Book Review

Moses Maimonides
By Miriam Bokser Caravella
Publisher: New Delhi: Science of the Soul Research Centre, 2023.
ISBN 978-81-962779-9-4

Moses Maimonides is the first book in a new series from Science of the Soul Research Centre, the “Free Thinkers Series.” The publisher’s note explains that the books in this series will “attempt to present the teachings of many of the great philosophers throughout history in a way that average readers without academic backgrounds can easily understand.” All these philosophers “sought, in their own way, an understanding of the ultimate truth.” The publisher submits that we readers, if we keep an open mind, “may glean fresh insights into our own understanding of the mysteries of God and human nature.”

Moses Maimonides was a medieval Jewish philosopher who remains the most widely studied Jewish thinker of all times. His masterpiece, The Guide of the Perplexed, reconciled Aristotle’s philosophy relying on reason with traditional Jewish belief resting on holy scriptures. Maimonides believed that the use of reason doesn’t contradict religious faith; rather it enables greater understanding of the divine. Influenced also by the Islamic mystical or Sufi tradition, he propounded a highly original and dynamic combination of Judaism, Aristotelian philosophy, and mysticism, charting a new path to understanding that still resonates today.

Born in 1138 in Cordoba, Spain, Maimonides lived his early years at a time when Jews coexisted peacefully with their Muslim and Christian neighbours under Muslim rule. When he was seven, however, the political climate changed and the state began to persecute Jews. So his family moved to Morocco, then to Palestine, and finally to Cairo, Egypt. He was eventually appointed the official physician to the sultan Saladin, as well as religious guide and judge for the Jewish community of Cairo. Among his works are medical works that were studied for centuries thereafter, and two ground-breaking works on Jewish law, Commentary on the Mishnah and Mishnah Torah.

But it is as a philosopher that he wrote his greatest and most enduring work, The Guide of the Perplexed. In his time the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle had recently become available in Arabic translation, and these were seen to pose a severe challenge to Jews. Judaism held that truth resided in divinely revealed scriptures, while Aristotle asserted that by reason mankind may know the ultimate truth about the world, the self, and the divine.

Undaunted by this stark opposition, Maimonides sought and found “a common ground of a higher synthesis” beyond it. He believed that combining Jewish law as revealed in scripture with the reason of the ancient Greek philosophers would lead to a deeper understanding of the divine and of the divine laws guiding human conduct. To him, the philosopher is a compassionate physician whose primary concern is “care of the soul.” Ancient philosophy, he said, sought to “form people and to transform souls.” The synthesis Maimonides crafted became significant, not only for Jews, but also for Christian theologians such as Thomas Aquinas.

Maimonides explained that he had two purposes for writing the Guide. The first was to instruct a person who, believing both in the Jewish law and in philosophy, was perplexed by the seeming contradictions between them. Maimonides set out to explain the underlying meaning of both revealed Jewish law and philosophy.

His second purpose in writing the Guide was to explain the mysterious parables in the Bible and help people move beyond a literal interpretation of them. Ultimately, Maimonides wanted to replace superstitious and imaginary beliefs with a more rational awareness of the divine. He believed that a person must go through the perplexing experience of attempting to reconcile reason and revelation. For him this is not merely an intellectual exercise; rather it leads to a deep spiritual transformation and peace of mind.

The Guide is divided into three books, the first two demonstrating how reason and revelation can relate, and the third the synthesis that is the climax of Maimonides’ teachings.

Book One offers a commentary on biblical terminology. Maimonides points out that when scriptures use human terms to speak of God – terms like seeing, dwelling, sitting, rising, the “hand of God” – it is important not to take such terms literally, and to use reason to perceive that God is a spiritual entity that has no shape or form.

Book Two incorporates the metaphysics of Aristotle into a worldview based on scripture. Maimonides sets out to show that the biblical account of creation is in accord with Aristotelian philosophy. He explains the language in the book of Genesis as an allegory in which God created the universe by generating the divine intelligence on the first day. From this intelligence, the “spheres derived their existence and motion, and thus became the source of the existence of the entire universe.” He believed the spheres received their power from the Prime Mover or God.

In Book Three Maimonides starts by explaining a mystical passage in the book of Ezekiel from the Hebrew Bible, in which the prophet Ezekiel ascends to the Throne of God in a chariot made of heavenly beings driven by “the likeness of a man.” Next Maimonides reviews the 613 laws found in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, using reason to show their underlying purposes. By such investigations Maimonides seeks to show both that scriptures cannot be properly understood without reason, but more importantly, that reason alone cannot understand metaphysical realities. The author writes,

Maimonides ultimately concludes that metaphysics cannot be known intellectually with clarity, through reason, but only through prophecy, revelation, and spiritual illumination. … [O]ne has to stand in perplexity and accept that through the intellect there is no clarity. The intellectual search for God ignites an inner passion that philosophy alone is unable to satisfy. This passion is a fuel that drives one to take steps of consciousness that lie beyond philosophy; then the understanding and knowledge of God is revealed to us as God wills.

Thus, for Maimonides, ultimate truths about God may be known only through individual spiritual illumination, the source of prophecy and revelation. According to Maimonides, prophecy supersedes intellect:

Know that there is a level that is higher than all philosophy: this is prophecy. It is a different world. Arguing and investigating are out of place here; no evidence can reach prophecy; any attempt to examine it in a scholarly manner is doomed to fail. It would be like trying to gather all the water on earth in a small cup. … I say that there is a limit to human knowledge, and so long as the soul is in the body, it cannot grasp the supernatural.… No matter how greatly the mind may strive to know God, it will find a barrier; matter is a powerful dividing wall.

And Maimonides further held that this spiritual illumination is not confined to the prophets of scripture but may be attained by anyone in any time period. Indeed, he ends the Guide with a poem:

God is very near to everyone who calls,
if he calls truly and has no distractions.
He is found by every seeker who searches for Him,
if he marches toward him and goes not astray.

Summing up the Guide, the author writes:

Book III of the Guide is the bright summit of The Guide of the Perplexed. It is about the supreme form of worship, the ultimate attainment of the truth, and the highest knowledge and love of God. In this section, Maimonides moves from the intellectual attainment of an Aristotelian rationalist to the higher mystical attainment of a true worshiper.