Thirty years ago Yizhak Twersky ushered in a new era in
the academic study of Maimonides with his seminal article, "Some Non-Halakic
Aspects of the Mishneh Torah." I see my own published work on Maimonides
over the last twenty years as a series of footnotes to Twersky's study.
In these "footnotes" I have sought to elaborate different aspects of Maimonides'
central teaching as expressed by Twersky, that the quest for wisdom (hokhmah)
"is absolutely indispensable for religious perfection --is indeed the crowning
achievement" (p. 96). In his elegant essay, Yizhak Twersky showed how for
Maimonides the process of intellectualization "is woven uninterruptedly
and unabashedly from his earliest writings through the Moreh Nebukim
and on through all his responsa. It is especially discernible in the texture
of the Mishneh Torah" (p. 96).
In the present essay, dedicated with profound respect to
a scholar whose work has constantly stimulated my own at every juncture
of my career, and to a colleague who has proven himself unselfishly supportive
over and over again to a younger man whom he barely knew, in the hope and
prayer that he be given many long and healthy years in which to teach us,
I will call further "attention to some motifs of Maimonidean rationalism
. . . allusively incorporated into the Mishneh Torah" (p. 95). In
particular, I wish to draw attention to certain stylistic features of Maimonides'
writing in the Mishneh Torah.
There are many passages in the Mishneh Torah, a
few examples of which I will examine here, in which Maimonides writes in
what might be called a quasi-esoteric vein. He writes simultaneously for
several audiences without drawing explicit attention to that fact.
Maimonides, it appears to me, had in mind three different
kinds of readers when he wrote the Mishneh Torah. In the first instance,
the work was addressed to rabbinic scholars, talmudists, who had no interest
in philosophical issues, no grounding in philosophical texts, and who probably
viewed such issues and texts as at best irrelevant to their spiritual lives.
In the second instance, the work was addressed to rabbinic scholars, talmudists,
who had gone beyond the pale of talmudic studies to the realms of logic,
physics, and metaphysics without in any way giving up their prior allegiances.
These were individuals like Maimonides himself as I understand him, individuals
for whom rabbinic studies were not an end in themselves, but a preparation
for the study of the wisdom (hokhmah) of the Torah properly understood.
Thus, I do not see Maimonides' audience as divided between "talmudists"
and "philosophers" but between talmudists simpliciter and philosophical
talmudists. Maimonides probably had in mind a third group as well, talmudists
on their way to becoming philosophical talmudists, for whom I suspect Maimonides
hoped the Mishneh Torah to be crucially valuable.
Talmudists read Maimonides' words, and because of the context,
vocabulary, and style think that they are reading a wholly traditional
text, totally unobjectionable, and fully consistent with conventional religion
as popularly understood. The more philosophically aware audience reads
the same passage and finds in it statements consistent with some of the
more daring Maimonidean theses expressed (later) in the Guide of the
Perplexed.
It is my understanding that Maimonides wrote in this fashion
in order to protect talmudists from exposure to ideas which might cause,
rather than solve, perplexity. Maimonides had no interest in confusing
such people. On the contrary, his desire to be helpful to them was such
that he made clear attempts to teach them without upsetting their traditional
beliefs. This approach finds expression in the following text:
Know that the things about which we shall speak in these chapters
and in what will come in the commentary are not matters invented on my
own nor explanations I have originated. Indeed, they are matters gathered
from the discourse of the Sages in the Midrash, the Talmud, and other compositions
of theirs, as well as from the discourse of both the ancient and modern
philosophers and from the compositions of many men. Hear the truth from
whoever says it. Sometimes I have taken a complete passage from the text
of a famous book. Now there is nothing wrong with that, for I do not attribute
to myself what someone who preceded me said. We hereby acknowledge this
and shall not indicate that "so and so said" and "so and so said," since
that would be useless prolixity. Moreover, the name of such an individual
might make the passage offensive to someone without experience and make
him think it has an evil inner meaning of which he is not aware. Consequently,
I saw fit to omit the author's name, since my goal is to be useful to the
reader. We shall explain to him the hidden meanings in this tractate.
It turns out that the ancient and modern philosophers to whom
Maimonides is referring here are Aristotle and Alfarabi. It was Maimonides'
intent to help his readers; if explicit references to the great thinkers
of the past would be counter-productive, then he would do without such
references. So, too, in the Mishneh Torah, if making some of his
positions explicit would only drive away readers who would otherwise benefit
from study of his work, Maimonides had no compunction about writing such
that his ideas would be clearly understood only by those who could read
them in their broader philosophical context.
I do not mean to say here that Maimonides held positions
which he thought that his talmudist readers should reject. In his own eyes,
his positions were those of the Torah, properly understood. Positions which
deviated from his were illegitimate, not the other way around. Maimonides,
however, was a realist, and understood the Jews of his day (and, I might
add, many in our own day), the power of habit, and the unwillingness of
people to give up ideas to which they had grown accustomed. Rubbing the
faces of such people, so to speak, in explicit expositions of his (correct,
Jewishly orthodox, but withal unusual) ideas would in no way bring them
to accept the truth. They had to be brought to it gradually and in his
role as educator (a role which I think can be seen in every single thing
he wrote) Maimonides sought to do that.
But there were others, a tiny minority, who could understand
the truth, appreciate it, and accept it. It would have been sinful not
give them at least a glimpse of the truth, and Maimonides sought to do
that also in all of his works, the Mishneh Torah most emphatically
included.
Maimonides, it seems to me, sought to write as the Torah
writes, "in the language of human beings." The Torah was written on several
levels, the uppermost suitable for the talmudist uninterested in or incapable
of understanding the true meaning of the Torah, which is presented to the
philosophically sophisticated in deeper levels. If the Torah itself was
written by God in this fashion, is it any surprise that Maimonides, motivated
by that very Torah to walk in God's ways, wrote his "repetition" of the
Torah in this fashion?
A good example with which to begin our discussion is the
very first sentence of the Mishneh Torah, "Laws of the Foundations
of the Torah," I.1:
The foundation of all foundations, and the pillar of all the species
of wisdom, is to know that there exists a First Existent, that He gives
existence to all that exists, and that all existent beings, from the heaven
to the earth and what is between them, exist only due to the truth of His
existence.
The traditionalist reader of this passage notes the following
things:
-
the first letters of the first four Hebrew words spell out the tetragrammaton,
as is the case in many devotional works.
-
belief in God is presented as the foundational belief of Judaism.
-
God is characterized as creator of all things.
-
Everything that is not God derives its existence from God, and without
God cannot exist.
The more philosophically literate and sophisticated reader of this
passage notes the following things:
-
the "foundation" of religion is made equito the "pillar" of the sciences;
they both teach the same thing: God's existence.
-
The Jew is here called upon to know that God exists; such knowledge
entails being able to prove that God exists, using the tools of
logic and philosophy.
-
God is characterized as the source of existence, not necessarily as the
cause of all that exists. This formulation is as acceptable to Aristotle,
who denies the creation of the world, as it is, for example, to R. Akiva,
who presumably affirms it.
-
God is here called "the first existent," as opposed to the more usual biblical,
rabbinic, or traditional names one would expect to find in an halakhic
work; the language calls to mind a parallel text by Alfarabi, a text which
turns out upon examination to be literary source for much of what Maimonides
writes in "Laws of the Foundations of the Torah."
-
God's "truth" is here called the source of all existence. The attentive
reader notes that this strengthens the last two points: God is presented
as metaphysical ground of all that exists. The well-educated reader further
remembers Aristotle's claim (Metaphysics, ii, 993b20-30) that eternal
things are true, and as such are the cause of being of other things.
A text which on the face of it presents no problems
for the conventional reader of the Mishneh Torah at the same time
opens a window into the mind and soul of its author for the reader familiar
with the language, ideas, and issues of medieval philosophy.
Maimonides himself instructs us to read "Laws of the Foundations of the
Torah" I in the way I have presented it here. In Guide of the Perplexed
I.71 he explains that, the proofs for the oneness and existence of the
deity and of His not being a body ought to be procured from the starting
point afforded by the supposition of the eternity of the world, for in
this way the demonstration will be perfect, both if the world is eternal
and if it is created in time. For this reason you will always find that
whenever, in what I have written in the books of jurisprudence, I happened
to mention the foundations and start upon establishing the existence of
the deity, I establish it by discourses that adopt the way of the doctrine
of the eternity of the world. Maimonides hastens to assure
the readers of the Guide of the Perplexed that the reason for this
is not that he believes "in the eternity of the world, but that [he] wish[es]
to establish in our belief the existence of God, may He be exalted, through
a demonstrative method as to which there is no disagreement in any respect."
Whatever one may think about Maimonides' position on creation, there is
no doubt that in "Laws of the Foundations of the Torah" he "mentioned the
foundations" and sought to establish the existence of God. We are thus
surely right in reading "Foundations," I.1 as it is presented here, as
teaching an aristotelian conception of God as metaphysical ground of being,
as opposed to a conception of God as creator of the cosmos. Maimonides'
stylistic strategy enables him to get the point across to the reader who
can "handle" it, while keeping the less sophisticated reader in the dark.
But this second type of reader is not misled: the existence of God is indeed
the foundation of all foundations, the Jew is required to accept that teaching
(the first commandment in the decalogue according to Maimonides and the
first of the 613 commandments), even if only as a matter of belief, not
knowledge, and God is the creator of the cosmos and not only the metaphysical
ground of its being. Maimonides has succeeded in reaching out to two very
different audiences here, instructing both, and harming neither.
Maimonides' comment in the Guide of the Perplexed tells us something
very important: he expected at least some readers of the Mishneh Torah
to realize that he was proving God's existence with arguments which assumed
the eternity of the universe and had to explain to them in the Guide
of the Perplexed why he did that. This is important evidence in favor
of my contentions concerning the diverse nature of the audience addressed
in the Mishneh Torah. There is another text in
"Foundations of the Torah" where Maimonides' ability to address two different
audiences simultaneously finds emphatic expression: It
is among the foundations of religion to know that God causes human beings
to prophesy, and that prophecy does not rest upon anyone but a sage great
in wisdom, powerful with respect to his [moral] qualities --[i.e.] one
whose passions do not overpower him with respect to anything in the world,
but, rather, through his intellect he always subdues his passions-- and
who has a very broad and well-established intellect. A person filled with
all these qualities, sound of body, upon entering pardes and continuously
dwelling upon those great and remote matters, and having an intellect prepared
to understand and conceive them, and who continues to sanctify himself,
by separating himself from the ways of most people who walk in the darkness
of the times, and who zealously trains himself and teaches his mind not
to have any thoughts concerning vain things, the nonsense of the time and
its snares, but his mind is always directed above, bound under the throne
in order to understand those sacred and pure forms, and who examines the
entire wisdom of God from the first form till the navel of the world, learning
from this God's greatness; the holy spirit immediately rests upon him,
and at the time the spirit rests upon him, his soul mingles with the degree
of the angels known as Ishim and he becomes another man, and understands
through his intellect that he is not as he was, but has risen above the
degree of other wise humans, as it says of Saul: "You will prophesy and
become another man" (1 Sam 10:6). The talmudist reader
of this passage will be very comfortable with it, since so much of the
language is taken from biblical and rabbinic texts. On the face of it,
there is nothing in this text to upset such a reader. Maimonides reminds
us that prophecy is one of the principles of Judaism (as defined by himself
in his Commentary on the Mishnah) and that prophecy is restricted to one
who is very wise, powerful in the mishnaic sense of controlling one's desires,
and one who has broad and correct understanding (de'ah). When such
a person, who is also healthy and physically unimpaired, studies those
disciplines known in the tradition as pardes, is devoted to those
great matters, is wholly separated from unimportant nonsense and concentrates
on nothing but divine matters and the wisdom inherent in God's creation,
then the divine spirit rests upon him or her. When that happens the individual's
soul meets those angels called Ishim and the prophet becomes someone
new altogether. So much for the philosophically uneducated
talmudist reader. What does the reader who has carefully read the Sefer
ha-Madda to this point and is furthermore familiar with Maimonides'
own theory of prophecy (as expressed in the Guide of the Perplexed),
find in our passage? Something quite different. This reader finds a naturalistic
account of prophecy even more daring than the one put forward my Maimonides
in the Guide of the Perplexed. In that place Maimonides maintains
that prophecy is a perfection of the prophet, and that God's only role
in the process is to make it possible. God does not choose or send prophets,
rather, God establishes the circumstances in which prophecy can take place
(and it is in that sense that the phrase, "that God causes human beings
to prophesy," must be read in our passage). Anyone having certain
qualities who works hard enough will achieve prophecy. In the Guide,
however, Maimonides does allow for an exception: God can work a miracle
and cause an otherwise qualified individual not to achieve prophecy. But
not so here: when one has satisfied certain conditions, then "the holy
spirit immediately rests upon him" (îéã
øåç ä÷åãù ùåøä
òìéå)-- God does nothing (in the sense of
direct, immediate intervention), the person seeking prophecy does everything.
When that person has satisfied all relevant criteria, the divine spirit
immediately
rests upon him or her, with no specifiaction or decision by God.
What are the conditions which the prospective prophet must satisfy? Let
us examine them, one after the other.
-
First, the candidate for prophecy must be exceedingly wise (literally:
"a great sage [çëí]
in wisdom [çëîä]").
-
Second, the person must be powerful with respect to personal qualities.
Maimonides explains that such a person uses intellect to control his or
her physical desires.
-
Third, the individual seeking prophecy must have an exceptionally "broad
and very sound intellect."
-
Fourth, the individual in question must be physically unimpaired. This
bring to mind the second of the "four perfections" which Maimonides enumerates
in Guide of the Perplexed III.54 (wealth, health, morals, intellect).
Furthermore, Maimonides teaches us in other passages in the Sefer ha-Madda
that a healthy body is a prerequisite for studying wisdom.
When a person satisfies these four criteria, prophecy will
immediately, automatically, and naturally result if further steps
are taken:
-
the person must enter pardes. In "Laws of the Foundations of the
Torah," I-IV, and especially in IV.13, Maimonides makes clear that pardes
means the study of physics and metaphysics.
-
one must continue studying the great and remote matters (which in "Foundations"
IV.13 we learn means metaphysics).
-
one must be further willing to separate oneself the common run of humanity
and train oneself to think of nothing but "the sacred and pure forms under
the throne" (i.e., the separate intellects).
-
one must examine God's wisdom as exemplified in the created cosmos, from
the first form down to the navel of the world, i.e., devote oneself to
the study of physics (including astronomy) and metaphysics.
All this done, the holy spirit immediately rests upon one
and one's soul (nefesh), i.e., one's intellect, achieves contact
with that level of angels called Ishim, and one becomes an entirely
new person, a level beyond normal savants, i.e., beyond the wise who have
not achieved prophecy. The careful reader of Sefer ha-Madda knows
that Ishim is the name given to angels of the tenth (and lowest
degree), those who speak with prophets. The philosophically attuned reader,
or the reader who comes back to this passage after careful study of the
Guide
of the Perplexed, knows that what traditionalists call "angels" the
philosophers call "separate intellects" and that the tenth (and "lowest")
of these intellects is called the Active Intellect. It is through the Active
Intellect that God addresses prophets: "know that the true reality and
quiddity of prophecy consist in its being an overflow overflowing from
God, may He be cherished and honored, through the intermediation of the
Active Intellect" (Guide, II.36, p. 269).
The account of prophecy implied in this text is more radical
than that propounded in the Guide of the Perplexed, since it does
not mention the possibility of God's miraculous intervention to withhold
prophecy from an otherwise qualified individual. This is consistent with
what we saw above: in the Mishneh Torah Maimonides adopts extremely
naturalist positions, but hides them from the nonphilosophical talmudist
reader.
In the text before us, as well, we find that Maimonides
succeeds impressively in teaching truth to the philosophic talmudist while
both not lying to the non-philosophical talmudist and keeping the truth
taught to the former hidden from the latter.
While the phenomenon to which I am drawing attention here
is most pronounced in "Laws of the Foundations of the Torah," it is not
only found there, as the following text, "Laws of the Recitation of the
Shema," I.2 (which deals with a straightforwardly halakhic issue), illustrates:
What does one recite? The three paragraphs beginning with the words
"Hear" (Deut. 6:4-9); "If, then, you obey" (Deut. 11:13-21); and "The Lord
said" (Num. 15:37-41). One recites the paragraph "Hear" first because it
contains a commandment concerning God's unity, love of God, and study,
which is the basic principle upon which all depends. After it, "If, then,
you obey," since it commands obedience to all the other commandments. After
that, the paragraph concerning the fringes, since it also contains a command
to recall all the commandments.
The second sentence of this passage reads as follows in Hebrew:
åî÷ãéîéï
ì÷øåú ôøùú
"ùîò" îôðé ùéù
áä ééçåã ä', åàäáúå,
åúìîåãå, ùäåà
äòé÷ø äâãåì
ùäëì úìåé áå.
The
interpretation of one word here, åúìîåãå,
makes a tremendous difference to the meaning of the passage. What does
the non-philosophical talmudist understand here? Such a person reads the
sentence as follows: "One recites the paragraph "Hear" first because it
contains a commandment concerning God's unity, love of God, and study of
Torah, which is the great principle upon which all depends." Our talmudist
reads this sentence with great satisfaction: the study of Torah is made
"the great principle upon which all depends" and it is in part because
that study is found in the first paragraph of Shema ("you shall teach them
diligently to your children" -- Deut. 6:7) that the first paragraph is
the first of the paragraphs of the Shema.
The philosophically more alert reader of the Mishneh
Torah finds something else here, different from, but by no means inconsistent
with, what the talmudist finds. Such a reader must understand the key term,
åúìîåãå,
to mean the study of God, and not the study of God's Torah. The study of
God, as is taught in the first four chapters of the Mishneh Torah,
involves the study of physics and metaphysics, not the study of Talmud
as ordinarily understood. Maimonides, of course, has nothing against the
study of God's Torah as the talmudist understands it, but the obligation
to undertake that study is not the issue here, at least for the reader
of this passage who has carefully read the Mishneh Torah to this
point.
Why do I say this? I take Maimonides to be teaching that
we recite Deut. 6:4-9 first because of the first verse, "Hear, O Israel,
the Lord, our God, the Lord is one." This verse indeed teaches äòé÷ø
äâãåì ùäëì úìåé
áå "the great principle upon which all depends,"
namely God's existence and unity. In "Laws of the Foundations of the Torah,"
I.6 Maimonides uses the same exact expression, "the great principle upon
which all depends," with reference to God's unity.
One should not be confused by the reference to the love
of God in the maimonidean text before us. It calls to mind the passages
in the Guide of the Perplexed in which Maimonides teaches us that
love of God is proportionate to knowledge of God. Knowledge of God, of
course, results from the study of physics and metaphysics (our knowledge
of immaterial entities and our understanding of the limitations of what
we can actually know about God). The student of Maimonides who has read
and assimilated the Guide of the Perplexed knows that love of God
finds its finest expression, not in the study of Talmud, but in the study
of physics and metaphysics. This, too, is hinted at in the passage under
discussion.
We have examined three passages in which Maimonides addresses
at the same time conventionally minded rabbinic readers of the Mishneh
Torah and philosophically aware students of the same text. Part of
his artistry as an author, as well as a thinker, is to address each audience
in a way in which it will not only not be harmed, but actually benefited.
The audience of talmudists remains unaware of the philosophic message of
the text it is reading, while those beginning the study of philosophy may
be prompted to go further in their studies because of passages like those
under discussion; the accomplished philosopher-talmudist will fully understand
what the master is teaching and, if he or she is a faithful student of
Maimonides, will approve the intention to teach the (philosophical) elite
while not perplexing or upsetting the (rabbinic) masses.
NOTES |