work in Maimonides. Most of his writings were not strictly philosophical, but legal or Halakhic writings, in which Maimonides either explains the law to the layperson, or investigates what he calls 'the science of the law,' the study of the reasons behind the commandments.
When you read the Guide of the Perplexed, however, Maimonides seems to be a very different kind of thinker. This is the philosophical Maimonides. And he says explicitly, there are things in The Guide that are not for the ordinary person. They are not really for somebody who hasn't had a long and rigorous philosophical training, and who is therefore ready to have these truths revealed to them. And so he says, 'The secrets that I'm going to reveal here should not be communicated broadly.' And what the secrets are, it seems to me, is that as a matter of fact, and with all philosophical sophistication, the truth of nature is that God is not this interventionist, miraculous agent. That divine providence does not consist in ad hoc salvations by a benevolent deity, and so on. But these truths about the Torah, truths about nature, and truths about God, are not to be spoken of in public.
Alan Saunders: But presumably God did part the Red Sea, and presumably the Jews are the chosen people, they're his chosen people?
Steven Nadler: It depends what you mean by 'God did part the Red Sea.' One way of reading Maimonides is that the nature of the Red Sea was such that under certain conditions, at a certain point in time, it would undergo this phenomenon. It does not necessarily mean that at a particular point in time, God said to the laws of nature, 'Wait a second, hold on, I've got to do something special here.' It's not clear to me that from Maimonides, the philosophically informed person needs to believe that God actively intervened at that moment, suspended the laws of nature and made the Red Sea part. In fact, at one point he seems to suggest that this could be understood through a perfectly natural means. Perhaps the wind was blowing in a certain way with a certain power.
Alan Saunders: Sounds like the sort of thing I was taught at school.
What about the Jewish people? Are they especially chosen by God?
Steven Nadler: Well, again, it depends what you mean by 'especially chosen.' They have been favoured with the giving of the law. They've also been favoured by the fact that, of all the prophets, Moses was gifted. He enjoyed something that no other prophet experienced. That is, Moses spoke to God face to face. And, as a result of that, Moses gave the law to the Israelites, and the giving of the law itself is an act of chosenness. Does it mean that God deliberated and made a particularly wilful chose, the way in which we think of human beings as rational agents making deliberate choices? Again, I think Maimonides really wants to resist that kind of anthropomorphisation of God. So we can talk about God's power, God's will and God's intellect, but we should not give into the temptation of thinking that God's will, power and intellect are anything like what we find among creatures.
Alan Saunders: What about Maimonides and the t-word, truth? Where did he stand on philosophical truth and revealed truth? Truth as revealed in the Torah.
Steven Nadler: This is, I think, one of the most interesting questions of Maimonides, and also perhaps one of the things that most offended his rabbinical critics. Maimonides believed that there is one and only one truth. It's inconceivable that the truths revealed by reason would be inconsistent with the truths revealed by faith, or by God. And thus Maimonides argued that we should think of religious truth, the truths that are found in Hebrew scripture, as essentially the same as philosophical truths. And what that means is, that if you're going to read Hebrew scripture, the Torah or any of the writings of the Hebrew prophets, if you come upon a passage that's difficult to decipher, and you're not quite sure how to interpret it, your default assumption should be to read the passage literally. However, if a literal reading of the biblical passage is inconsistent with the philosophically demonstrated truth, then you must read the scriptural passage figuratively.
So, for example, Maimonides believed that Aristotle never demonstrated with absolute certainty that the cosmos was eternal. Aristotelians generally believed that the cosmos was eternal. But Maimonides says Aristotle never demonstrated that. Therefore, we do not have to read the Genesis account of creation figuratively, because a literal reading of Genesis is not inconsistent with any demonstrated philosophical truths. However, there are many passages in Hebrew scripture which talk about God's head, God sitting on a throne, talk about God's anger, even God's feet. And if we were to read these passages literally, they would be inconsistent with a demonstrated philosophical truth, namely, it can be demonstrated with absolute certainty that God does not have a body. Therefore, all of those passages in scripture, which when read literally, attribute a body to God, have to in fact be read figuratively. And that's a very, just a trivial series of examples. There are many parts of Torah where Maimonides thinks that they must be read figuratively because that's the only way to preserve the philosophical truth in Hebrew scripture.
Alan Saunders: The Guide of the Perplexed, which you've already mentioned, is probably Maimonides' most philosophical work, he finished it in 1190, when he was in his early 50s, and in some rabbinical circles it was banned, and indeed burned, because it was viewed as heretical. Why is it such an important work?
Steven Nadler: It's important I think both in terms of the Jewish tradition and in terms of the history of philosophy. From the Jewish tradition it represents, perhaps, the grandest synthesis of philosophy and Jewish intellectual tradition. There were great Jewish philosophers before Maimonides, and there are great Jewish philosophers after. In fact there's a saying well-known in Jewish thought, 'from Moses to Moses there was non like unto Moses.' There was nobody who was able to accomplish what Maimonides did in terms of giving us a grand philosophical synthesis of Jewish law and also Jewish Aggadah, that is, Jewish metaphysics and Jewish science. The fact that he was able to do so with such consistency and with such philosophical rigour, to take not just the scriptural passages about creation and translate those into Aristotelian terms, but also the most difficult prophetic writings, like Ezekiel's account of the chariot, and show us the deep metaphysical truths that are hidden in there. I think The Guide shows a truly amazing philosophical mind, and a truly wise individual at work. The fact that he was so attacked by his rabbinic critics, I think, in a way attests to his success. That the strength of his rationalisation of Jewish faith, it was so compelling that the rabbis who didn't think that reason was the key to faith, felt they had to do something.
Steven Nadler: The perplexed is anybody who, having been brought up in, with a knowledge of Hebrew scripture, that is, a knowledge of the law, of Torah, but who also has studied a little bit, or perhaps a good deal of philosophy, and especially logic, it's also somebody who is of good moral character. So, if there's an individual who has led an observant and informed and studious life of Torah, but who has also studied Aristotle, this person will start to wonder, 'How can I reconcile these two things, because many things seem inconsistent? The Torah tells me that the universe is created by God, a God who exhibits emotions and expectations. Aristotle tells me that God is simply the first mover, and that the universe is eternal', even though Aristotle doesn't demonstrate it, it's nonetheless the case that for Aristotelians the cosmos is co-eternal with God. And the perplexed person is somebody who's caught in the dilemma, who feels a kind of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand their faith tells them to believe P, on the other hand their philosophy tells them to believe not-P, and the Guide of the Perplexed is supposed to show such a person how to bring these two worlds together; how to be both an observant, believing Jew or even Christian or Muslim on the one hand, but also to understand the philosophical secrets that, deepen their understanding and also their faith.
Alan Saunders: Let's talk about evil. What was Maimonides' take on what's called the 'problem of evil?'
Steven Nadler: Evil for Maimonides was grounded in matter. And human beings... there are various sorts of evil. There's the evil that human beings commit against each other: crimes of passion, murder, theft, stealing, lying and so on. Then there are the evil deeds that we commit upon ourselves: ignorance, the failure to pursue virtue. These are sins with which the individual harms him or herself more than anybody else. And then there are the evils that simply happen by the course of nature: tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes and so on. In all three cases evil is due to the fact that we are material beings. We're subject to calamities of nature, because we have bodies. We also treat each other in horrendous ways, because our bodies are the cause of the fact that we are ignorant of what we really should do. And thus we are responsible, to some degree, for the evils we commit.
Maimonides believes... well, let me just say that the problem of evil is the problem of how to reconcile the fact that there are these imperfections in the world. There's sin, there's suffering, and yet the world was created by a benevolent, all-powerful, all-knowing God. And the problem of evil is, how do we reconcile these two facts? Why doesn't God prevent these evils from happening? Does God not know about them? Is God impotent to do anything about them? Maimonides' solution to the problem of evil is that we bear total responsibility for the bad things that happen, because of ignorance. We act evilly towards others, because of our ignorance of virtue, and the duties that, the ethical duties that we have towards other human beings. And our own failure to achieve happiness and flourishing in our lives is due to the fact that we haven't achieved the intellectual perfection that is our duty. A person who has perfected their intellect, through the study of Torah and through the study of philosophy, and therefore the person who truly understands the cosmos and nature, has thereby, simply through that knowledge alone, has thereby achieved a greater degree of protection from the vicissitudes of nature. This is a person who has a kind of providence. Not because God is actively engaged in protecting this person, but because through their own efforts, through their own rational acquisition of knowledge and understanding, this person is better equipped to make it through life with virtue and to flourish.
Alan Saunders: Does Maimonides remain relevant today?
Steven Nadler: Absolutely. I think, just because of the emphasis on reason the relationship between virtue and happiness and the understanding of what virtue is, in terms of knowledge and intellectual perfection. I think Maimonides can be read by anybody seeking to understand what a human being can do through their own resources to live a good life. And by a good life I don't necessarily mean just a life of good ethical behaviour towards others, but a life in which one flourishes by exercising one's higher rational faculties. I think if there's a lesson to The Guide that's it, that true happiness consists in virtue understood as a rational understanding of what we are and how we relate to nature.
Alan Saunders: Well, Steven Nadler, thank you very much for guiding us through our perplexities.
Steven Nadler: It was my pleasure, thank you.
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