Maimonides codified Jewish law, shaped in the Middle Ages a large body of Jewish thought, and was a provocative philosopher, whose views on the relation of reason to revelation stirred controversy among his contemporaries and continues to do so today. His influence extended not only to Jewish theology and philosophy but to the philosophy of such diverse thinkers as Aquinas and Leibniz.
Born in Córdoba, Spain, in March or April 1135, Maimonides soon fled growing antiSemitic persecution, finally settling in North Africa. Maimonides briefly visited the Holy Land but spent much of his mature career in Fostat, the “Old City” of Cairo. Throughout his early struggles, Maimonides and his family depended on the income produced by his younger brother, a merchant. When the brother was lost at sea, Maimonides, seeking a living, turned to the practice of medicine, becoming physician to the Grand Vizier of Egypt. During this time, he wrote major works on Jewish law but refused payment for them on the grounds that the work was a sacred duty.
Maimonides also wrote on medicine and science. He produced Mishneh Torah, a stillinfluential codification of Jewish law, but his Guide for the Perplexed, written about 1190, in Arabic using the Hebrew alphabet, is his philosophical masterwork, a bold endeavor to reconcile Aristotelian rationality with rabbinical theology.
The first of the Guide’s three books begins with an argument against anthropomorphism in the conception of God. In support of his argument, Maimonides conducts an intensive hermeneutic analysis of Scripture to prove the incorporeality of God and, what is more, the philosophical concept that God cannot be described in any positive terms at all but only in negatives—what God is not.
Book Two opens with an essentially Aristotelian cosmology, which argues against Aristotle’s view that the universe is eternal but which appropriates Aristotle’s proofs of the existence of God, especially the concept of God as the Prime Mover. Maimonides goes on to associate natural forces and the heavenly spheres with the idea of angels as forms of pure intelligence.
Book Two includes a discussion of prophecy, which Maimonides defines in unorthodox terms as a vision interpreted through a prophet’s intellect. Maimonides holds that many aspects of prophesy are metaphors, as in the narratives of God speaking with a prophet. Moreover, he concludes that all prophesy, save that of Moses, is the product of natural law. He goes on to describe eleven hierarchical levels of prophecy, with that of Moses being beyond the highest and closest to God.
Book Three begins with an exegesis of the Chariot in Ezekiel. Maimonides explains the mystical elements of this material with reference to cosmology—the Spheres, the elements, and the Intelligences. This is followed by an analysis of the moral aspects of the universe, including the problem of evil, trials and tests (citing Job and the story of the binding of Isaac), and the topics of providence and omniscience.
Book III ends with the idea of achieving a perfect and harmonious life through the correct worship of God, which is attained when one correctly understands the rational philosophy that supports Judaism.
A measure of the Guide’s power as philosophy is the mixed reception it received and continues to receive, with some greeting it as a much-needed intellectual and spiritual triumph and others branding it as the vision of a heretic. The Guide was frequently banned and even burned. As Aristotelian thought has receded into historical perspective, Maimonides’ place as the archetypal Jewish philosopher has become secure and authoritative. It continues to be much studied, especially among the Orthodox. The philosopher’s death, on December 12, 1204, in Fostat, was widely mourned by Jews as well as Muslims, who respected him as physician and a thinker.
