The Language of Union in the Writings of Moses Maimonides and Moses Nachmanides

Chapter 6 The Language of Union in the Writings of Moses Maimonides and Moses Nachmanides

By the middle of the 12th century, Jewish thinkers were exposed to a philo- sophical trend deriving from Aristotelian philosophy, specifically to its later developments in the Arab world. This Neo-Aristotelian trend considered and presented itself as the authentic Aristotelian philosophy; it was highly criti- cal of both Islamic and Jewish Kalam theologies, as well as Neoplatonism. Moses Maimonides is the most important of the Neo-Aristotelian Jewish phi- losophers, using Aristotelian philosophy to develop and deepen a Jewish philo- sophical path yet at the same time articulating a systematic critique of Kalam and Neoplatonic Jewish theology; his writings, especially the Guide for the Perplexed, signifies the shift from Neoplatonic to Neo-Aristotelian influence on Jewish philosophy. Interestingly enough, Kabbalah and Jewish Neo-Aristotelian philosophy emerged around the same time, and shared a fundamental point of view: a deep systematic interest in the nature of God,1 and in the metaphysical realms that mediated between heaven and earth. In this worldview, the gulf between human and metaphysical realms, up to and including divinity itself, is crossable through conjunction and even union with the divine and/or with mediating sub-divine realms and beings. In the 13th century, Jewish philosophy shifted in emphasis towards a more Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle, signified by the central vocabulary and imagery of noetic union (knowledge as union) in this particular trend of thought. In the Jewish Averroistic worldview, the human agent can undergo changes through which his intellect can cleave with the metaphysical active intellect. This was the general atmosphere in which several schools of early Kabbalah first developed. The dominant philosophy in the period of time when Kabbalah emerged, the Neo-Aristotelian trend of Jewish philosophy saw the development of a Jewish vocabulary of both noetic union and spiritual cleaving. The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle as the dominant philosophy in Judaism (following and interpreting Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed) was a crucial engine for the development of radical types of mysticism in early

1 See Jonathan Dauber, Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012).

Kabbalah.2 This is especially evident in the ecstatic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia, who developed a combination of Averroistic-Jewish mysticism.3 In contrast to the Latin (that is, the Christian) world, 13th-century Jewish philosophy was willing not only to embrace the idea of a metaphysical ladder that exists between the human agent and the metaphysical realms, rising towards God, but also to allow the human to climb such a ladder all the way to its divine top. Several Kabbalists drew directly on this structure in develop- ing what we might call a Kabbalistic-Averroistic mystical system; others drew on different elements of this theory to explain mostly eschatological unitive states. Since religious life before and after death was considered a continuation process of “climbing” the metaphysical ladder towards God, the language of Neo-Aristotelian union was used to define specific stages on that ladder; for some it was possible to reach that stage of noetic union before death, yet for most it was possible only after the full departure from the material realm. Neo-Aristotelian union, which occurs through the clinging of the intellect (not the soul) to a divine or metaphysical intellect or thought, could be characterized as a form of “integrative union”. By uniting with the noetic metaphysical entity—that is, pure thought—the human mind undergoes a process of inte- gration into a universal entity.4 Philip Merlan has discussed Neo-Aristotelian union in contrast to Neoplatonic unio mystica, and suggests the following:

This union is, if we may say so, the Neo Aristotelian counterpart of the [Neoplatonic] Unio Mystica usually so called. In this union the individual is absorbed into the universal, i.e. the supra-personal, and this supra- personal is at the same time characterized as the divine5 [. . .] The God with whom we are united in ecstasy is not the God-above-thinking-and Being, but rather one who is thought-thinking-itself.6

Neo-Aristotelian union is characterized as “positive”,7 allowing the human- realized intellect to integrate into a metaphysical intellect, possibly God. In this setting, what begins as a conjunction or noetic attachment culminates

2 See: Yossef Swartz, “Magic, Philosophy and Kabbalah: The Mystical and Magical Interpretation of Maimonides in the Later Middle Ages”, DAAT: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah 64–66 (2009), 99–132 (Hebrew). 3 See: Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 4–5. 4 See the systematic discussion in Idel, “Universalization”. 5 Merlan, Monopsychism, 19–20. 6 Ibid., 21–22. 7 For the definition of a “positive” union see chapter 1.