Thinker

Maimonides quotes

7 passages in English · 1138–1204 · Jewish Rationalism.

Overview

Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), known as Maimonides or Rambam, fled Almohad persecution from Córdoba to Fez and finally to Egypt, where he served as a communal leader and court physician. He codified Jewish law in the Mishneh Torah and wrote the Guide of the Perplexed for readers torn between Torah and Aristotelian science. His Eight Chapters adapt Greek virtue ethics to a Jewish frame.

Main ideas

God is known chiefly by negation: affirmative attributes risk corporealizing the divine. The Law aims at the welfare of body and soul; intellectual perfection measures nearness to God. Prophecy is an overflow through the Active Intellect to reason and imagination. Moral virtue is a mean between extremes, cultivated by habit under divine commandment.

Major works

  • Guide of the Perplexed
  • Mishneh Torah
  • Eight Chapters
  • Commentary on the Mishnah

Legacy

He became the central medieval Jewish philosopher and influenced Latin scholastics including Aquinas. Later Jewish thought continually renegotiates his balance of reason and revelation; popular misattributions (such as Talmudic sayings) must be separated from his own texts.

Themes in this archive

God (2) · Truth (1) · Power (1) · Virtue (1) · Faith (1)

  1. Accept the truth from whatever source it comes.
  2. Silence and limiting oneself to the apprehensions of the intellect are more appropriate with regard to God than speech.
  3. The Law as a whole aims at two things: the welfare of the soul and the welfare of the body.
  4. The more the intellect is perfected, the more one draws near to God; proximity is measured by knowledge.
  5. The virtues are means between two extremes; the good character is the mean disposition.
  6. The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all sciences is to know that there is a First Being who brought every existing thing into being.
  7. Prophecy is an overflow from God through the intermediation of the Active Intellect, first to the rational faculty and then to the imaginative faculty.