Maimonides Mini-Course
The year 2004 is the 800th anniversary of the death of Maimonides, lovingly known as the Rambam, an acronym for Rabbi Moses ben Maimon-- known in Arabic as Musa bin Maimun. My colleague Idit Dobbs-Weinstein and I will be hosting a special conference here at Vanderbilt November 14-15, 2004 on Maimonides and his Milieu. David Novak, Alfred Ivry, Menachem Kellner and others including new local talents, Professors Richard McGregor and Martina Urban, will be joining us in presenting scholarly and philosophical papers on the content, backgrounds and impact of Maimonides' thought. Both Idit and I will be taking part as well in other conferences scheduled around the scholarly world to celebrate Maimonides' achievement. Watch the Vanderbilt Philosophy and Jewish Studies websites for details of the Nashville event.
Maimonides (1138 - 1204) was among the greatest of Jewish philosophers. He was also a physician, the author of ten medical works. And he was a jurist, commentator on the ancient Jewish legal code the Mishnah, collator of the 613 commandments traditionally numbered in the Torah, and author of the authoritative Mishneh Torah, a comprehensive code of Jewish law still cited and closely studied today for its brilliant conspectus of the entire range of biblical and rabbinic law, the Halakha. Most famous of Maimonides' philosophic works is the Guide to the Perplexed. Where Maimonides legal code was written in Hebrew, making it accessible to learned and literate Jews throughout the world, the Guide was written in Arabic, the same language in which Maimonides read the translated works of the Greek philosophers, scientists and physicians, and the same as that of the Islamic and Jewish philosophers whom he studied and whom he warmly and openly acknowledged. The aim of the Guide is to make sense of the ideas of the Torah in the light of the very different assumptions of that Greco-Arabic philosophical tradition.
The two great problems addressed by the Guide are given rabbinic names by Maimonides. He calls them Ma'aseh Bereshit, the account of creation, and Ma'aseh Merkavah, the account of the Chariot. In these shorthand allusions to the biblical narratives of Genesis and Ezekiel, Maimonides sweeps up the great issues of philosophical physics or cosmology and metaphysics or theology, as he explains. The issues: How can the incorporeal and timeless God create or govern a finite, physical world, or enter into any relationship at all with such a world and its creatures. How can finite human intelligence have any knowledge of God? In more general terms, how can the Infinite manifest Itself on a finite and determinate scale. The problem of evil, the index case of theophany (Ezekiel's troublingly graphic vision of the divine), the problem of specificity in the Law, are all special cases of this larger issue.
Maimonides opens the Guide with a discussion of another special case: the anthropomorphisms of biblical language: How is it that the prophets describe God in physical and emotive terms? As the Talmudic Rabbis remark: "Great is the boldness of the prophets who liken the Creator to the creature!" Maimonides does not, as some have supposed, try to prove that anthropomorphism is a bad idea. He takes it for granted that anthropomorphic descriptions can mislead, since both reason and tradition teach that God is infinitely above all limited conceptions. But if so, how can we understand the words of the prophets? That is the problem he seeks to address in the opening chapters of the Guide.
In the summer of 2003 I gave a mini-course on Maimonides, hosted by Congregation Sherith Israel, where I've been an active member since coming to Vanderbilt in 1994. The five lectures cover the chief elements of Maimonides' philosophical thought, as laid out in the The Guide to the Perplexed and in his ethical work, The Eight Chapters, a free standing component of his commentary on the Mishnah. The five lectures and the discussion that followed each one are accessible here on this site, as recorded by Eric Davis. There was an introductory lecture on Maimonides' life and times as well, but regrettably, that was not recorded. Perhaps at some future date, when I lecture on that topic again, this site will be supplemented with that introduction.
Meanwhile, I have a word of advice for listeners. Maimonides' thinking is a model of clarity. Indeed, that got his legal code in trouble with halakhists who worried that it was too clear and explicit, diverting minds from a lifetime of study and debate with its direct and straightforward answers to halakhic questions. But Maimonides' philosophic work suffered almost exactly the opposite fate. That was partly a result of his distinctive mode of exposition. For it was never the Rambam's intention to make problems for those who did not have them. So he followed a Talmudic hint that one who discusses Ma'aseh Merkavah and Ma'aseh Bereshit should use a bit of indirection. When a problem is addressed, only the outlines of an answer should be suggested. Those who have labored with that problem will immediately see how to deal with it, but those who see few difficulties in theology or none at all will be left untroubled. The outcome, in the 20th century was that the Guide, in some quarters at least, was labeled obscure, intentionally ambiguous, hermetic, a book sealed with seven seals.
That adds to the drama but not to the resolution of the problems that the Rambam wanted to help his perplexed reader to surmount. I believe the obscurity has been heavily overpainted, discouraging even learned scholars from tackling the Guide, and profiting from it. The situation was not helped by the publication of intentionally over-literal translations that darken the sense of Maimonides' luminous, explicit, and sometimes humorous Arabic. Nor is the situation helped by those who imagine that Maimonides' text bears a secret (and skeptical) message that bears a striking resemblance to their own assumptions.
I have translated and commented on much of the Guide and the Eight Chapters in my book, Rambam: Readings in the Philosophy of Moses Maimonides. This is available for purchase from Gee Tee Bee in Los Angeles. There is also a study guide (entirely in question form and keyed to the book). This little guide to the guide was something I prepared years ago at the request of B'nai B'rith. I'd be glad to mail you a copy of the study guide (while they last) if you write to me at Vanderbilt.
I'm putting my lectures on this site as part of the international celebrations of the 800th Maimonides' yahrzeit. The lectures, like the book and the study guide, are copyright material. But (as with the biblical laws that allow passers by to take fruit from an orchard, but not in a container!) you are free, under the fair use provisions of the copyright law, to download the lectures for your personal use, and listen to them on line, at home, or in your car. You may not sell them or license them for sale in any form, written or electronic.
Enjoy!
Lenn E. Goodman, Professor of Philosophy
Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities
Rambam, Part 1: The Language of Man
Rambam, Part 2: The Act of Creation
Rambam, Part 3: The Works of Man
Rambam, Part 4: The Account of the Chariot
Rambam, Part 5: The Words of the Living God
The lectures are encoded in CD-qualty MP3 format.
Since each lecture is approximately 50 megabytes, we recommend a high-speed internet connection for download.
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