Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed

I’m fond of a quote by Karl Popper that I first encountered in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum: “The conspiracy theory of society... comes from abandoning God and then asking: ‘Who is in his place?’” Secrecy inheres within conspiracy, and Popper’s quote suggests that there exists a universal, human longing for there to be knowledge hidden and guarded by an omnipotent, preferably benevolent, oligarchy. If this is so, a complementary longing would be to uncover that secret knowledge for the betterment of the world, or at least the satisfaction of one’s own intellectual curiosity.

We’ve read quite a bit of theology so far in our reading list – Augustine, the Bhagavad-Gita, those irascible Islamic philosophers – but we haven’t really encountered any true talk of “hidden” knowledge. Augustine talked about discovery and epiphany, Krishna revealed a method of being to Arjuna, and the Muslims went so far as to say that some truths are reserved for an elite group. None of this, however, feels worthy of hiding. Though it is often enlightening, for individuals or for groups, it does not possess the same cloak-and-dagger secrecy that we would expect from earth-shattering secrets.

Moses Maimonides, whether or not it is his intention, surrounds his monumental Guide of the Perplexed with exactly that sort of aura. Despite the title, his work is less a handbook or manual than a compendium of esotericism set down in a labyrinthine structure: topics are scattered, themes appear and disappear at random. The text itself, dedicated to his student, Joseph ben Judah, for whom he is writing, deals primarily with a topic that had a hoary past even by his time: the figurative language of scripture. Maimonides’ goal is to set straight the confusions that arise when one reads scripture absolutely literally. Secondarily, Maimonides writes to explain the truth about two of the most secret aspects of Judaism: the story of the creation in Genesis, and the vision of the chariot from Ezekiel. The explanation of these stories is normally reserved for only the most capable students of the Torah: Maimonides writes that the former should not be told to more than one person, and the latter to anyone at all; that is, it should be deduced for oneself, never explained. Maimonides, then, cannot simply set them down in a book for anyone to read. So he hides them. The Guide contains dead-ends, contradictions, and red herrings meant to throw all but the most careful exegete off the scent.

We can probably call him successful since I didn’t even read Books II and III of the Guide, where the secrets are revealed and probably wouldn’t have understood them anyway. Boom. Everyone stopped reading right there. It's not that much of a letdown, because from my readings about them, Maimonides doesn’t seem to have explicitly revealed anything that turns black to white. At any rate, after this disappointing lead-up (for which I apologize, but I was disappointed, too), the part of the Guide that I’ll discuss -- Book I -- is still pretty incredible, incredible enough that my copy contains two introductory essays that run longer than the actual text, one by Leo Strauss and one by Shlomo Pines. (Leave it to the University of Chicago Press.)

The Method of the Guide

The primary goal of the Guide is to explain how any confusion that arises when reading the Torah can be ameliorated by understanding the equivocal nature of words. To make this clear, Maimonides sets down the basic method of Book I of the Guide: most chapters deal with a single Hebrew word, such as “face,” “body,” “wing,” etc., and show how that word is used in both literal and figurative senses. If a word can be used figuratively, so the logic goes, then we are allowed to take it as such when its literal meaning creates contradictions. For example, words related to sight, “to see” and “to look at,” are often applied to God, and may lead us to think that we or any other human can “see” God, or that He is a being that can be perceived. Maimonides tells us this is untrue. Instead, those words have common figurative uses: “Yea, my heart hath seen much of wisdom and knowledge;” or, “and they looked after Moses.” Neither of those uses of “seen” or “looked” indicates literal sight; hence Maimonides has demonstrated that the figurative usage abounds in the text. And if it can be used figuratively, we should take it as such when it is applied to God.

Why, then, is figurative language even employed if it only obscures the Truth being conveyed? The answer is twofold. The first explanation is that were it not for figurative language, we would have no way of even describing the transcendental nature of God. This leads Maimonides into discussing the concept of negative theology. The second is didactic: even though someone like Maimonides is able to write a work describing the Truth stripped of metaphoric language, it is by no means immediately understandable to most of the world. The Torah, as a Jewish dictum goes, “speaketh in the language of the sons of man”: “Hence attributes indicating corporeality have been predicated of Him [God] in order to indicate that He, may He be exalted, exists, inasmuch as the multitude cannot at first conceive of any existence save that of a body alone.” Because most people can only understand that something exists if we say that it has a body, we must describe God as corporeal or else His being will be incomprehensible to most people.

Negative Theology

Were it not for figurative language, it would be impossible for us to even begin to comprehend God. Why is this true? Let us first try to give God an attribute: God is good. Someone may say, Is that all? To which we would respond, By no means! He’s also just. Okay, our interlocutor may reply, He is good and He is just; is that all? We would say, No: he is also merciful, and powerful, and vengeful, and– Hold on, our friend interjects, How can He be merciful and vengeful? I cannot think of any being that is both!

By using positive predication, we are, Maimonides says, narrowing the scope of God’s nature. This can be interpreted logically: The set of all possible things is infinite. The subset of all things that are good is smaller. If we then say we wish to take the subset of things that are good and just, this would be even smaller. The more we add attributes, the smaller we make our set.

Moreover, positive predication is too common to be used for God. To say, “God is good,” when one has recently said, “Mary is good,” would lead one to believe that God and Mary are good in the same way. This leads to a privation of the true nature of God’s “goodness.” Describing God in positive qualities creates an “implied deficiency” in God.

Maimonides argues instead that God can only be discussed in negative terms: God is ineffable, God is boundless, etc. While positive predication narrows the view of the subject, negative predication infinitely widens it. In Maimonides’ own words:

“For the thing of which attributes are predicated becomes more particularized with every increase in attributes that are predicated of it, and he who predicates these attributes accordingly comes nearer to the apprehension of the true reality of the thing in question. In a similar way, you come nearer to the apprehension of Him, may He be exalted, with every increase in the negations regarding Him; and you come nearer to that apprehension than he who does not negate with regard to Him that which, according to what has been demonstrated to you, must be negated.”

The Need to Understand

Like al-Farabi before him, Maimonides believed that not all knowledge was meant for all people. But does this mean that Truth is relative? Can I believe that God has a corporeal form since this is what the text of scripture would lead me to believe prima facie?

Maimonides first seems to say, Yes. “You should not consider as blameworthy the fact that this profound subject, which is remote from our apprehension, should be subject to many different interpretations. For this does no harm with respect to that toward which we direct ourselves. And you are free to choose whatever belief you wish.”

Yet there are some interpretations, such as the corporeality of God, which he refuses to tolerate. Of this matter, he says, “the law has, so to speak, no other purpose than to destroy idolatry,” and “[o]nly if God is incorporeal is it absurd to make images of God and to worship such images.” Moreover, “the only image of God is man, living and thinking man, and that man acts as the image of God only through worshipping the invisible or hidden God lone.”

Transitional Forms

To understand Maimonides’ beef with idolatry, we must first understand his view of Moses (the prophet, not his own name). To Maimonides, as would be expected of a rabbi, Moses is the greatest prophet, on an entirely separate plane from every other prophet. Part of the reason for this is that Moses represented the key step between wild, godless men and righteous men in communion with God.

Before Moses, Maimonides says, all people were Sabians. I won’t try to explain what the Sabian religion constitutes, but suffice it to say, it was full of the things that Maimonides didn’t like: handcrafted idols, human sacrifices, the works. Not until Moses was an attempt made by God to turn a large group of people from Sabianism. (The Biblical Patriarchs, Maimonides says, were Sabians until called by God; consider how Abraham is willing to sacrifice Isaac.)

God recognized, however, the power that habit holds over human nature. It would have been impossible – even for God, Maimonides claims – to turn a group of people from idolatrous Sabians into devout Jews in a moment’s notice. So God provided Moses with the Law.

Mosaic Law, according to Maimonides, is not perfect. The Law calls for animal sacrifices. Idols are banned, but men still must go to temple and pay devotion to sacred objects. Leo Strauss writes, “The sacrificial laws constitute a step in the gradual transition, in the progress from Sabianism to pure worship, i.e., pure knowledge of God.”

From Maimonides himself: “Man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed. As therefore God sent Moses our Master to make out of us a kingdom of priests and a holy nation – through the knowledge of Him, may He be exalted…; and as at that time the way of life generally accepted and customary in the whole world and the universal service upon which we were brought up consisted in offering various species of living beings in the temples in which images were set up, in worshipping the latter, and in burning incense before them…His wisdom, may He be exalted, and His gracious ruse [my emphasis], which is manifest in regard to all His creatures, did not require that He give us a Law prescribing the rejection, abandonment, and abolition of all these kinds of worship… Therefore He, may He be exalted, suffered the above-mentioned kinds of worship to remain, but transferred them from created or imaginary and unreal things to His own name… Through this divine ruse it came about that the memory of idolatry was effaced and the grandest and true foundation of our belief – namely, the existence and oneness of the deity – was firmly established.” God works secretly.

Shlomo Pines adds, “Just as Nature, or God working in Nature, makes shift with the available corporeal devices in order to form a viable organism, History, or God working in History, makes shift with available devices of a different kind in order to form a viable nation.” God works in degrees.

Maimonides cares so much about Moses because he sees his own time as yet another transitional period. His time, while not suffering as greatly from the sin of idolatry, is weight down by tradition and superstition that he considers detrimental to both faith and progress. Pines writes, “Maimonides contrasts his own times, which he seems to have held to be dominated by superstition, to use Spinoza’s term and that of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, with Greek antiquity, in which the philosophers who aspire to know the true nature of things did not have to struggle against the dead hand of traditional belief.” (Although Maimonides may or may not have known that the Greeks had their own belief systems to struggle against.)

Again, in Maimonides’ own words: “Alexander of Aphrodisias says that there are three causes of disagreement about things. One of them is love of domination and love of strife, both of which turn man aside from the apprehension of truth as it is. The second cause is the subtlety and the obscurity of the object of apprehension in itself and the difficulty of apprehending it. And the third cause is the ignorance of him who apprehends and his inability to grasp things that it is possible to apprehend. That is what Alexander mentioned. However, in our times there is a fourth cause that he did not mention because it did not exist among them. It is habit and upbringing. [My emphasis] For man has in his nature a love of, and an inclination for, that to which he is habituated. Thus you can see that the people of the desert – notwithstanding the disorderliness of their life, the lack of pleasures, and the scarcity of food – dislike the towns, do not hanker after their pleasures, and prefer the bad circumstances to which they are accustomed to good ones to which they are not accustomed.”

Thy Ways

There is a final reason that Maimonides considered Moses to be so great. Through Moses, Maimonides believes, the true nature of God was revealed.

How? When Moses confronted God (probably not literally), he asked Him two questions: to reveal His face, and – when this is said to be impossible – he asks God to “show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee.” Maimonides writes, “Consider the wondrous notions contained in this dictum. For his saying [this] indicates that God, may He be exalted, is known through His attributive qualifications; for when he would know the ways, he would know Him.”

What are those attributes through which God may be known? Shlomo Pines writes, “[T]his knowledge… can practically be equated with the grasp of the sequence and (natural) causes of the natural phenomena… The study of nature and of the order of nature is the only way open to man to know something of God.” God’s workings in the universe are exactly the procession of nature. Nature, then, is the best and perhaps only way that man can apprehend the nature of God. We should not be surprised by this revelation. After all, is this not the same thing that was revealed to Job at the end of his eponymous book, when God finally appeared to him in a whirlwind?

This conclusion leads us to understand more about Maimonides’ theological beliefs, such as his understanding of attribution. Pines writes:

“The import of these views may be realized more clearly if one considers the reinterpretation of biblical terms that Maimonides has in mind. His attributes of action are such terms as “Merciful” or “Revengeful” applied to God. According to Maimonides expressions of this kind originate in man’s teleological anthropocentric interpretation of the inhuman, self-conserving, and self-perpetuating order of nature. Thus God is sometimes called ‘Merciful’ because in accordance with that order the embryos of animals develop satisfactorily and parents have been endowed with the instinct to protect their children. Or He is called ‘Revengeful’ because, again in accordance with the order of nature, storms, floods, earthquakes, and wars work destruction. One is again reminded of Spinoza’s attacks on the ascription of a finalistic man-centered causality to Nature, or to call it by another name, to God.”

This may be summed up in a parable that Maimonides recounts and then alters. Originally, a parable went:

“The fact that information has been received that justice and fair-dealing are practiced in India should not be considered as proof that the country is ruled by a just king, whereas the arrival of envoys bearing gifts sent by the king of India would prove the existence of that king. In other words, the existence of God should be proved not by a reference to cosmic order, but by the fact of divine intervention in the history of the people of Israel and by the mission of the prophets.”

Maimonides rewrites the parable:

“One may be persuaded in various ways that a certain country has a king: one may see him in person, or see the retinue surrounding him, or one may consider that he exists because things are done (for instance, buildings and bridges are built) upon his order. One may also infer his existence from the fact that a robust beggar does not attack and rob a wealthy moneychanger, even in the latter is physically quite weak.” Maimonides believes, then, that cosmic order is proof of the existence of God.

Stray Observations

• Sorry for the huge block-quotes in this post. Everyone involved is a bit wordy.
• I'm a big fan of book design in general, and an especially big fan of this cover. 
• Maimonides explains angels: the word “wing” in Hebrew(?) has the “signification of concealing.” Angels, he explains, have no corporeality, just like God, and so they are depicted as having wings because their true nature is concealed. Moreover, their wings allow them to fly, an ability not conferred upon humans: “For it is the most perfect and the noblest of the motions of the irrational animals, and man believes it to be a great perfection; so that he even wishes to fly in order that it might be easy for him to flee from all that harms him and that he might betake himself swiftly to whatever agrees with him, even if it be far off.” This is a bit of a stretch, and I am just reminded of the way Arthur Waley in his introduction to the Analects of Confucius casually dismisses the idea of angels by citing that ancient societies used to see birds as the intercessors between men and God (because they flew through the sky, i.e. Heaven).
• Though he wanted to break free of the dead hand of tradition, Maimonides did still borrow from the Greeks, most notably Aristotle. Of Aristotle: “Sometimes explicitly, and perhaps more often tacitly, he [Maimonides] accepted apparently with equanimity the existence in the cosmos of a constituent element that was not amenable to such derivation, of something corresponding to Plato’s “necessity”… Maimonides attributes the existence of this residue of obdurate facts, which are irreducible to scientific explanation, to God’s having willed them.” 
• Maimonides also agrees with an idea espoused by the kalams (of which al-Gazali was a member) of a particularizer: one who, since the world exists in spite of there being no intrinsic reason to exist, willed the universe into being in its current form. “This view… seems to be based either on a belief in the existence of an irreducible element of irrationality in nature… On first supposition, Maimonides’ view of God as the ‘Particularizer’ approximates Whitehead’s description of God.” The description being: “God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the ultimate irrationality.”
• Maybe one of these days I’ll read Books II and III, but right now, I’m not really feeling another 300 pages of this.