In writing a systematic history of Jewish philosophy, one needs to consider, having departed from Philo, yet before arriving in the Middle Ages, a whole bunch of issues, such as the effects of the Islamic influence on Jewish thought, and the Talmud-denying anti-Rabbinical intellectual rebellion of the Karaites, initiated by Anan ben David in the eight century Anno Domini (if I may be forgiven such adherence of principle to our Christian conventional mode of reference, please!), et cetera, et cetera. But I am resolutely dismissing any condescension to rigid custom in an admittedly free-flowing and undisciplined endeavor, such as this work represents. I exhibit no pretense of encyclopedic comprehensiveness in covering the subjects of my interest and need not issue any apologies with regard to my commission of even the most glaring omissions.
Besides, certain notable subjects will be considered in the next subsection on Jewish history, which I deem well justified for at least these reasons that it is impossible to differentiate the components in the fusion of history, philosophy, religion, law, and custom, which together constitute the Jewish phenomenon. Besides, I have no intention to ignore the Jewish-Islamic Kalam, or the Karaite revolt, both of which will get their place alongside the infamous affair of the false Messiahs in the historical subsection.
But first things first, if the words first and last still carry any meaning in this wacky context, and I will be turning my attention now to the enticing figure of Rambam, that is Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides, arguably, the greatest philosophical mind of the Judenthum, prior to Spinoza, with the latter owing a large sum of debt to his great, yet far less known predecessor.
I have read Rambam’s More Nevukhim, that is, Guide for the Perplexed, and found it eminently readable, interesting, and instructive, although not in the same class as my favorite giants. Ironically, both titles, in Hebrew and in English, are later translations from the original Arabic title Dalatat Al-Hairin. Its essential message is infinitely appealing to me, as the reader may easily guess from my other philosophical entries. In his Guide, Maimonides makes a very interesting attempt to reconcile philosophy, religion, and science, and, although he may not have been successful in his endeavor, at least, he tried.
In his Introduction to the Guide, Maimonides complains about the implicit “dangers” of his task, and seeks to “dodge the bullet” by concealing his real thoughts, so that his message would not be misconstrued. Some Guiding the Perplexed, turned into Perplexing the Guided!
Perhaps, the most curious theme of discussion in the Guide is about God. Ironically, Maimonides blasts the so-called God of the philosophers, who, on the superficial level, may be misconstrued as what I call God of philosophy. There is no comparison, however, let alone identity. My philosopher’s God is Absolute, which means, free from all conceivable and inconceivable restrictions, and even free from the philosophical need to be proven or justified, in other words, he is God by postulate. On the other hand, Maimonides’s God of the philosophers, the object of his criticism, is an unfree God, who is essentially limited by natural laws, as well as by the constraints of man-made rationality. Having set down this caveat of my own (in the jocular spirit of parody of Maimonides’s own caveats in his Introduction to the Guide), I shall proceed with some interesting, and allegedly conflicting, aspects of Rambam’s idea of God.
The God of Maimonides is free. His Infinite and Eternal Will (say hello to Schopenhauer, and by inference to Kant’s Ding an-Sich!) transcends the laws of nature. (Only this transcendence can give credibility to the miracles of the Torah, where God’s intervention in the world defies the laws of nature.) Having created the world in time, by an act of His Will, God superimposed the law of nature on his Creation, remaining above that law Himself.
God is unknowable to man, in the sense that no positive attribute can be ascribed to God, by virtue of such unknowability. Certain “negative” attributes, however, could be ascribed to God, in stating what He is not, like saying that He is not knowable to man. (This last illustration of negative theology is of my own making, as I believe that it goes deeper into the essence of such negativity, than any other example, including those offered by Rambam himself. What I am saying here is that all such man-made negative categories amount to the simple fact that had they not been negative, God would have become knowable to man, and therefore all of them put together restate in different ways just one single negative quality of God, namely, that He is not knowable to man.)
God is a mens, an intellect, an ens sapiens, in which sense akin to homo sapiens. Some critics of Rambam have pointed to the latter connection as an indication of the existence of positive knowledge about God, in contradiction to Maimonides’s negative theology. My view of this centers on the concept of rationality. Is God a rational being, or is he capable of irrational acts? My answer is in harmony with the mystic concept of Gvul and with the classic Kabbalistic contemplation on this subject: to deny God irrationality means to limit his power to the rational sphere only, therefore, God must be capable of both!
In keeping with this, it is an unfortunate omission on Rambam’s part to neglect the supernatural, or, in my terminology here, the irrational source of obtaining the truth. He holds that the Prophets of the Bible had great intellectual powers, which overflowed into the area of imagination, and to the latter, rather than to a direct revelation, he ascribed their prophetic visions and dreams. Moses, in his view, was a greater prophet than the rest, and he did not require a hypertrophied imagination in his purely intellectual communication with God. (I suspect that Maimonides happily uses the higher Biblical stature of Moses, to score a point for his own philosophy’s promotion of rationality.)But I think that Maimonides here inappropriately limits God’s power of communication with His Prophets, and self-servingly places the rationality of God’s communication above the irrationality of the revelation.
So much for Rambam’s Guide for the Perplexed, where of all possible topics of discussion and comment I have chosen what is of most interest to me personally.
His main work, Mishne Torah, is an equally readable codification of the Jewish law, a huge project, which had taken ten years of his life, and of which I acquainted myself with certain portions of particular interest to me. In the religious sphere, his certainly greatest, in my opinion, contribution to Judaism is the profound Ani Maamin, I believe, also known as the Maimonides Credo, or, more technically, the Thirteen Articles of Faith, which have been posited in a separate essay in a series of essays, all united under the original Arabic title Kitab Al-Siraj, and constituting his Commentary on the Mishna, written between the ages of twenty-three and thirty three, before he wrote the Mishne Torah. The Credo was obviously a clever response on his part to the Christian Profession of Faith, first formulated in 325 AD as the Nicaean Creed, and to the Moslem Shahada. Unlike these two, Maimonides’s Credo is much longer, but then, it was important for the Jews to have a common understanding of what post-Biblical Judaism was all about, and in the absence of an authoritative Jewish equivalent of the law-setting Christian Catholic Church, or of a functional religious document of instruction on faith and practice, like the Koran of Islam, his Ani Maamin would become indispensable.
And finally, a few long sentences or even paragraphs on “the life and times” (to use the popular jargon) of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon.
He was born in Islamic Spain, in 1135, to a prominent Jewish family, and showed a brilliant promise since early childhood. Almost half-a-millennium before the Reconquista and the forcible Christian expulsion of the Jews, an “internal Islamic” affair destroyed the idyll of Jewish life under the Moslems, when, in 1148, a fanatical Islamist sect of the Almohads captured his native city of Cordoba demanding everybody’s instant conversion to Islam with the alternative of leaving the city. His family chose to stay in Cordoba for eleven more years, leading a double life, as outward Moslems, yet closet Jews, until finally they could not take it anymore, and moved first to Morocco, where their misery continued, then to Palestine, where they lived in abject poverty, and finally to Egypt, where Jews were still living freely as Jews.
Their peculiar challenge, however, was to prove that they had not been previously converted to Islam. In a recent private conversation with a devout Moslem, I clarified my understanding of the basic idea of Moslem tolerance for the other “people of the Book.” Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all considered as the three progressive steps of God’s revelation to the world, and all three steps are to be acknowledged as legitimate. Furthermore, it is commendable for anyone to “step up” from a lower step of God’s revelation to a higher step. It is very good for a Jew to become a Christian, or even better, to convert to Islam, or for a Christian to become a Moslem. However, should anyone desire to step down, from a higher step to a lower one, such an apostasy cannot be tolerated, and great trouble awaited the wretch. At several points in his life, Maimonides would be accused of such apostasy, and had he not been fortunate by then to acquire for himself a mighty protector in the sultan Saladin, and later in his son, as a respectable and well appreciated court physician to them both, the “burden of proof” might have crushed him to death.
His father dead, and all his fortune lost at sea, Maimonides was forced to make his living by practicing his medical skills, and, with his medical genius now apparent to all, the loss of family fortune proved a blessing in disguise, bringing him to the attention of the legendary sultan Saladin, as I have already mentioned.
His historical contribution to medical science was remarkably significant. His fame now established, and in this alone already guaranteeing him a place in history, he however kept complaining how his so many duties had robbed him of a peaceful life he had always sought, and undermined his health. He died in 1204, having lived until a respectable old age, for those times. He was buried in the Holy Land, in Tiberias, where his grave is now a shrine for the people who know his name.
So much for the greatest Jewish philosopher (Spinoza not counted… as a Jew) Moshe ben Maimon.
Besides, certain notable subjects will be considered in the next subsection on Jewish history, which I deem well justified for at least these reasons that it is impossible to differentiate the components in the fusion of history, philosophy, religion, law, and custom, which together constitute the Jewish phenomenon. Besides, I have no intention to ignore the Jewish-Islamic Kalam, or the Karaite revolt, both of which will get their place alongside the infamous affair of the false Messiahs in the historical subsection.
But first things first, if the words first and last still carry any meaning in this wacky context, and I will be turning my attention now to the enticing figure of Rambam, that is Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides, arguably, the greatest philosophical mind of the Judenthum, prior to Spinoza, with the latter owing a large sum of debt to his great, yet far less known predecessor.
I have read Rambam’s More Nevukhim, that is, Guide for the Perplexed, and found it eminently readable, interesting, and instructive, although not in the same class as my favorite giants. Ironically, both titles, in Hebrew and in English, are later translations from the original Arabic title Dalatat Al-Hairin. Its essential message is infinitely appealing to me, as the reader may easily guess from my other philosophical entries. In his Guide, Maimonides makes a very interesting attempt to reconcile philosophy, religion, and science, and, although he may not have been successful in his endeavor, at least, he tried.
In his Introduction to the Guide, Maimonides complains about the implicit “dangers” of his task, and seeks to “dodge the bullet” by concealing his real thoughts, so that his message would not be misconstrued. Some Guiding the Perplexed, turned into Perplexing the Guided!
Perhaps, the most curious theme of discussion in the Guide is about God. Ironically, Maimonides blasts the so-called God of the philosophers, who, on the superficial level, may be misconstrued as what I call God of philosophy. There is no comparison, however, let alone identity. My philosopher’s God is Absolute, which means, free from all conceivable and inconceivable restrictions, and even free from the philosophical need to be proven or justified, in other words, he is God by postulate. On the other hand, Maimonides’s God of the philosophers, the object of his criticism, is an unfree God, who is essentially limited by natural laws, as well as by the constraints of man-made rationality. Having set down this caveat of my own (in the jocular spirit of parody of Maimonides’s own caveats in his Introduction to the Guide), I shall proceed with some interesting, and allegedly conflicting, aspects of Rambam’s idea of God.
The God of Maimonides is free. His Infinite and Eternal Will (say hello to Schopenhauer, and by inference to Kant’s Ding an-Sich!) transcends the laws of nature. (Only this transcendence can give credibility to the miracles of the Torah, where God’s intervention in the world defies the laws of nature.) Having created the world in time, by an act of His Will, God superimposed the law of nature on his Creation, remaining above that law Himself.
God is unknowable to man, in the sense that no positive attribute can be ascribed to God, by virtue of such unknowability. Certain “negative” attributes, however, could be ascribed to God, in stating what He is not, like saying that He is not knowable to man. (This last illustration of negative theology is of my own making, as I believe that it goes deeper into the essence of such negativity, than any other example, including those offered by Rambam himself. What I am saying here is that all such man-made negative categories amount to the simple fact that had they not been negative, God would have become knowable to man, and therefore all of them put together restate in different ways just one single negative quality of God, namely, that He is not knowable to man.)
God is a mens, an intellect, an ens sapiens, in which sense akin to homo sapiens. Some critics of Rambam have pointed to the latter connection as an indication of the existence of positive knowledge about God, in contradiction to Maimonides’s negative theology. My view of this centers on the concept of rationality. Is God a rational being, or is he capable of irrational acts? My answer is in harmony with the mystic concept of Gvul and with the classic Kabbalistic contemplation on this subject: to deny God irrationality means to limit his power to the rational sphere only, therefore, God must be capable of both!
In keeping with this, it is an unfortunate omission on Rambam’s part to neglect the supernatural, or, in my terminology here, the irrational source of obtaining the truth. He holds that the Prophets of the Bible had great intellectual powers, which overflowed into the area of imagination, and to the latter, rather than to a direct revelation, he ascribed their prophetic visions and dreams. Moses, in his view, was a greater prophet than the rest, and he did not require a hypertrophied imagination in his purely intellectual communication with God. (I suspect that Maimonides happily uses the higher Biblical stature of Moses, to score a point for his own philosophy’s promotion of rationality.)But I think that Maimonides here inappropriately limits God’s power of communication with His Prophets, and self-servingly places the rationality of God’s communication above the irrationality of the revelation.
So much for Rambam’s Guide for the Perplexed, where of all possible topics of discussion and comment I have chosen what is of most interest to me personally.
His main work, Mishne Torah, is an equally readable codification of the Jewish law, a huge project, which had taken ten years of his life, and of which I acquainted myself with certain portions of particular interest to me. In the religious sphere, his certainly greatest, in my opinion, contribution to Judaism is the profound Ani Maamin, I believe, also known as the Maimonides Credo, or, more technically, the Thirteen Articles of Faith, which have been posited in a separate essay in a series of essays, all united under the original Arabic title Kitab Al-Siraj, and constituting his Commentary on the Mishna, written between the ages of twenty-three and thirty three, before he wrote the Mishne Torah. The Credo was obviously a clever response on his part to the Christian Profession of Faith, first formulated in 325 AD as the Nicaean Creed, and to the Moslem Shahada. Unlike these two, Maimonides’s Credo is much longer, but then, it was important for the Jews to have a common understanding of what post-Biblical Judaism was all about, and in the absence of an authoritative Jewish equivalent of the law-setting Christian Catholic Church, or of a functional religious document of instruction on faith and practice, like the Koran of Islam, his Ani Maamin would become indispensable.
And finally, a few long sentences or even paragraphs on “the life and times” (to use the popular jargon) of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon.
He was born in Islamic Spain, in 1135, to a prominent Jewish family, and showed a brilliant promise since early childhood. Almost half-a-millennium before the Reconquista and the forcible Christian expulsion of the Jews, an “internal Islamic” affair destroyed the idyll of Jewish life under the Moslems, when, in 1148, a fanatical Islamist sect of the Almohads captured his native city of Cordoba demanding everybody’s instant conversion to Islam with the alternative of leaving the city. His family chose to stay in Cordoba for eleven more years, leading a double life, as outward Moslems, yet closet Jews, until finally they could not take it anymore, and moved first to Morocco, where their misery continued, then to Palestine, where they lived in abject poverty, and finally to Egypt, where Jews were still living freely as Jews.
Their peculiar challenge, however, was to prove that they had not been previously converted to Islam. In a recent private conversation with a devout Moslem, I clarified my understanding of the basic idea of Moslem tolerance for the other “people of the Book.” Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all considered as the three progressive steps of God’s revelation to the world, and all three steps are to be acknowledged as legitimate. Furthermore, it is commendable for anyone to “step up” from a lower step of God’s revelation to a higher step. It is very good for a Jew to become a Christian, or even better, to convert to Islam, or for a Christian to become a Moslem. However, should anyone desire to step down, from a higher step to a lower one, such an apostasy cannot be tolerated, and great trouble awaited the wretch. At several points in his life, Maimonides would be accused of such apostasy, and had he not been fortunate by then to acquire for himself a mighty protector in the sultan Saladin, and later in his son, as a respectable and well appreciated court physician to them both, the “burden of proof” might have crushed him to death.
His father dead, and all his fortune lost at sea, Maimonides was forced to make his living by practicing his medical skills, and, with his medical genius now apparent to all, the loss of family fortune proved a blessing in disguise, bringing him to the attention of the legendary sultan Saladin, as I have already mentioned.
His historical contribution to medical science was remarkably significant. His fame now established, and in this alone already guaranteeing him a place in history, he however kept complaining how his so many duties had robbed him of a peaceful life he had always sought, and undermined his health. He died in 1204, having lived until a respectable old age, for those times. He was buried in the Holy Land, in Tiberias, where his grave is now a shrine for the people who know his name.
So much for the greatest Jewish philosopher (Spinoza not counted… as a Jew) Moshe ben Maimon.
No comments:
Post a Comment