Continuation. Relation of All Natural Events to God. A Very Comfortable and Pious Method. Divine Equipage, a Cosmological Idea That the Prophet Ezekiel Wouldn’t Have Dreamed of. Excellent Morals, but Not in Line with Today’s Taste. Origins of Evil. Prophesy. Final Causes
EVERYTHING THAT COMES TO BE, Maimonides continues, has its proximate cause, and these causes, in turn, have their own proximate causes, and so on until the first cause: God’s will. Because they could assume that this was generally accepted, the prophets often opted for a concise way of expressing themselves and attributed an effect directly to the first cause: They were thereby counting on their listeners to interpolate intermediary causes into their thoughts. These intermediary causes could be physical or moral causes, or [108] even accidental impetuses, and so they attributed the effect directly to God, and said: God did it, willed it, sent it, and such.1
I want to present a few passages from the prophetic writings here as representative examples, which will enable you to draw inferences about those I that do not present.
We read about those actions of nature that happen according to immutable laws, such as, for example, snow melting as the air temperature rises and the churning of the sea during stormy weather: “He sends His word, and has them (snow flakes) melt.”2 “He ordered that a storm wind howl and make the waves churn.”3 About His preventing rain from falling we read: “I will forbid the clouds to rain.”4 Just this manner of expression occurs also with reference to such events whose cause is the free will of man: for example, war, conquest, or the injury and imprecations that one person inflicts on another. Thus, we hear of [109] Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion: “I order the one whom I had designated to do it,”5 and so on.
About Simei, the son of Gera, we read: “Let him be, for God spoke to him: Curse David,”6 and this says nothing other than that this cursing is an effect of moral intermediary causes, whose first cause, however, is God. About Joseph being freed from prison, we read: “He (God) sent a king who freed Joseph.”7 About the Persians’ destruction of the Babylonian monarchy, we read: “I will send agents of dispersion to Babylon to disperse them (the nation).”8 About Elias, whom a widow supported, we read: “I ordered a widow to nourish you.” Thus, Joseph says to his brothers: “You didn’t send me here; God did.”9
Likewise, about an effect whose cause is an animalistic drive to satisfy a natural need, we read: “God ordered the fish to spit out Jonah,”10 which [110] says nothing less than that God is the first cause of this drive, and not that He made the fish into a prophet by revealing His will to it. It is the same with the locusts that ravaged the land during the time of the prophet Joel, “for mighty are they (locusts) who carry out his commands.”11 And about the devastation of the land Iduma12 by wild animals: “He (God) selected them (the animals), and His hand distributed it (the land) according to his plan.”13
This form of expression is used as well for accidental occurrences. We read, for example, that Rebecca “should become the wife of your lord’s son, as God promised” (as Providence arranged it),14 and Jonathan says to David: “Go, for God sends you away” (though only the accidental throwing of the spear prompted his escape).15
From this you see how Scripture attributes a confluence of causes to God, whether essential, accidental, voluntary, or arbitrary, through these five [111] expressions: command, say, speak, send, call.—
(Dearest Reader! God, who, as the aforesaid should have made clear, sent me to Germany and commanded that I relate the story of my life, now commands that I draw your attention to this section,16 which elucidates how, through rational exegesis, one can reconcile reason and faith and bring them into perfect harmony. Further, it illuminates that achieving Enlightenment isn’t a matter of attaining new knowledge and modes of scholarship; rather, it consists in overturning the false ideas taught to us by others as part of our upbringing and education).17
Maimonides begins the third part of the Guide with an interpretation of Ezekiel’s image of God’s equipage, which he regards as an allegorical representation of cosmological truths. Because he wants to present this reading for rational reasons, and isn’t exactly permitted to do so on account of theological reasons, [112] he employs a special technique: He cites the passages from the prophetic description without interpreting them, but in such an order and in juxtaposition with such addenda that the intelligent reader will easily arrive at the same interpretation on his own.
Isaiah, he goes on to say, put in general terms just what Ezekiel described in such a laborious manner.18 Our wise men made us aware of this by saying everything that Ezekiel saw Isaiah saw as well. Jesiah is like an urbanite, Ezekiel a man from the country who sees the king ride by. The former merely says: I saw the king ride by, presupposing that the equipage is well known. But the latter, for whom an equipage is something entirely new, describes everything extensively.19 (Isaiah, as a cultured man from the royal family, had already developed true insights into the structure of the world and the order and relations of things, [113] and he no longer had a need to describe these things. By contrast, Ezekiel, who came to such insights late, describes the scene laboriously. Verily, the Talmudists aren’t as stupid as people believe.)
All corporeal things, Maimonides continues, which come to be and cease to be, cease to be purely because of their materiality.20 On account of form, all have their lasting being. Thus, all weaknesses and failings, both physical and moral, have their ground in matter.
Because this is so, and divine wisdom wanted that there would be no matter without form and no form without matter, and that the exalted human form, the image of God, would be connected with a dark matter that is the cause of weakness, divine wisdom conferred upon human form some power and capacity over matter, through which it can to some degree control matter and keep its weaknesses in check. And with regard to this capacity and their use of it, humans are very diverse. Some strive for the highest perfection their form can attain [114] and think of nothing except achieving pure concepts and true ideas of all things in order to bring themselves in this way into unity with the divine intellect. Such people are ashamed of satisfying even the most indispensible bodily needs, and they try to conceal the shame of their satisfaction as much as possible, or even to get beyond it completely. If, for example, the king has punished someone by sentencing him to transport manure, the latter, if he is otherwise a free man, will try to conceal this ignominy as much as possible; he will load up only a little, and he won’t travel far with it (provided this part of the punishment has been left open), so that his hands and clothes won’t be dirty, and others won’t see him. A slave, by contrast, won’t regard being filthy all over as much of a punishment and will react to being in this state with indifference. There are people who are ashamed of corporeal needs and especially sensation (under which taste, too, is understood), eating, drinking, intercourse, and such. A rational [115] man needs of this as little as possible, broods about this, doesn’t talk about it, and avoids all indulgence. All his striving goes toward fulfilling his vocation as a human, which consists of achieving knowledge of eternal truths, of which the most important is knowledge of God and his effects. Such people are constantly with God, and of them it is said: “You are gods and children of the Highest Being—all of you!”21
The others, those separated from God, namely, fools, do exactly the opposite. They foreswear all serious thought and thorough judgment; they establish their sensual satisfaction, which is our greatest ignominy, as their chief goal in life, and they think about nothing except eating, drinking, and intercourse. Of them it is said: “They drink wine to excess,”22 and “women rule them,”23 counter to the rule laid down immediately after the creation of the world: “He (the man) should rule you.”24
Thus, Maimonides proceeds to preach stoicism. Because I fear [116] that I will displease men of gallantry and ladies if I present his reasons more expansively, I will break off here.
In the following section,25 Maimonides says: Matter is a strong divide that doesn’t allow us to attain a real concept of a separate intellect. The prophetic writings suggest this in saying: There is a divide between God and us; he conceals himself from us in darkness, fog, and clouds.26 Likewise, the psalmist says: “Clouds and fog envelop him.”27 This means that our bodies are a thick shell that blocks our insight into his true essence, but not that God is a body enveloped by clouds and fog, as the conventional meaning seems to indicate.
Thus, God’s revelation took place on Mount Sinai in thick clouds and fog as a way of suggesting this truth. It is well known that on the day of the revelation, it was very cloudy, though with little rain.28—[117] Darkness affects us; for God, however, there is only the great eternal light whose rays chase away all darkness. Thus, we read in the Scripture: God’s glory lights up the earth.29
In the following section,30 Maimonides, going against the views of the dialecticians, shows that all evil consists from privation only.
Thereupon,31 he shows that one cannot give a final ground of the existence of the world, not when one accepts, with Aristotle, the eternity of its Being, nor when, on the basis of the Holy Scripture, one believes the opposite. In the first case, we do know, along with Aristotle, the relative ends of the existence of the individual parts of the world, as the object of the highest intellect;32 but we cannot know the purpose of the absolute existence of the world in general, which is necessary. In the second case, too, we cannot seek beyond God’s will the purpose of the being of the world as the object of God’s will. [118]
In the following chapter, Maimonides contests the views of those who try to make humans the goal of all creation, doing so by showing that this proposition isn’t consonant with how small humans are in relation to the immeasurable enormity of the world.33
God’s providence rests, according to Maimonides, on the use of reason and is proportional to this. I have already addressed, in an Essay on Theodicy published in the Deutsche Monatsschrift, the chapters dealing with this; I thus refer the reader to that work.34 [119]
1 Maimonides addresses this issue in Guide 2:48. Maimon’s detailed explanation could be a response to Spinoza’s famous critique of the Hebrews (including, presumably, Maimonides), “who are accustomed to relate an action towards the first cause which brought it into being,” and disregard the intermediary causes. See Spinoza, Hebrew Grammar, ch. 12 (1/75), and the Theological Political Treatise, ch. 1 (3/16–17), and ch. 6 (3/94).
2 Ps. 147:18.
3 Ps. 107:25.
4 Isa. 5:6.
5 Isa. 13:3.
6 2 Sam. 16:10.
7 Ps. 105:20.
8 Jer. 51:2.
9 Gen. 45:8.
10 Jon. 2:11.
11 Joel 2:11.
12 Namely, Edom.
13 Isa.34:17.
14 Gen. 24:51
15 1 Sam. 20:22.
16 Guide 2:48 | Pines 2:409–12.
17 Maimon’s exaggerated sarcasm here underlines the implicit blasphemy of his earlier adaptation of God’s call to Abraham to leave his family and homeland (Gen. 12:1) with regard to himself in his “Preface to the Second Book.” It also has a certain poignance given the evident disorder of Maimon’s life.
18 Guide 3:6 | Pines 2:427.
19 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Hagiga, 13b.
20 Guide 3:8 | Pines 2:430.
21 Ps. 82:6.
22 Isa. 28:8.
23 Isa. 3:12.
24 Gen.3:16.
25 Guide 3:9 | Pines 2:436–37.
26 Lam.3:44.
27 Ps. 97:2.
28 Guide 3:9 | Pines 2:437.
29 Ezek. 43:2.
30 Guide 2:10 | Pines 2:438–40.
31 Guide 3:13| Pines 2:448–56.
32 For a helpful discussion of Maimonides’ critique of teleology, see Warren Zev Harvey, “Spinoza and Maimonides on Teleology and Anthropocentrism,” in Spinoza: a Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) Yitzhak Melamed, ed., pp. 43–55.
33 Guide 3:14 | Pines 2:457.
34 Maimon, “Über die Theodicee” Deutsche Monatsschrift (1791), 3:190–212. Reprinted in Maimon, GW, 3:309–31.