Encyclopedia of Philosophy: MAIMONIDES

Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, better known to later writers by the name of Maimonides, was nine years younger than Averroes. He left his birthplace, Cordoba, when thirteen. Muslim Spain, which had provided a tolerant environ-ment for Jews hitherto, was overrun by the fanatical Almohads, and Maimonides’ family migrated to Fez and later to Palestine. For the last forty years of his life he lived in Egypt, and he died in Cairo in 1204.  Maimonides wrote copiously, in both Hebrew and Arabic, on rabbinic law and on medicine, but as a philosopher he is known for his book The Guide for the Perplexed, which was designed to reconcile the apparent contradictions between philosophy and religion which troubled believers. Much of the Bible, he thought, would be harmful if interpreted in a literal sense, and philosophy is necessary to determine its true meaning. We cannot say anything positive about God, since he has nothing in common with creatures like us. He is a simple unity, and does not have distinct attributes such as justice and wisdom. When we attach predicates to the divine name, as when we say ‘God is wise’, what we are really doing is saying what God is not; we mean that God is not foolish. (Foolishness, unlike divine wisdom, is something of which we have ample experience.)