The Ismaili
United States of America
December 13
(2003): 13-15.
The influence of Islamic Philosophy
on Maimonides's Thought
The overall purpose of the Law is twofold: to promote the welfare of
the body and to promote the welfare of the soul. The welfare of the soul is
achieved inasmuch as sound views are implanted in the minds of people, to the
extent they are capable of grasping them. For this reason, certain ideas are
stated directly while others are expressed through symbols, since it is not
within the natural capacity of common people to grasp the latter class of
truths directly.
Maimonides, Moreh Nevukhim, III: 27[1]
Jewish culture, which had flowered under the Ummayad Caliphs, received a
terrible blow when Southern Spain was conquered by the Almoravids. Jews were
persecuted and forced to pay a heavy tax to preserve their religion. Mosheh ben
Maimon, called Maimonides by Latin authors and known in the Arab world as Musa
Ibn Maymun, Moses son of Maimon, was born in Cordova in 1135. The Almohads, who
succeeded the Almoravids, took over Cordova in 1148 and destroyed the beautiful
synagogue that had been built there. Jews, like Christians, were forbidden to
practice their religion. The family of Maimonides fled into exile and wandered
from city to city in Spain and North Africa. Maimonides's father was a Rabbi
and a judge of the rabbinical court and he decided to establish his residence
for a time in Fez. He wrote an epistle encouraging the Jews to hold fast to
their faith and to practice taqiyya
(dissimulating their faith in periods of danger). The taqiyya is commonly practiced by minorities in Islam such as
Shīites and Sūfīs. The father of Maimonides comforted the Jews who were forced
to outwardly profess Islam by assuring them that their real faith was the genuine
belief concealed within their hearts. He urged the Jews to believe firmly that
God would not change Jewish revelation by abrogating the Torah in favor of the
Qurān. This latter idea will be developed by Maimonides in his Treatises. Eventually, the family was
unable to continue hiding in Fez and decided to journey to Palestine before
finally setting in Cairo, where there was a substantial Jewish population.
The Jewish
community in Cairo was divided into two groups: Karaites and Rabbanites.
Maimonides positioned himself on the side of the Rabbanite authorities by
maintaining Jewish Rabbinical tradition. He rejected the Karaite point of view
that everyone has the capacity to develop his own authoritative interpretation
of the Law. For Maimonides, the [p.14] point of view of the Karaites led
to a rejection of the notion of divine legislation which was the foundation of
Judaism. Maimonides refused to earn his living as a Rabbi and decided to learn
most probably medicine by reading Arabic translations of texts by Hippocrates,
Galen as well as Arabic works of Muhammad b. Zakariyyā al-Rāzī, Avenzoar (Ibn
Zuhr), and Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā). Later he was hired as a physician by the
Fātimid court. The Fātimid court also appreciated him for his knowledge of
Greek sciences and philosophy. When the Fātimids were overthrown in 1171,
Maimonides was retained as a physician under the ruler Salāh al-dīn (d. 1193).
During that
time Maimonides, influenced by Islamic philosophical tradition, decided to
consider the difficult problem of reconciling faith (īmān) and intellect (aql).
Previous Jewish authors such as Abraham Ibn Daud, Saadia Gaon and Samuel b.
Hophni preceded him in this attempt to understand how the Holy Scripture can be
interpreted in the light of the truths of science and reason. Uneducated
people, according to Maimonides, do not see any problem in the meaning of
Scripture, but to the more critical philosophical mind the Torah appears
problematic. Guidance could only be reached by going beyond the problematic
apparent (zāhir) meanings of the
Torah to its deeper (bātin)
significance. For Maimonides, philosophy and science became essential as a
means to develop a deeper understanding of divine Scripture. All these ideas
were integrated in his 1190 work
composed in Arabic and entitled Dalālat
al-Hārīn (Guide of the Perplexed). Maimonides was one of the greatest
Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages and the Guide is his most important philosophic work. Maimonides preferred
the Aristetolian interpretations given by al-Fārābī, Avempace (Ibn Bāja) and
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) to the more mystically oriented ones of Avicenna.
Philosophy, as
an organized discipline, traced its origins to Greek philosophical theory; this
understanding was relatively new in Judaism during Maimonides's time, for it
came from the Muslim initiatives in philosophy during the ninth century. The
growing interest of Muslims in Greek sciences such as medicine, astronomy,
mathematics, logic, and philosophy led to an extensive movement of translation
from Greek (often via Syriac into Arabic). Greek philosophy left a tangible
imprint on Islam and on all those who came in contact with Islamic
civilization. Two Muslims philosophers, al-Fārābī (d. 950) and Avicenna (d.
1037), undertook the task of integrating the philosophical tradition of Plato,
Aristotle, and Plotinus into their religious philosophy. Al-Fārābī developed
the theory of prophecy and of the function of the state which was adopted by
Maimonides. To Maimonides, it is evident that material wealth is not an end in
itself, but a means to study and contemplate divine creation. He argues that
the function of the state is to create the conditions of peace and security
enabling men and women to fulfil their human needs through the use of their
intellect, thus enabling them to come closer to God. Avicenna inspired
Maimonides to overcome metaphysical problems. Since worldly things are
contingent, they must ultimately be produced by a Being who is necessary
through Himself.
Even though
Maimonides based his theory of prophecy on many concepts inherited from
al-Fārābī, he used these ideas to consolidate his Jewish faith. He conceived
the Prophet as a statesman who brings the law to his people. This notion of the
Prophet-statesman is derived from the Republic
of Plato where the Philosopher-King administers the ideal state. Maimonides, in
[p. 15] his halakhik writings,
placed the Prophet Moses in a unique position. In his view, Moses had attained
the highest rank of humankind one which
could not ever be reached by anyone else. Every Prophet except Moses received
the divine revelation through an angel. Maimonides accepted al-Fārābī's
definition of prophecy as an emanation from God, which, through the Active
Intellect (al-Aql al-faāl) flows
first upon the rational Prophetic faculty before reaching the imaginative
faculty of the Prophet, who then transmits it to the people. According to
Maimonides, when Moses received the revelation, his imaginative faculty
remained untouched. The knowledge of Moses was absolute and unsurpassed by that
of any other Prophets. Moses overcame the interference of corporeality in the
acquisition of the divine truth. He, unlike all other Prophets, received his
revelation without an intermediary, while completely awake, without being
physically perturbed and whenever he so desired. Moses attained the highest
knowledge of God and thus surpassed the rest of mankind. Moses pierced all the
veils which separate man from God. No material obstacle stood in his way. Only
his pure intellect remained to receive the divine Truth.
In the second
chapter of the Guide of the Perplexed,
Maimonides explained that : nothing is similar to the call addressed to us by
Moses. For Maimonides, the purpose of the Law is both the welfare of the soul
as well as the body. The commandments are only intended for man to control the
impulses of matter. The Mosaic Law assimilates itself to nature, perfecting the
natural realm. The Law of Moses, full of wisdom, was considered by Maimonides
superior to all human laws, even to the laws revealed to other Prophets whose
apprehension of nature was only partial. The Law was meant to bring people to
their final perfection and to make them wiser. Only a being who belongs to both
worlds, the spiritual and the material, could have produced such a perfect Law.
According to Maimonides, in the history of mankind there was only one man who
reached such a level of perfection: it was Moses. Since no other man can
apprehend God more fully than Moses, the Mosaic Law is the most perfect and
cannot be abrogated. For Maimonides, Christianity and Islam, which preached a
new revelation, are more dangerous to Jewish faith than Hellenism. However,
Maimonides recognized the purely monotheistic nature of Islam and did not
classify Muslims as idolaters.
Maimonides
criticized the teachings of Islamic and Jewish theologians who were relying
mainly on their imagination rather than on reason and consequently were not
able to give satisfactory explanations of the existence, unity, and
incorporeality of God. As for the demonstration of the creation or the eternity
of the world, this is beyond human capacity.
Maimonides
integrated many Islamic philosophical concepts into his Jewish philosophy. He
was a controversial figure and his works were not universally welcomed nor
understood. His three most important works are: his commentary on the Mishnah (in Hebrew), the Mishneh Torah (in Arabic initially and
translated in Hebrew later) and the Guide
(in Arabic). The Mishneh Torah was
written for the common people, who do not see contradictions between philosophy
and religion; its aim was to explain how to live in accordance with the Jewish
Law. The Guide addressed itself to an
intellectual elite which was perplexed about religion; its aim was to bring
those belonging to it back to Judaism. The anthropomorphic terms of the Torah
have both a spiritual (bātin) and an
apparent (zāhir) meaning. Only the
spiritual meaning should be applied to God. The Mishneh Torah, which claimed to supersede the Talmud, replacing its
deliberations by a systematic code of Jewish law, was new and disturbing to
some orthodox Rabbis.
Maimonides had a decided impact on western philosophical thinking. Muslims, Jews, and Christians studied the Guide of the Perplexed in the Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew languages. But the work nourished debates between rationalists and anti-rationalists throughout the Middle Age. The Maimonidean controversy is at the heart of Jewish faith and simultaneously part of a set of problems common to Christianity and Islam alike. The great Christian theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, considered Maimonides a trustworthy guide who helped him to reconcile Christian faith with philosophy. For him, Maimonides pointed the way to a philosophical approach to religion which did not discard Scripture but he discovered in the Revelation some insightful guidance which might illuminate human intellect. Duns Scotus and Leibniz were inspired by Maimonides. Through Leibniz, Maimonides reached Kant. The Guide of the Perplexed affected Jewish thought even more deeply. Michael Friedländer listed more than forty commentaries, all written by Jews, except for the one by Leibniz and another written by a Muslim, al-Tabrīzī.
Bibliography
Bland, Kalman P. Moses and the
Law According to Maimonides, pp. 49-66 in Mystics,
Philosophers, and Politicians. Essays
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Jehuda Reinharz and Daniel Swetschinski. Durham (North Carolina): Duke
Univerity Press, 1982.
Maimonides, Moses. Dalālat al-Hāirīn (The Guide of the Perplexed).Translated
by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.
Maimonidean Controversy and
Maimonides, Moses in Encyclopaedia
Judaica, vol. 11 (1971): 745-781.
Readings in the Philosophy of Moses Maimonides. Selected and
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Viking Press, 1976.
Wolfson, Harry Austryn. Repercussions of the Kalām in Jewish
Philosophy. Cambridge (Massachusetts):
Harvard University Press, 1979.
Diana Steigerwald
Religious Studies, California State University (Long Beach)
[1] Readings
in the Philosophy of Moses Maimonides. Selected and translated with
introduction and Commentary by Lenn Evan Goodman. New York: The Viking Press,
1976, p. 410.