Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maimonides

« this is a matter of individual immortality.

Traditional texts use two other expressions to talk about man after death:‘the days of the Messiah' and ‘the resurrection of the dead'.

For Maimonides, ‘the days of the Messiah' meanspolitical independence of the Jews and their return to the land of Israel.

The Messiah will easily be recognized, sincehis coming will coincide with a new period of history, totally different from the time of the diaspora.

As for thecorporeal resurrection of the dead, Maimonides holds that it is neither necessary from a scientific point of view, northeoretically impossible.

If one believes in divine omnipotence, it is a possibility.

Clearly, this bodily resurrection isnot of great importance to Maimonides, especially since it would be followed by a bodily death.

Samuel ben Eli, Gaonof Baghdad, attacked Maimonides sharply for failing to insist on the resurrection of the dead and the survival of theindividual human soul.

In his final work, The Letter on the Resurrection of the Dead, Maimonides repeats his earlierview, unchanged, often with fierce irony.A fourteenth-century versification of the Thirteen Principles became part of the daily prayers of almost every Jewishcommunity, except for the Ashkenazim, thus impressing themselves on the great majority of Jews and definitivelyshaping the Jewish notion of God.The Guide of the Perplexed is the Jewish philosophical work most known outside Judaism.

By contrast withMaimonides' other works, which are models of clarity and order, the Guide is avowedly difficult to understand.

Likethe Torah, the prophetic books and the Aggadot of the Talmud, it is constructed in such a way as simultaneously tohide and reveal its inner sense.

The difficulties of its plan and the ambiguities in its expressions can be traced back to the obscurities of the texts it discusses.Maimonides suggests, moreover, that his book should not be studied chapter by chapter, but rather problem byproblem.

He asks that it should not be read in the light of preconceptions, but that the reader should first havestudied all that ought to be studied, and that he should not explain it to others.The book is intended neither for the ignorant, nor for philosophers— neither of these are in difficulties—but for thosewho, like Maimonides' follower, Joseph ben Judah, have studied science, mathematics, astronomy and then logic,and who pose themselves questions about the Bible and its interpretation.

Take the example of God's incorporeality.From the conceptual point of view, belief in the existence of God is inseparable from his absolute unity and hisabsolute unity is inseparable from his incorporeality.

But it is quite otherwise when seen from the pedagogical orhistorical angle.

The Law of Moses, a political law like every other religious law, was given to the Jewish people at acertain point in its history.

For it to be accepted, it had to take into consideration the beliefs to which the peoplewere accustomed.

If it had not done this, the political and intellectual good it brought would have been lost.

Beforeinsisting on the existence of an incorporeal God it was necessary to bring about acceptance of the existence of Godhimself.

When they fled from Egypt, the only type of existence which the Jews could conceive was that of acorporeal being: ‘The minds of the multitude were accordingly guided to the belief that He exists by imagining thathe is corporeal and to the belief that he is living by imagining that He is capable of motion' (I, 46; [4.13] 98).

‘God,may He be exalted above every deficiency, has had bodily organs figuratively ascribed to Him in order that His actsshould be indicated by this means' ([4.13] 99).

What was a gain in understanding at the time of Moses had becomean inexcusable fault by the time of Maimonides: those who believe that God is corporeal were, as we have seen, tobe excluded from the Jewish community.

The Sages themselves had never committed this fault: ‘the doctrine of thecorporeality of God did not occur even for a single day to the Sages, may their memory be blessed and...this wasnot according to them a matter lending itself to imagination or confusion' ([4.13] 102).The problem which the Guide is intended to resolve is, therefore, that of the Law's double character.

Sometimes itsexternal sense, which results from the historical situation at the time when it was granted, serves to introduce andhelps to discover the internal sense, which alone is true.

Sometimes the external sense prevents the reader fromreaching ‘the knowledge of the Law in its reality' and is contrary to reason.

The object of the Guide is to bring tolight the two senses of the Bible: through this duality alone can knowledge from science and revelation be reconciled.In the Guide there can be found the elements of the method which allows the cloak of divine, scriptural allegory tobe removed:Know that the key to the understanding of all that theprophets, peace be on them, have said, and to the knowledge of its truth, is an understanding of the parables, oftheir import, and of the meaning of the words occurring in them.

You know what God, may He be exalted, has said:And by the ministry of the prophets have I used similitudes (Hos.

12:11).

And you know that He has said: Put fortha riddle and speak a parable (Ezek.

18:2).([4.13] 10–11)The first half of Book I treats in general the expressions in the Bible and the Talmud which cannot be taken in theirliteral sense.

In the second half, God's attributes are described and the Mu‘takalimun, among them Saadiah, areattacked.

Book II discusses philosophical doctrines, then prophecy.

Book III begins with an allegorical explanation ofthe ‘Account of the Chariot' and then considers providence and the fact that the world will end and not continueeternally.

Maimonides gives a psychological explanation of the book of Job, a history of religions and types ofworship, and he goes on to talk about religious commands.Clearly, it is beyond the scope of this survey to examine the great variety of interpretations of the Guide.

Ourdiscussion must be limited to mentioning a few of the especially important points in its doctrine.(1) God and his attributes According to Maimonides, only negative attributes can be applied to God.

Any relationbetween two terms implies something they have in common.

But there can be nothing in common between a beingwhich is totally separate and another being which depends on every other being.

Even existence is not common tothem both, because ‘existence' does not describe the same thing when one speaks of God and when one speaks ofa created being, because God is a necessary existence and a created being a possible existence.For Moses, the prince among the prophets, as for man in general, to know God means, not to know anything of his. »