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Dateline: Middle East
Volume 25 • Winter 2008
Published by The Student Coalition for a Just Peace in the Middle East

MAIMONIDES: RATIONALISM, NOT FUNDAMENTALISM
Eric Adler

Gaining experience involves gaining knowledge. This compounds information and may alter understanding.
Occasionally, inconsistent data force the re-evaluation of what has already come to be understood. This is basically how a new worldview develops. Conflict arises when new information seems incompatible with understanding and cannot be neatly assimilated.

Eight centuries ago, one of Judaism’s foremost philosophers, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Rambam, or Maimonides), recognised such a conflict. Progress in science and philosophy seemed to some to contradict the truth revealed in Torah, posing a problem for “a religious man who has been trained to believe in the truth of our holy Law… and at the same time has been successful in his philosophical studies.” This prompted him to compose The Guide for the Perplexed, effectively to marry two worldviews — the pursuit of academic truth, on the one hand, and Orthodox Jewish devotion, on the other. But how could differing worldviews both claim to describe the world as it truly exists?

Quite familiar with the Aristotelian philosophy, which endorsed rationalism and appealed to scholars at the time, Maimonides faced the challenge of reconciling the human capacity for reason with the Jewish faith in the sanctity and perfection of Torah. The result of his deliberations is the Guide’s critique of religious pedantry in favour of a more flexible method of reading Torah. He argues that a “literal interpretation of the Law” leads to
an inaccurate conception of God, and ceases to benefit a student who “instead of following his reason… would then be left with those errors which give rise to fear and anxiety”. In the Torah, God is literally anthropomorphised, represented with speech, limbs, and emotions. But Maimonides argues that these descriptions are best-case analogies to express God’s nature figuratively in language, since to ascribe such attributes to God would limit monotheism.

Maimonides held that the physical condition of the body affects the condition of the soul, and that only a well-nurtured soul can appreciate God. So he contends that Moses’ Law is designed to facilitate the cultivation of both body and soul. Maimonides treats Torah as a guide for the development of body and soul, though one which takes into account the varying cognitive abilities of its readers. Still, while some of Torah’s commandments clearly direct one to self-improvement, others “do not seem to have any influence upon the well-being of the soul by imparting any truth, or upon the well-being of the body by suggesting such ways and rules as are useful”.

Popular science and philosophy emphasised reason, the deliberative human ability to discover truth about the world, and Maimonides’ philosophy is no exception. The more one fosters intelligence and acquires knowledge, the better one understands the world and grasps the concept of God. Yet when confronting commandments
which some see as having no purpose and still others believe have a purpose known only to God, Maimonides offers a different explanation. He insists that their purpose, though obscure, is not unknown, for “all these and similar laws must have some bearing upon one of the following three things… the regulation of our opinions [well-being of the soul], or… the removal of injustice, and the teaching of good morals [well-being of the body].”

Rationalisation of Torah lends itself to compromise, facilitating the integration of new information, whereas fundamentalism adheres uncritically to literal interpretations and inherited wisdom. Fundamentalist worldviews will not erode to deliberation, and they will inevitably find it more difficult to cope with a conflicting worldview. The Guide aims to tame fundamentalism, while promoting a critical and morally responsible civilisation. The key to conflict resolution, in more general terms, is to find points of convergence between competing platforms in order to render them compatible, and a shrewd mediator could thus attempt to reconcile fundamental and moderate worldviews.

Regardless of one’s religious devotion, the essential lesson to draw from Maimonides is that the general religious and secular goals of civilisation are identical: the well-being of the body and the soul. Since Torah must be read critically, a wise reader will more readily discover the truth it reveals. Therefore, Maimonides
maintained that improving one’s faculty of reason is not only necessary for humankind, but a necessary condition for appreciating God, the appropriate aspiration for humankind.

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