1) Short Answer (Question
1)
Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed is quite arguably one of the most intricate
and expansive philosophical works in all of the histories of the traditions
stemming from the Ancient Greek Philosophers and the Abrahamic religions of
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
While, Maimonides was a devout believer and a respected rabbi, he
realized that there existed deep divides between common or literal
interpretations of Hebrew Scripture and the logical necessities of philosophy
and science. However, Maimonides
also believed that comprehending the complex resolutions to these issues would
be beyond the vast majority of persons and their misreading of his text might
have dangerous implications for societal cohesion – and perhaps for Maimonides
himself! Hence, it was written
with the utmost care and deliberation by its author, so that he would not be
misunderstood by the ‘vulgar’ masses but would so guide a chosen few students
out of their perplexity and towards a far deeper understanding of the Divine.
Thus, Maimonides begins his work
carefully with a discussion on the corporeality of God and how it relates to
the creation of humankind in his image.
In the very first page of the first chapter of The Guide Maimonides makes it clear that true belief in God would
be inconsistent with believing in his corporeality. He writes, “Now with respect to that which ought to be said
in order to refute the doctrine of the corporeality of God and to establish His
real unit – which can have no true reality unless one disproves His
corporeality.” (Maimonides, 1.1, 21)
Maimonides arguments for why God must be non-corporeal are provided
throughout the rest of the three volumes of The
Guide, however it is absolutely critical for him to first establish the
premise that God has no material existence in order that he may then establish
what he truly thinks is meant by the scriptural dictum that humanity was
designed in the ‘image of God’.
If God is not a material being akin to some
sort of superhuman, then as Maimonides explains to us, we are only like him in
relation to humanity’s true form, which is the apprehension of the intellect. Hence,
the Divine must truly be a sort of rational intellect that apprehends itself
and the universe in the way that a human being is conscious of themselves and
their ability to think. Throughout
the rest of the Guide, Maimonides ventures to describe as much as can be
understood about this intellect, drawing on the ideas of many preceding thinkers
from both Ancient Greece and Islam, but he is chiefly driven by the
Aristotelian conception of an Active Intellect; which is the first cause or
prime mover of the Universe.
While there are many variations of the
idea of the Active Intellect that different thinkers have proposed, the general
concepts are quite similar; the Universe is in some way willfully emanated from
a rational, but non-corporeal entity whose will provides order to the whole of
the cosmos. This being would be
necessarily perfect but beyond complete comprehension by any lesser
intellects. Its absolute
perfection is not just the result, but in fact ‘is’ its essence as a purely
rational entity.
Thus, humanity could not have been
created in the physical image of this Deity or Cosmic Intellect. The only trait that a person could have
that would be at all comparable to this entity would be their intellect. The human intellect; its ability to
think rationally and to apprehend itself, is humanity’s sole perfection and why
we humans can be said to have been created in the image of God. As Maimonides’s reflects on this point,
“Now it is a thing to wondered at that man’s punishment for his disobedience
should consist in his being granted a perfection that he did not possess
before, namely, the intellect.”
2) Essay (Questions 4 & 6)
Maimonides
on God: God’s Being, God’s Unity, God’s Essence, God’s Ways
One
of Maimonides’s self-declared motivations for his writing of The Guide of the Perplexed was to draft
a philosophically and theologically cohesive cosmology through a synthesis of
the traditions stemming from both Aristotle’s Active Intellect and the
Abrahamic religious traditions. However, with Maimonides’s immediate discarding
of any corporeal divine being on the very first page of The Guide, it is clear that a cogent explanation of God will be far
more complex than of the simplistic doctrines for the ‘vulgar’ masses. For Maimonides’s to come to a proper
understanding of what he so fervently believed it was necessary delve into the
very nature of God’s being. These
topics revolve closely around the questions of God’s ‘quiddity’, or ‘thatness’,
and his ‘annity’, or ‘whatness’.
Achieving a clearer comprehension of how these terms apply to God’s
being is essential in beginning to answer any questions about God’s attributes
or actions, such as; his unity, ways, and free will. However, to reveal the full scope of the complexity of these
issues, Maimonides’s answers to these issues are drawn from the arguments for a
divine, rational entity of both Ancient Greek philosophers and the Islamic
Muktakallimun. The thinkers and
theories most central to these specific subjects are undoubtedly Avicenna with
his arguments from necessity and Aristotle with his arguments from the first
motion of the universe. Thus, the
questions surrounding God’s ‘thatness’ and ‘whatness’ are absolutely essential
to understanding Maimonides’s Neo-Platonic re-interpretation of the teachings
of the Torah.
In Chapter 1.59 of The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides summarizes about God’s
quiddity and annity that, “God… is existent of necessity and that there is no
composition in Him, as we shall demonstrate, and that we are only able to
apprehend the fact that He is and cannot apprehend His quiddity… For he has no
‘That’ outside of His ‘What’ and hence an attribute cannot be indicative of one
of the two.” (Maimonides, 1.59, 135)
To properly understand this quote, it is useful to gain a better
understanding of what is meant by quiddity, annity, and God’s being. Avicenna was also central in
Maimonides’s own development of these concepts. E.M. Macierowski’s analysis of Avicenna’s writings on God’s
quiddity in includes an in depth discussion of these terms. Quiddity is
the ‘essence’ of something, or what it is that makes up something;
‘whatness’. The essence of
physical creatures and objects is matter.
If God were to not have an essence, then he would be rendered completely
unknowable to humankind. Annity is
a slightly trickier notion of essence denoting the ‘thatness’ of a thing; what
makes something that particular thing.
Annity is the ‘being’ of a thing.
Avicenna tells us that God’s annity is that he is necessary for the
bringing of the universe into being.
Macierowski makes it clear
that he believes that according to Avicenna God did have a quiddity.[1] However, God’s quiddity is most
exceptionally unique in that it is the same as his annity. In this manner Avicenna pioneered the
argument that the essence of the First Intellect is that it is absolutely
necessary of existence; God is Being.
This critical distinction between God’s
quiddity and annity is at the very center of coming to a better understanding
of the Divine Intellect as Maimonides would depict it. It frames the entire discussion of what
one can even say to know about God’s nature or Divine attribute. Maimonides highlights this issue in
when he continues the discussion in Chapter 1.60. He makes the analogy, “An example is that of a man who has
heard the term elephant and knows that it is an animal and demands to know its
shape and true reality….” (Maimonides, 1.6, 146) Maimonides claims that it is
very well possible that another person may entirely misinform this ignoramus as
to the form of an elephant, and he may believe it. However, this does not mean that this poor fool knows a
single thing about elephants. As
Maimonides continues, “But I shall say that the thing that he has imagined as
having these attributes is merely an invention and is false and that there is
nothing in existence like that.” (Maimonides, 1.6, 146) This comparison provides simple
concrete imagery that makes the logic of Maimonides argument quite clear. Hence, in the same manner, no one can be
said to know anything about God’s annity, ‘thatness’; or what it is about the
Divine that makes it God? The
result of not knowing his annity is that no one can positively name any of God’s attributes, the only accurate way to
discuss Divine attributes is through negation; saying what God is not. This claim of Maimonides is certainly amongst the most
valuable conclusions in the entire of The
Guide of the Perplexed.
However,
while nothing further can be said of God’s annity, God’s quiddity, , is
according to Maimonides something that humanity can apprehend – if properly
educated and attuned – and is deeply dependant on the arguments for the
existence of a one singular God provided by prior thinkers who were critical in
the formation of Maimonides’s own beliefs. Avicenna’s argument from the existence of people, the
universe, and everything for the necessity of God’s own existence is certainly
one of the most important of these ideas.
Avicenna writes, “If we suppose something possible of existence to be
non-existent, no impossibility follows from that, so it cannot do without a
cause for its existence. And if it
does exist, it becomes necessary of existence by another thing.” (Avicenna,
1.2.1, 14) This highlights the
distinction that Avicenna makes between things that are necessary and things
that are possible. The universe is
possible of existence and is of necessity brought into existence by something
else which is necessary (God).
Things that are shown to be necessary, by virtue of something else, may
possibly exist by themselves.
Thus, Avicenna makes the case for God as a necessary existent of nature.
Avicenna’s
concept of necessity was not the only argument for God’s existence earnestly believed
by Maimonides, Aristotle’s theories on the origin of motion of universe. By postulating from what he deemed to
be readily apparent; that motion in the universe is continuous and eternal,
Aristotle claims that there must be one eternal cause of this motion. This cause would be necessarily
unmoving, because what is continuous must have a stable cause according to
Aristotle. More importantly, it
would necessarily have no other cause for its existence, because then that
would beg the question of what the cause of that entity was. Thus, Aristotle declares that there
must exist a ‘Prime Mover’ that was the source of motion in the Universe. Maimonides would use the works of later
thinkers to evolve this concept into his “First Intellect’ which was God. Aristotle summarizes the bulk of his
argument as such; “Motion must be continuous, because what is always is
continuous, whereas what is in succession is not continuous. But further, if motion is continuous,
it is one, and it is one only if the mover and the moved are each of them one,
since in the event of a thing’s being moved now by one thing and now by another
the whole motion will not be continuous but successive.” (Aristotle,
Bosley-Tweedale, 98)
While
Avicenna and Aristotle approached the issue of God’s existence from different
angles, the two of them need to be understood together in order to comprehend
what Maimonides’s has to say about the nature of the Divine. Avicenna’s arguments from necessity are
not easily apprehended and rely heavily on an understanding of the God’s
essence and being. Aristotle’s
discussion of the Prime Mover is more easily understood as merely identifying
that there must be a first cause to bring motion into the universe. The concept of necessity however
reveals perhaps more in the way of delving into the nature of God through its
discussion of God’s quiddity and annity.
Additionally, Avicenna’s ideas lead to the concept of an emanating
universe. Aristotle’s discussion
of the Prime Mover is usually considered to be closely linked with belief in an
eternal world. Maimonides’s own
position on the creation of the world is clearly against an eternal world
making emanation a much closer belief to his own. However, as in so many things in the history of ideas, it is
far from clear that the differences between the Aristotelian concepts of first
motion and eternity and the Neo-Platonized concepts of necessity and generation
are no more than a difference of terms, rather than meanings.
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