Maimonides

“ His father’s teaching was always ready at hand, and his own quick and clear intellect found it easy to acquire and to digest the lessons of experience. Aristotle, as has been said, was much studied, though little understood, by the Jews and Arabs of Spain. Maimonides’ intellect had much in common with the Greek philosopher’s scientific mind, while he possessed a sense of religion to which the Greek was a stranger. In the character of Maimonides the two temperaments, the Hebraic and the Hellenic, the reasoning and the emotional, met in a harmonious combination. ”

“ The world of Intelligences was represented by the figure; these can only be perceived in as far as they influence the spheres, but their relation to the Creator is beyond human comprehension. The Creator himself is not represented in this vision.
The key to the whole vision Maimonides finds in the introductory words, "And the heavens were opened," and in the minute description of the place and the time of the revelation. When pondering on the grandeur of the spheres and their influences, which vary according to time and place, man begins to think of the existence of the Creator. ”

“ Regarding the belief in Providence, Maimonides enumerates the following five opinions:-- 1. There is no Providence; everything is subject to chance 2. Only a part of the Universe is governed by Providence, viz., the spheres, the species, and such individual beings as possess the power of perpetuating their existence (e.g., the start) ; the rest--that is, the sublunary world--is left to mere chance. 3. Everthing is predetermined; according to this theory, revealed Law is inconceivable. 4. Providence assigns its blessings to all creatures, according to their merits ”

“ By making opinions the essential element of perfection Maimonides, according to him, abolished the difference between the righteous man and the wicked. “The philosopher,” he says, “may commit theft, murder, and adultery, and yet attain eternal life: salvation does not depend on merit.” This charge was already brought against Maimonides by his medieval opponents, but it is quite mistaken. Maimonides insists, over and over again, that until a man has moral perfection it is impossible for him to reach intellectual perfection to the degree necessary for the attainment of acquired intellect. ”

“ Moses Maimonides, the most famous Jewish scholar and theologian of the middle ages, must be mentioned among the exponents of Arab pharmacy. He was born at Cordova in 1139, and studied medicine under Averrhoes, but when he was twenty-five the then Mohammedan ruler of Spain required him to be converted or quit the kingdom. Maimonides therefore went to Cairo, and became physician to Saladin, the well-known hero of Crusade wars, who was then Sultan of Egypt. Among his duties he had to superintend the preparation of theriaca and mithridatium for the Court. ”

“ In the post-Maimonidean age all philosophical thinking is in the [312] nature of a commentary on Maimonides whether avowedly or not. The circle of speculation and reflection is complete. It is fixed by the "Guide of the Perplexed," and the efforts of those who followed Maimonides are to elaborate in his spirit certain special topics which are treated in his masterpiece in a summary way. ”

“ According to Maimonides, the moral faculty would, us fact, not have been required, if man had remained a purely rational being. It is only through the senses that "the knowledge of good and evil" has become indispensable. The narrative of Adam's fall is, according to Maimonidcs, an allegory representing the relation which exists between sensation, moral faculty, and intellect. ”

“ Attitude to astrology.
That Maimonides was well acquainted with the art of astrology may be inferred from his assertion that he has read every book in Arabic on the subject. [645] Maimonides not only believed that the stars were living, animated beings and that there were as many pure intelligences as there were spheres, [646] but he states twice in the Guide for the Perplexed [647] that all philosophers agree that this inferior world of generation and corruption is ruled by the virtues and influences of the celestial spheres. ”

“ This method is more fully described in a treatise on hygiene, composed for Alfadhel, son of Saladin, who was suffering from a severe illness and had applied to Maimonides for advice. In a letter to Rabbi Samuel Ibn Tibbon he alludes to the amount of time spent in his medical practice, and says I reside in Egypt (or Fostat) ; the king resides in Cairo, which lies about two Sabbath-day journeys from the first-named place. My duties to the king are very heavy. I am obliged to visit him every day, early in the morning ”

“ The rabbis would not say, any more than the philosophers, that the man who desires to murder but refrains from doing so is greater than the one who never desires to murder.
In Chapter VII, Maimonides discusses the partitions or walls (מחיצות‎) which separate man from God, and also describes what prophecy is. As explained in Chapter II, there are intellectual and moral virtues, and their opposite vices. ”

“ The interest which Maimonides now took in communal affairs did not prevent him from completing the great and arduous work, the Commentary on the Mishnah, which he had begun in Spain and continued during his wanderings in Africa. In this Commentary he proposed to give the quintessence of the Gemara, to expound the meaning of each dictum in the Mishnah, and to state which of the several opinions had received the sanction of the Talmudical authorities. ”

“ Maimonides was asked to give his opinion on astrology. He regretted in his reply that they were not yet in the possession of his Mishneh Torah; they would have found in it the answer to their question. According to his opinion, man should only believe what he can grasp with his intellectual faculties, or perceive by his senses, or what he can accept on trustworthy authority. Beyond this nothing should be believed. Astrological statements, not being founded on any of these three sources of knowledge, must be rejected. ”

“ In conclusion, Maimonides takes up a question often asked, "Does God know in advance that a certain man will do a good or a bad deed at a certain time, or does He not know it?" If He does not know, then the principles of religion are undermined, for God is said to be all-knowing. If He does know in advance, then this clearly proves that man's actions are preordained. Maimonides answers by having recourse to metaphysics. ”

“ But before we pass on to consider how Maimonides tried to make these ideas the common property of his people, and what mark his system has left on the development of Judaism, it is worth while to mention here that Maimonides himself has given us the essence of his system in a perfectly unmistakable form, by dividing men into various classes according to their position on the scale of perfection. He compares the striving of man after the perfection of his form to the striving of a king’s subjects “to be with the king in his palace” ”

“ This transmission is performed without the utterance of a sound; if any voice is supposed to be heard, it is only an illusion, originating in the human imagination, which is the source of all evils (ch. xii.) .
In accordance with this doctrine, Maimonides explains that the three men who appeared to Abraham, the angels whom Jacob saw ascend and descend the ladder, and all other angels seen by man, are nothing but the intellects of the spheres, four in number, which emanate from the Primal Cause (ch.. x) . In his description of the spheres he, as usual, follows Aristotle. ”

“ The several arguments advanced by Maimonides against the employment of attributes are intended to show that those who assume the real existence of Divine attributes may possibly utter with their lips the creed of the Unity and the Incorporeality of God, but they cannot truly believe it. ”

“ The homonymity of the term is not proved; the author confines himself to the remark, "It is employed homonymously," even when the various meanings of a word might easily be traced to a common source.
2 (pag. 4-8) . In addition to the explanation of homonyms Maimonides undertakes to interpret similes and allegories. At first it had been his intention to write two distinct works--Sefer ha-nebuab, "A Book on Prophecy," and Sefer ha-nebuab, "A Book of Reconciliation." ”

“ Those who see a man and hear him addressing them; 4. Those who see an angel addressing them; 5. Those who see God and hear His voice. The other group is divided in a similar manner, but contains only the first four classes, for Maimonides considered it impossible that a prophet should see God in a vision. This classification is based on the various expressions employed in the Scriptures to describe the several prophecies.
When the Israelites received the Law at Mount Sinai, they distinctly heard the first two commandments, which include the doctrines of the Existence and the Unity of God ”

“ The Attributists admit that God is the Primal Cause, One, incorporeal, free from emotion and privation, and that He is not comparable to any of His creatures, Maimonides therefore contends that any attributes which, either directly or indirectly, are in contradiction to this creed, should not be applied to God. By this rule he rejects four classes of attributes viz., those which include a definition, a partial definition, a quality, or a relation. The definition of a thing includes its efficient Cause ”

“ Ethics is the science of virtues or of good deeds. [39]
B. Name, Date, Description, and Contents of the Shemonah Peraḳim
The Shemonah Peraḳim, in Maimonides’ system, come, accordingly, under the head of ethics (הנהגת האדם נפשו‎) , which in turn is a branch of practical philosophy (הפילוסופיא המעשית‎) . They are divided into eight chapters, from which fact the name is derived. This division undoubtedly goes back to Maimonides himself, who, in his short introduction to the Peraḳim, says “and they are eight chapters.” ”

“ In the Middle Ages, in an environment which treated astrology as a respectable pursuit, the tendency persisted to recognize the influence of the movements of the heavenly bodies on the fate of this world. But since they were aware of the Biblical injunction against the application of its conclusions, adepts employed various means to explain and justify their position, such as maintaining that only the practice and not the acceptance of astrology is prohibited. Maimonides, however, remains a consistent opponent of it in all his works. ”

“ God is just, and the destiny of man depends on his merits. Maimonides denies the existence of trials inflicted by Divine love, i.e. afflictions which befall man, not as punishments of sin, but as means to procure for him a reward in times to come. Maimonides also rejects the notion that God ordains special temptation. The Biblical account, according to which God tempts men, "to know what is in their hearts," must not be taken in its literal sense; it merely states that God made the virtues of certain people known to their fellowmen in order that their good example should be followed. ”

“ He therefore sacrifices God's knowledge of the contingent and the free so as to save man's freedom. It is no defect, he argues, not to be able to predict what is in the nature of the case unpredictable. Maimonides cannot admit any ignorance in God, and takes refuge in the transcendent character of God's knowledge. What is unpredictable for us is not necessarily so for God. As he is the cause of everything, he must know everything. Gersonides who, as we have seen, is unwilling to admit Maimonides's agnosticism and transcendentalism, solves the problem in the same way as Ibn Daud. ”

“ Maimonides found that only a limited number of terms are applied to God in a figurative sense; and again, that in the "Targum" of Onkelos some of the figures are paraphrased, while other figures received a literal rendering. He therefore seeks to discover the principle which was applied both in the Sacred Text and in the translation, and he found it in the Talmudical dictum, "The Law speaketh the language of man." For this reason all figures are eschewed which, in their literal sense, would appear to the multitude as implying debasement or a blemish. ”

“ According to Maimonides, the difficulty is to be explained by the fact that God is the Creator of all things, and His knowledge of the things is not dependent on their existence; while the knowledge of man is solely dependent on the objects which come under his cognition. ”

“ Only a genius, master of all the sciences, combining soundness of judgment and clearness of insight with great mental vigor and depth, can succeed in reconciling the divergent principles of theology and speculation, if such reconciliation be within the range of the possible. At Cordova, in 1135, when the sun of Arabic culture reached its zenith, was born Maimonides, the man gifted with this all-embracing mind. ”

“ In the world to come there is no eating or drinking, no sexual intercourse, no barter, no envy, hatred, or contention. But the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads, enjoying the splendour of the Shechinah (the Divine Presence) .' Commenting on this in various places, Maimonides emphatically asserts the spirituality of the future life. ”

“ There are, however, ten chapters which I have omitted, as they are occupied entirely with a sketch of the great work of Maimonides,—the Moreh Nebhochim, or Guide of the Perplexed. Owing to their somewhat loose connection [5] with the rest, these chapters excite just the faintest suspicion of "padding;" and at all events there is no demand for such a sketch in English now, when our literature has been recently enriched by Dr. Friedländer's careful translation of the whole work. ”