Continuation. Interpretation of Expressions with Multiple Meanings. Language in the Hands of Theologians, like Clay in the Hands of Potters. Anti-Rousseauean Refutation of an Objection. Cautionary Rule for Aspiring Metaphysicians: One Must First Learn to Swim before Plunging into the Great Oceans of the World
THE FIRST PART OF More Newochim deals mainly with formulations about God and His properties that have multiple meanings. Zelem in Hebrew does not mean, as many have believed, the external corporeal figure, but rather the inner form or the essence of a thing, through which it is what it is. For human beings, this essence is reason (as their differentia specifica). Hence it is said of them: Bezelem Elohim1—they were created after the model of divine form. Damuth [33] (resemblance)2 here does not mean perfect resemblance, but rather correspondence in something. Because human beings have been blessed with an intellectual capacity that is independent of their physical structure, it is said of them that they were created in God’s image.3
A scholar presented me with the following question that he hoped I could resolve. “The story of Genesis, understood in the conventional sense, suggests that people were initially meant to use their reason no more than other animals do, and that they came by this perfection only by violating the prohibition against eating the forbidden fruit. It is quite extraordinary that they would have acquired a perfection as punishment for a crime. It is as though the fable told of someone committing a major crime and being placed as a result among the stars in the sky.”
I responded as follows, (Maimonides continues): “No! My friend, you are wrong. The matter [34] is not as you present it! Reason, imparted by God as the highest human perfection—namely, the ability to distinguish true from false—was employed by human beings in the most perfect way before their crime. Only because of this could it be said that God spoke with them and commanded them, which cannot be said of animals lacking reason.”
The vocation of humanity was to use reason alone to gain knowledge of (absolute, universally valid) good and evil,4 and to distinguish true from false. The form of reason was meant to yield the highest laws of both morality and logic, since knowledge of relative good and evil, grounded in material objects, lies beyond the scope of reason and thus cannot yield a universally valid principle of morality. [35]
We are not, however, simply intellectual beings. We are also physical creatures, whose actions are determined not only by general rational form5 but also by matter. Human beings could not maintain the perfection of existing as purely intellectual beings, and so they were transferred into the order of nonrational animals. The knowledge of good and evil they acquired through their crime, of which the Holy Scripture speaks, thus has a very different source than the knowledge of true and false. Knowledge of good and evil is not of the general law of reason, but simply of the material motives of behavior, and their acquisition was in fact a great loss.
Themunah means in general the idea of a thing, either sensuous or intellectual.6 An example of the latter meaning is the statement about Moses: “He sees Themunath Jehova”7—that is, he has a comprehensive, full concept of God. Seeing, [36] when used in reference to God (that someone has seen God, or that God has seen something), means to have a concept of.
Aristotle begins his profound metaphysical investigations with the following apology:8 “[the reader] shouldn’t accuse him (he says) of temerity for trying to get to the bottom of bottomless things; rather, one should be grateful for his diligence in striving to explore as far as the limits of human knowledge will allow.”9 (Critical philosophy stands above this apology, for unlike dogmatic philosophy, it doesn’t pursue investigations of things as such. It concerns itself, rather, with the forms of our capacity for knowledge and the conditions of its application to objects of experience. The limits of this investigation are determined by the capacity for knowledge itself and thus cannot be exceeded, as the critique stated above implies.)
Precisely this, (continues Maimonides), goes for us as well. Only with the right preparation [37] should one enter into this area of science. One must first be schooled in logic, have foundational knowledge, and improve one’s morals, all while remaining modest in one’s judgments. Hence the claim about Moses: “He hid his face, for he did not dare look at God,”10 and our wise men say11 that precisely because he didn’t dare look at God, he was deemed worthy of looking at God (Themunath Jehova),12 i.e., because he wasn’t hasty in his judgment of God, his judgment was correct.
The young geniuses (under the name Azilei Benni Israel13) were in fact hasty in their judgment, and thus they achieved only very shallow knowledge. It is therefore said of them: “They saw God; he had at his feet a sapphire-like stone, and so on.”14 From this formulation it is clear that their knowledge of God wasn’t purely intellectual, but rather mostly sensuous.
Thereupon follow still more expressions that Maimonides tries to explain in the same way. [38]
In the third section,15 the author shows that above all metaphysics have been subjected to conflicts, the natural sciences less so, and mathematics not at all. The reason for this is that the last of these areas of inquiry allows for the most rigorous demonstrations and doesn’t admit prejudices that spring from personal inclinations and passions, something that often occurs in the first two.
In the next section,16 Maimonides adds:
Our higher capacity for knowledge, insofar as it is bound up with a body, shares a fate with our sensuousness. If, for example, one strains one’s vision so as to perceive something from a greater distance than normal, or something that is simply too small, one won’t simply fail to achieve this goal, one will also weaken one’s vision, with the result that one won’t even be able to distinguish what he could tell apart before this exertion.
The situation with thinking is the same. If you try to determine what lies beyond the sphere of your capacity for thinking, or [39] to deny something for whose opposite one has no clear proof, you become not only not more fully developed through this exercise, you will become less fully developed—indeed, it can even have an ill effect on your ethics. By this I do not mean to impose arbitrary limits on thinking, as fools and indolent types do, fools and indolent types who try to pass off their ignorance and foolishness as perfection, and the knowledge and scholarship of others as imperfection; rather, I simply want to draw our attention to the natural boundaries of human knowledge.
In section 34,17 Maimonides presents five reasons why one shouldn’t begin studying systems of thought with metaphysics and why the untrained intellect should be made aware of everything notable in this science.
First, on account of how difficult the subject inherently is, for this science requires an extraordinary degree of acuity and penetrating intellect. “Far away [40] from us and much too deep for us is that which the world was at its origin—who could discover it?” “Wisdom! Where will it be found?” Therefore, we must always begin with the easier part. Scripture often compares wisdom with water. Our scholars interpret this comparison in the following way, among others: Whoever understands swimming will fish pearls from the bottom of the sea. Who doesn’t understand it will drown, and so it also goes in the search for truth.
Second, on account of weaknesses in our capacity for knowledge. Humans cannot have their highest perfection from the beginning. This perfection is for them a mere potentiality. “Humans are born as wild donkeys!” Nor is it inevitable that this capacity will be actualized. Obstacles and a lack of practice can get in our way. Hence the statement: “Not many become wise.” [41] Our scholars say: “Those who ascend are very few.”18
Third, on account of all the preparation. Humans naturally rush to results as the goal of their knowledge; but the preparations, as the means, are bothersome, and people neglect them. Indeed! If one could achieve results without preparations, then there would be no preparations.—
Wake the greatest imbecile out of his slumber and ask him if he wants to know the number of heavenly bodies and how they are constituted, if he wants to know what angels are, how the world came to be, how its destiny can be derived from the order we observe in it, what the soul is, how it is connected to the body, and if and how it can be separated again from the body—in response the imbecile would certainly say: Of course, I want to know all this, and he would exhibit a natural desire to, but only under the condition that you [42] can present all this quickly and in a few words.
And if you say to him that in order to acquire all this important knowledge, he must interrupt his work for only eight days, he will no doubt refuse the offer, and he will have much to say in objecting to these considerable preparations and far-reaching investigations.
Now, these matters are connected; there are no (real) objects other than God and His works, that is, everything existing outside Him. God can be known only through his works; through them we gain knowledge of His existence, of what must be affirmed or negated about Him. Thus, we must extend our investigation to include all objects, so that from every type of object we can gain true premises about metaphysical truths.
How many premises of this kind cannot be derived from the properties of numbers and of algebraic formulas? From these we can learn much about what we must negate [43] of God if we want to have a correct concept of Him.19(a)
As to astronomy and the natural sciences, you will not doubt that they are crucial for achieving a correct concept of the relationship of the world to divine wisdom.
There are other speculations, which, to be sure, don’t offer directly metaphysical premises, but that nevertheless indirectly exercise our capacity for knowledge, promoting skill in demonstrating and in methodical thinking, through which one can uncover the mistakes of most thinkers, which are the source of many false opinions and have their basis in the confusion of the [44] necessary and the accidental, the purely formal, and thus universally valid, with the material.
Those who strive for perfection must thus focus first on sound logic, then on mathematics, on natural science after that, and only then on metaphysics. How many people can tolerate studying a few of these areas thoroughly, even if we leave out all those whose course of study is interrupted by death? If we didn’t have hard-won views handed down by tradition, and if we weren’t guided to a dressing-up of the truth well-suited for our powers of imagination, if we wanted to promote the most correct concepts of all things, the most comprehensive explanations, and the most rigorous demonstrations, which can be [45] gained only after the most thorough preparations, the majority of us would pass from this world without knowing whether or not the world has a God. Thus, we don’t engage seriously with the majority of people. The few, however, whom God has called to this perfection—of them we demand with full justification that they undertake the necessary preparations.
Fourth, on account of the natural (temperamental) disposition.
It is so that the capacity for knowledge hangs together closely with temperament. There are many hot-tempered people, and others who are jovial and incline to frivolity, who are incapable of a single thorough consideration. The latter ones are not made for metaphysics, for this area of thought is not like medicine and geometry, on which the state of one’s emotions has no impact. Rather, we read in reference to metaphysics: “God despises the crooked one; to the straight ones he discloses his secrets.”20
Fifth, on account of the piling up of material pursuits, particularly when one has to provide for a wife and children, and even more so [46] when luxury gains the upper hand. This state of affairs is the case with most people, and thus only a few are able to achieve thorough knowledge. The study of metaphysics is for the select few, not for the common herd.
In the following section,21 the author says that everything he previously put forth about the difficulty of metaphysics, the natural theology grounded in it, and the necessity of keeping the common man out has nothing to do with the pure faith in God’s non-corporeality and His freedom from passions. Rather, just as one must teach the common man and even children (as an article of faith) that there is only one God, so must one make comprehensible that this God is not a body, and that between Him and creatures there exists not the slightest resemblance. His existence, His life, His wisdom, and other characteristics are not different from ours with respect to degree, but also with respect to kind, [47] so that there is no relation between them. Developing this teaching further and more precisely is reserved for a select few.
In the following section,22 Maimonides shows, using a mass of evidence from the Holy Scripture, that this God displays rage and vengefulness only when paganism is at issue; also, only the pagan is named as an enemy of God. The reason for this is that paganism contains a false system with respect to the most important object of our knowledge. Whoever attributes something corporeal to God is His enemy. Every person must try to gain pure knowledge of Him, and if it cannot be arrived at through independent reflection, it must be taken on from others, with loyalty and faith. [48]
1 Gen. 1:27.
2 Gen. 1:26.
3 This concludes Maimon’s summary of Guide 1:1. The quote below proceeds to his translation of Guide 1:2 (cf. Pines 1:24–25). For Maimonides, knowledge pertains only to the true and the false while good and bad are mere social conventions (in Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew mefursamot). Maimon would appear to read the passage as applying to only relative good and evil.
4 Here Maimon departs from Maimonides’ claims in Guide 1:2. For Maimonides, knowledge of good and evil is merely conventional, and not rational.
5 Here again Maimon is Kantianizing Maimonides’ text.
6 See Guide 1:3.
7 Num. 12:8.
8 Guide 1:5 | Pines 1:29.
9 Aristotle, De Caelo, 291b25–28.
10 Exod. 3:6.
11 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot, 7a. Cf. Midrash Tanhuma, 1 and Shemot Rabbah, 2:5.
12 Num. 12:8.
13 “The nobles of the children of Israel” (Exod. 24:11).
14 Exod. 24:10–11.
15 Oddly, this discussion occurs in Guide 1:31 | Pines 1:61 (and not in Guide 1:3). If Maimon relied on handwritten notes, he might have confused “3” for “31,” or perhaps it is simply an error on the part of his editor or printer. (Incidentally, Maimon refers to the chapters of the Guide as sections [Abschnitte].)
16 Guide 1:32.
17 Guide 1:34.
18 Bablonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, 97b, and Tractate Sukka, 45b.
19 Bablonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, 97b, and Tractate Sukka, 45b.
a [Maimon] Excellent! The nature of irrational numbers, for example, shows us that one can have no concept of what a thing is as an object and yet be able to define its relationship to other things. Thus, we have no concept of God as an object and yet we can define his relationship to us, which is the basis of morality. Algebraic formulas often bring us to the concept of the infinite as to a limit concept, which is not of constitutive, but rather of regulative use and as such, a concept that is of great importance in metaphysics.
20 Prov. 3:32.
21 Guide 1:35.
22 Guide 1:36.