Maimonides’ philosophical writings

Maimonides’ philosophical writings

Anyone who visits the impressive tomb of Maimonides in northern Israel will be greeted with the words: ‘From Moses to Moses, there was no one like Moses.’ While Moses the prophet founded Judaism, Moses the sage proved to be its greatest interpreter. Glenn Bezalel discusses Maimonides’ philosophical contributions, which continue to have a decisive impact far beyond Jewish thought

Jonathan Sacks, a former Chief Rabbi of the UK, writes that the Hebrew Bible is a ‘sustained battle against three things: idolatry, myth and pagan ritual’. In the ancient world, such superstitions were invariably linked with corruption and exploitation. The radical aims of ethical monotheism would be to stamp out such idolatrous beliefs and to protest against their associated practices that preyed on the weak and vulnerable. As Sacks puts it, ‘the more we understand what the Bible is arguing against, the deeper we understand the Bible’.

The Torah’s aim

Yet Maimonides, in The Guide for the Perplexed, his philosophical magnum opus, recognised that the Torah was realistic in its aim to transform primitive and superstitious humankind: ‘It is impossible to go suddenly from one extreme to the other; it is therefore according to the nature of man impossible for him suddenly to discontinue everything to which has been accustomed…’ (3:32). Prior to receiving the Torah, the Jewish people had been a slave nation in Egypt for whom ‘might makes right’, a pagan society that made gods of its powerful rulers and attributed supernatural powers to nature itself. The revolutionary shift to the worship of one transcendent God would take time.

Focusing on sacrifice as an ancient form of religious worship, Maimonides argued that:

‘The custom which was in those days widespread among all people, and the general mode of worship in which Israelites were brought up, consisted in sacrificing animals in temples which contained certain images, to bow down to those images and to burn incense before them… . For this reason, God allowed these kinds of service to continue. He transferred to His service that which had formerly served as a worship of created beings [i.e. idolatry]… .

By this Divine plan it was effected that the traces of idolatry were blotted out, and the truly great principle of our faith — the existence and unity of God — was firmly established. This was achieved without deterring or confusing the minds of the people by the abolition of the service to which they were accustomed and which alone was familiar to them. ’

The Guide for the Perplexed 3 :32

The upshot of this evolutionary approach was that the reality rarely lived up to the ideal, as the Jewish people regularly lapsed into idolatrous beliefs and practice. The ancient prophets berated the Jewish people repeatedly for having forsaken their God and for their descent into unethical behaviour. Isaiah (eighth century BCE) despaired of God’s ‘children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord’ (1:4).

A calling

Some 1,800 years later, Maimonides felt his own calling as he lamented the lack of theological sophistication among the ‘People of the Book’:

‘The wisdom of our wise men has disappeared; the understanding of our prudent men is hidden’ (Introduction to Mishneh Torah). Maimonides was concerned that literal interpretations of the Bible and the teachings of the Sages in the Talmud had led to theological misunderstandings that undermined the central tenet of monotheism.

In turn, he sought nothing less than a systematic reinterpretation of the philosophy of religion. This would include:

■ formulating the fundamental principles of Jewish faith

■ reinterpreting the attributes of God in an attempt to drive out anthropomorphism

■ reassessing religious language with regard to the problem of speaking about God

MAIMONIDES, IN THE GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED, HIS PHILOSOPHICAL MAGNUM OPUS, RECOGNISED THAT THE TORAH WAS REALISTIC IN ITS AIM TO TRANSFORM PRIMITIVE AND SUPERSTITIOUS HUMANKIND

Pure monotheism

Maimonides’ starting point is the belief in a transcendent creator, a Primary Cause of all that exists: ‘The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a Primary Being who brought into being all existence’ (Maimonides, Laws of the Foundations of Torah 1:1). Influenced by Aristotle, Maimonides reasoned that while all that exists is contingent upon him, only the Primary Cause’s existence is necessary and so ‘the truth of His [being] does not resemble the truth of any of other [being]’ (Laws of the Foundations of Torah 1:3). This idea is based on the biblical verse which claims: ‘There is nothing else aside from Him’ (Deuteronomy 4:35), which Maimonides interpreted to mean that ‘aside from Him, there is no true existence like His’ (Book of Knowledge, Laws of the Foundations of Torah 1:4).

A central aspect of the incomparability of the Prime Cause is God’s absolute and unparalleled unity. According to Maimonides, ‘There is no oneness at all except in believing that there is one simple essence in which there is no complexity or multiplicity of notions, but one notion only’ (The Guide for the Perplexed 1:51).

The consequence of Maimonides’ approach means that any definition of God intrinsically falls short. While we may know that God, as the Prime Cause, must exist, we cannot comprehend his essence. Any description necessarily limits God according to our subjective human experience, which simply doesn’t apply to the creator himself.

THE NOTION OF A GOD WHO IS INCORPOREAL CAN LEAVE THE BELIEVER FEELING ALONE, WITHOUT A PERSONAL GOD TO CONNECT WITH AND EXPERIENCE.

The problem of anthropomorphism

This insistence on God’s incorporeality — that God has no image or form — is essential for the idea of a transcendent, eternal and all-powerful God. Yet Maimonides went further, claiming that a belief in a corporeal, or physical, God was even worse than idolatry itself:

‘…when you believe in the doctrine of the corporality of God or believe that one of the states of the body belongs to Him, you provoke His jealousy or anger, kindle the fire of his wrath, and are a hater, an enemy, and an adversary of God, much more so than idolatry.’

The Guide for the Perplexed 1 :36

It should be noted that Maimonides is obviously being ironic here. Equally problematic for him are anthropopathisms, attributing emotions to God. To suggest that God gets ‘jealous’ or ‘angry’ would again limit him — this time to the idea of God being bound by his supposed emotions. As discussed below, this highlights the problem of religious language and how to talk about God.

Maimonides feared that the notion of corporeality was at the heart of many misunderstandings about the nature of God, undermining the necessity of God’s perfection. As Moshe Halbertal, an Israeli philosopher, explains:

‘An idolater can always argue that the idol he is worshipping is merely a symbol of a more exalted God, but one who internalises…a personified image of the divinity…does not worship God; he worships some being that is simply a more perfected form of man.’

Maimonides, Life and Thought, p. 2 90

Yet such a harsh approach has been met with huge resistance from believers across the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam for two major reasons.

Lonely believers

First, the notion of a God who is incorporeal can leave the believer feeling alone, without a personal God to connect with and experience.

Indeed, in the early Christian fight against pagan influences, Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria wrote a pastoral letter in 399 CE to all the monks of Egypt condemning the then widespread belief in a corporeal God. One monk responded in despair, ‘Woe is me! They have taken my God away from me, and I have none to grasp, and I know not whom to adore or to address.’ Accounts of religious experiences, a major cause of belief for many, have included many anthropomorphic descriptions. Micaiah the Prophet (ninth century BCE) was able to say, ‘I saw the Lord seated on His throne, and all the host of heaven were standing by Him on His right and on His left’ (I Kings 22:19).

Biblical corporeality

This leads us to the second problem, which is that a simple reading of the Bible seems to affirm the notion of God’s corporeality. Genesis speaks of a God who creates (1:1), moves (1:2), speaks (1:3) and sees (1:4). In Exodus, God promises to lead the Jewish people out of slavery from Egypt ‘with an outstretched arm’ (6:6). In the desert, Moses is warned by God that, ‘you cannot see My face; for no one shall see me and live’ (33:20). Moreover, as seen above, the Bible also speaks of God’s emotions, including his grief (Genesis 6:6) and jealousy (Exodus 20:5) as well as his steadfast love (Exodus 20:6).

Needless to say, Maimonides interpreted all such verses metaphorically. Relying on a Talmudic hermeneutical principle of Rabbi Ishmael (90–135 CE) that the ‘the Torah speaks in the language of people’ (The Guide for the Perplexed 1:57, based on Sifre, Numbers 112), Maimonides dedicated a significant part of The Guide for the Perplexed to unpacking these attributes ascribed to God. He explained in great depth that any description of God is to be taken as a figure of speech, which, at most, is ‘an attribute of His actions and not an attribute of His essence’ (Guide for the Perplexed 1:53). The ‘ways of God’, whether referring to his mercy or his goodness, refer to his actions, which we can perceive through his creations and providence over the world.

‘For You, silence is praise’

Nevertheless, the threat of ‘defective representations’ of a literal reading of the Bible would lead Maimonides to deal with the problem of religious language. Going beyond the difficulties of anthropomorphism and anthropopathism, Maimonides adopted the neo-Platonic via negativa or apophatic theology, which attempts to describe God by way of denial. For example, rather than say that God is good, it would be more correct to say that God isn’t evil.

In so doing, Maimonides was hoping to avoid two central problems. First, language is limited to the descriptions and definitions understood by people based on their experience of the world. Any adjective describing the ‘ineffable’ and ‘transcendent’ God (including those two words) thus mischaracterises God as it attempts to link him to our spatial and temporal reality. Second, the very structure of language undermines the pure unity and oneness of God as any attribute ascribed to God must be one and the same as his essence. As Maimonides put it:

‘Know that when you make an affirmation ascribing another thing to Him, you become more remote from Him in two respects: one of them is that everything you affirm is a perfection only with reference to us, and the other is that He does not possess a thing other than His essence, which, as we have made clear, is identical with His perfections.’

The Guide for the Perplexed 1 :59

‘The Divine, which created the universe and so remains an absolute other, can only be spoken about in terms of what He is not.

God’s existence is absolute and it includes no composition and we comprehend only the fact that He exists, not His essence. Consequently, it is a false assumption to hold that He has any positive attribute… However, the negative attributes are necessary to direct the mind to the truths, which we must believe… When we say of this being, that it exists, we mean that its non-existence is impossible; it is living — it is not dead; …it is the first — its existence is not due to any cause; it has power, wisdom, and will — it is not feeble or ignorant; He is One — there are not more gods than one… . Every attribute predicated of God denotes either the quality of an action, or, when the attribute is intended to convey some idea of the Divine Being itself — and not of His actions — the negation of the opposite.

The Guide for the Perplexed 1 :58

LANGUAGE IS LIMITED TO THE DESCRIPTIONS AND DEFINITIONS UNDERSTOOD BY PEOPLE BASED ON THEIR EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD.

Maimonides was well aware of the theological impact of this approach: ‘apprehension of Him’ consists in the inability to attain the ultimate term in apprehending Him’ (1:59). Slamming the use of symbolism and analogy as misguided, Maimonides also sharply denounced the use of poetry in religious liturgy, pointing to the irony that as the list of flowery adjectives praising God grew, the more God’s stature diminished.

What is left for humankind in its quest for God? Maimonides turns to Psalm 62 for inspiration: ‘The most apt phrase concerning this subject is the dictum occurring in the Psalms, ‘“Silence is praise to Thee”… . Accordingly, silence and limiting oneself to the apprehensions of the intellects are more appropriate’ (1:59). Religious language highlights the cognitive limits of finite beings, unable to comprehend the divine.

This line of thought clearly connects Maimonides with another genius of Jewish descent some 700 years later. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) concluded in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a modern classic on the philosophy of language: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’

Glenn Bezalel is head of religion, philosophy and ethics at St Helen’s School, Northwood.