Maimonideanism

The claim

Negative theology. Every positive attribute we ascribe to God either compromises his unity or means something other than what it means of us. The nearest approach to knowing him is an accumulation of denials.

What it held

Maimonides was the leading rabbinic authority of his age and the leading philosopher, and the Guide of the Perplexed is written for someone who is both — a person trained in the law who has since read philosophy and cannot hold the two together.

His solution on divine attributes is uncompromising. To say God is wise is not to attribute wisdom in any sense we understand; it is to deny ignorance. Every positive statement must be converted into a negation, because anything else divides God into essence and property.

On creation he is unusually candid. Aristotle's eternal world cannot be demonstrated, and neither can creation in time; the arguments on both sides fail, and he accepts creation on scriptural grounds while saying plainly that this is what he is doing.

The prophet, for him, is a philosopher whose imagination is also perfected — which makes prophecy a natural capacity that God may withhold, rather than an intervention.

The book was burned by other Jews within decades of his death. The Maimonidean controversy ran for two centuries.

How it argued

Deliberate difficulty. He says in the introduction that the book contains intentional contradictions, so that the argument reaches only readers capable of following it — a method that has kept commentators busy ever since.

What it was arguing against

Anthropomorphic readings of scripture, kalam arguments he considered specious, and astrology, which he attacked as a fraud.

Where it disagreed with itself

Whether he privately held the eternity of the world and concealed it — Strauss argued so, and the question has not been settled. Whether negative theology leaves anything to worship.

Common misconceptions

That the Guide is a work of apologetics. It is addressed to one perplexed student and explicitly not written for the general reader, and Maimonides says so.

How it began

A refugee from Almohad persecution who became physician to Saladin's court and wrote the standard code of Jewish law before turning to philosophy.

What became of it

The controversy over his work split communities and led to book burnings on both sides. He nonetheless became the central figure of Jewish philosophy, and remains so.

Lasting influence

Aquinas cites him respectfully and often. Spinoza attacks him at length, which is a form of dependence. Every subsequent Jewish philosopher writes with him in view.

Why it still matters

Negative theology is a live position in philosophy of religion, and his is its most rigorous statement in any tradition.

Put another way

A portrait drawn entirely by removing what the sitter is not.

Where to start

The Eight Chapters. Then the Guide, Part I, chapters 50 to 60, on the attributes.

The surprising bit

His own community's leaders had the Guide burned. A century later, some of the same communities were using his legal code as their standard authority.

In their own words

Connections

Answers

Falsafa, Peripatetic school (Aristotelianism)

Opposed by

Jewish Neoplatonism

Influenced

Jewish Aristotelianism, Thomism

The verdict

The most demanding book in Jewish philosophy, written for one reader and argued over by everyone else for eight hundred years.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy