’ GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed is a multi-layered and complex text which includes discussions of key issues for mediaeval , such as whether the world is created or exists eternally, and the possibility and nature of prophecy, miracles and divine providence. By using a contemporary philosophical approach, this study examines the doctrines of Maimonides’ Guide from the perspective of an enquiry into the question of whether or not an isolate, as epitomised in ’s allegory, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, could achieve salvation with no access at all to the doctrines of revealed . The early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein – a not normally cited in the context of studies of Maimonides – shows that both thinkers were pessimistic about the possibility of genuine metaphysical knowledge being obtained by human beings, and advocated silence in the face of that which could not be truly known. However, Wittgenstein also believed that indirect communication of the unknowable was possible and that some things could be ‘shown’ but not ‘said’, being communicable in an indirect manner but not amenable to direct articulation. It is claimed here that Maimonides’ theory of religious language has implicit within it an element which is similar to Wittgenstein’s, and that the similarity is sufficient to justify the adoption of a Wittgensteinian perspective, not only to assist in the search for a doctrine of non-revelatory salvation in the Guide, but also to indicate the likely limitations of such a doctrine. Maimonides’Guide for the Perplexed: Silence and Salvation will be of interest, and accessible, to undergraduates interested in mediaeval thought in general, and that of Maimonides in particular, who wish to explore an issue which is perennially important in religious and philosophical thought.

Donald McCallum received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Manchester. His research interests are in the areas of mediaeval philosophy, especially in the Jewish tradition, Spinoza and Schopenhauer. JEWISH STUDIES SERIES Series Editor: Oliver Leaman University of Kentucky

Studies, which are interpreted to cover the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, culture, politics, philosophy, theology, religion, as they relate to Jewish affairs. The remit includes texts which have as their primary focus issues, ideas, personalities and events of relevance of Jews, Jewish life and the concepts which have characterised Jewish culture both in the past and today. The series is interested in receiving appropriate scripts or proposals.

MEDIEVAL JEWISH JUDAISM, PHILOSOPHY, PHILOSOPHY CULTURE An introduction Selected studies by Dan Cohn-Sherbok E. I. J. Rosenthal Erwin Rosenthal FACING THE OTHER The ethics of Emmanuel Levinas PHILOSOPHY OF Edited by Seán Hand THE TALMUD Hyam Maccoby MOSES MAIMONIDES Oliver Leaman FROM SYNAGOGUE TO CHURCH: THE A USER’S GUIDE TO FRANZ TRADITIONAL DESIGN ROSENZWEIG’S STAR OF Its beginning, its definition, REDEMPTION its end Norbert M. Samuelson John Wilkinson

ON LIBERTY HIDDEN PHILOSOPHY OF Jewish philosophical perspectives Edited by Daniel H. Frank Margaret Betz Hull

REFERRING TO GOD DECONSTRUCTING THE BIBLE Jewish and Christian philosophical Abraham ibn Ezra’s introduction and theological perspectives to the Torah Edited by Paul Helm Irene Lancaster IMAGE OF THE BLACK IN HEBREW LANGUAGE JEWISH CULTURE AND JEWISH A history of the other THOUGHT Abraham Melamed David Patterson

FROM FALASHAS TO CONTEMPORARY JEWISH ETHIOPIAN JEWS PHILOSOPHY Daniel Summerfield An introduction Irene Kajon PHILOSOPHY IN A TIME OF CRISIS ANTISEMITISM AND Don Isaac Abravanel: MODERNITY defender of the faith Innovation and continuity Seymour Feldman Hyam Maccoby

JEWS, AND JEWS AND INDIA MASS MEDIA History, image, Mediating the ‘other’ Edited by Tudor Parfitt Yulia Egorova with Yulia Egorova JEWISH MYSTICISM JEWS OF ETHIOPIA AND MAGIC The birth of an elite An anthropological Edited by Emanuela Trevisan Semi perspective and Tudor Parfitt Maureen Bloom

ART IN ZION MAIMONIDES’ GUIDE The genesis of national art FOR THE PERPLEXED in Jewish Palestine Silence and salvation Dalia Manor Donald McCallum This page intentionally left blank MAIMONIDES’ GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

Silence and salvation

Donald McCallum

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2007 Donald McCallum Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn All reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN10: 0–415–42111–X (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–96195–1 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–42111–9 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–96195–7 (ebk) FOR VAL, ALICE AND BETTY This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS

Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii

1 Enframing 1

2 and Oliver Leaman on how to read the Guide 12

3 What we can say about God: the philosophical theology of the Guide 30

4 What we can say about creation: Marvin Fox on how to read the Guide 53

5 Using Wittgenstein’s Tractatus to approach the Guide 72

6 A reconstruction of the soteriology of the Guide 86

7 A reconstruction of the soteriology of the Guide: some further details 109

8 Showing that which cannot be said: in Tolstoy and in the Torah 122

Notes 147 Bibliography 176 Index 181

ix This page intentionally left blank PREFACE

The aim of this book is to establish whether or not there is a non-revelatory doctrine of salvation from death contained within Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. The question will be contextualised by locating it against the backdrop of Ibn Tufail’s allegory, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, which shows how an isolated human being achieves salvation with no access at all to the doctrines of revealed religion, using only his and his . As with so many questions which arise from Maimonides’ text, establishing a naturalistic soteriology within it is not as straightforward as one might wish. The methodology adopted will be to show via a close reading of the Guide that his deep pessimism about the possibility of knowledge accessible to human beings concerning God and his creation notwithstanding, he simultaneously put forward a positive doctrine of salvation. In this doctrine, human beings, as created hylo- morphic beings with the concomitant ontological status of all such creatures, can survive death by perfecting their intellects to such an extent that at the point of death they leave behind, and become independent of, the matter which has hitherto individuated them, and survive death by conjoining with the Active Intellect – a metaphysical entity, the existence of which underpins all intellectual activity in the sublunary realm. This immortality is admittedly non-personal and non-, but it is, for Maimonides, true salvation, being synonymous with liberation from the trammels of matter – matter being the source of evil and of corruption in general, although as divinely created is not evil in itself. Thus the Guide contains both a philosophical theology, which is deeply sceptical about the possibility of demonstrative knowledge in the realms of both metaphysics and physics, with silence being the ultimate counsel of wisdom for those who seek God, and a soteriology which is based entirely on noesis. A further dimension is added to the study by the suggestion, and subsequent utilisation, of a parallel between some aspects of the Guide, and analogous aspects of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, with a benefit of this parallel being provided in the application of the distinction between saying and showing to Maimonides’ work. This parallel enables a final answer to be given to the question raised earlier. Throughout the book, the focus is very much on Maimonides the philosopher, rather than on Maimonides the Jewish theologian, codifier of post-Biblical legal

xi PREFACE codes, administrator and intellectual adviser and succour of his co-religionists; and to this end little reference is made either to his writings other than The Guide of the Perplexed or to influences on him which are external to the tradition of which post-dates Thales. To take this hermeneutic stance is not to prescind in a misleading and artificial manner from the ‘whole’ writer – rather it is a deliberate decision to focus on the philosophy clearly and explicitly contained in the text, and to read the Guide in the tradition of which, for example, ’s Metaphysics, Descartes’ Meditations and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason are classic examples. Certainly this entails that much of the material contained within the Guide, such as the implications of some of his comments for rabbinic debates, is set aside, but with a text as wide-ranging and rich as the Guide, one cannot have everything. There are treatments of philosophical topics in the Guide an appreciation of which does not require a grounding in rabbinic thought, any more than an appreciation of Descartes’ Meditations requires knowl- edge of Jesuit Catholicism, or an appreciation of Kant’s first Critique requires knowledge of Pietism, and it is with these topics that this book is predominantly concerned, although the textual support for the various arguments raised will be drawn from all parts of the Guide where relevant evidence is available. This is unavoidable given the fact that the treatment of some topics in it is scattered throughout it rather than neatly and conveniently located in a single place. Ultimately the proof of this particular pudding must be in the eating, and this procedure must be self-justifying, with the self-justification succeeding if the overall book presents a sensible, useful and coherent account of Maimonides’ text.

xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks are due to a number of people, all of whom have provided supportive and helpful comments on this book, mostly in its previous incarnation as a doctoral dissertation. At the University of Manchester, Professor Alexander Samely of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Mr Harry Lesser of the Department of Philosophy made detailed comments upon the text at various stages in its life, which saved me from making a number of embarrassing errors as well as providing much appreciated encouragement. Also at the University of Manchester, Professor Philip Alexander of the Department of and Theology, who, as my PhD supervisor, was involved with the project from the beginning, provided invaluable guidance and support. In connection with the form which the text finally took, I am especially grateful for his suggestion that I make the Wittgensteinian angle more explicit than was my original intention. I owe a debt of a different type to Professor Oliver Leaman of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky. Not only did he encourage both my initial enquiry about completing a PhD on Maimonides and my subsequent pro- posal to turn the completed dissertation into a book, but it is directly due to his writings in the area of mediaeval Jewish and that I first engaged in any serious way with Maimonides and other philosophers in this area of thought. It is no exaggeration to state that without his unstinting encourage- ment and advice, and without the benefit of his own publications, it is likely that neither the PhD nor my own book would have come into being. Excerpts from The Guide of the Perplexed, by Moses Maimonides, trans. S. Pines, © 1963 by the University of Chicago Press, are reproduced by permission of the University of Chicago Press. Excerpts from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, © 1961 by Routledge and Kegan Paul, are reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.

xiii This page intentionally left blank 1 ENFRAMING

I In the introduction to his translation of ’ The Incoherence of the Incoherence, Simon Van Den Bergh describes the deep emotional difference between Averroes and Al-Ghazali as being, in part, that between a thinker who conceives of God as a ‘dehumanized principle’ and one who regards God as ‘the Pity behind the clouds’.1 This is indeed a deep difference. Van Den Bergh explains how despite the fact that Averroes is unwilling to go as far as Aristotle in regarding man as a mortal God due to his intellectual capacity, Averroes’ faith in reason ‘remains unshaken’.2 This faith is something which Averroes shares with his fellow Andalusian, Moses Maimonides, whose The Guide of the Perplexed can be read as providing assistance to those of his fellow Jews who had the necessary intellectual and moral training, to enable them to recon- cile the fundamental tenets of their faith as laid down in the Bible and post- Biblical sacred texts with Aristotelian philosophy, at least as interpreted by Aristotle’s Arabic exegetes. Maimonides’ Aristotelianism differs from Averroes’ insofar as the former’s is heavily imbued with the Neo-Platonic interpretations of Alfarabi and , whereas Averroes was keen to return to what he regarded as a pure Aristotelianism purged of any Neo-Platonic accretions. Maimonides and Averroes also share the dubious distinction of having been accused of heresy in their own lifetimes by their respective co-religionists due to the results of their application of independent reasoning to the sacred texts of their respective religions, and linked with this, they shared what can fairly be described as an intellectual elitism, due to their view that the aforementioned texts are aimed predominantly at the unlettered masses, and aim to communicate basic religious truths in a picturesque fashion which appeals primarily to the imagination of ordinary people. As Maimonides puts it, in a rabbinic phrase which he character- istically appropriates for his own purposes, ‘The Torah speaketh in the language of the sons of man’.3 The philosophers, on the other hand, form an elite cadre who can grasp these truths conceptually by the appropriate exercise of rational thought, without any imagination-dependent adulteration.4 Furthermore, philosophers and non-philosophers, for both these thinkers, form mutually exclusive groups.

1 ENFRAMING

Generally speaking, one can either be a philosopher, and thereby a member of a small and intellectually privileged minority, or a member of the uneducated bulk of the populace which forms the majority of humankind.5 The provision of these sacred texts is interpreted by the philosophers as a divine concession to the weakness of the intellect in most people, which enables them to live in accordance with God’s will for them, and in a can be regarded as an act of ‘Pity’, which ensures that no human being is left without essential guidance in the important issue of how one should live one’s life. Correct behaviour towards one’s fellow citizens and in one’s own private conduct is thereby fostered without any knowledge being required of the philosophical truths underlying this behaviour. These truths can be directly grasped by those whose rational powers are sufficiently developed. However, for those who are not so equipped, help and guidance is available from a different source – one which is external to the individual, and which is presented as a given rather than requir- ing acts of intensive abstract cognition. It can be seen here that there is a sense in which the provision of religious texts acts as a bridge between Averroes and Al-Ghazali with respect to the above-mentioned gulf which separates them. For those who have sufficient intellectual capability and who have the appropriate educational background, which according to Maimonides, at least, requires as a minimum training study in logic, mathematics, the natural sciences and, finally, in metaphysics,6 as well as a highly developed moral character, reason will provide the maximum illumination possible to the unaided human intellect of the first principles underlying the universe, and, by extension, mankind’s place within it. However, for those who have neither the time nor the aptitude7 for philosophical studies, revelation will provide, at least for all practical purposes, knowledge which is missing – knowledge which is essential and without which a human life cannot be properly lived.8 This revelation is a gift from God, and as a bare minimum com- prises the Koran, for Averroes, and the Torah, for Maimonides. The universe may be underpinned and permeated by reason, but there is a different route to the truth and to salvation from the dilemma of how human life should be lived, and this route has been provided as a result of God’s mercy towards human beings. Philosophers in the Middle Ages were, as a general rule, proud of man’s capacity for rational thought, and for them, man is a created being of the genus ‘animal’ whose differ- entia is ‘rationality’.9 Nevertheless, they had an acute awareness of how few people were actually able to make the fullest possible use of this faculty, and while this awareness led to a radical intellectual elitism, which sometimes sits uncomfortably with us in the twenty-first century, it also led to a toleration of religious texts, which they regarded as compensating, to a limited extent, for the less than fully developed state of the intellectual faculty in most people. Ideally, one learns of God’s existence, unity and incorporeality through the unaided use of reason, as indeed one learns how to behave towards one’s fellow creatures, but for those who cannot do this, for whatever reason, religious texts such as the Koran and the Torah perform this function, and steer those of weaker intellectual power away from inadvertent heresy or idolatry, or from inappropriate behaviour towards others.

2 ENFRAMING

Although Maimonides was a devout Jew he was steeped philosophically, in terms of style, methodology and content, in a milieu that was very much Islamic,10 and indeed the post-Aristotelian thinkers most often named or referred to in The Guide of the Perplexed are generally Islamic.11 Like all those thinkers, he lived in a community of his co-religionists, and had been educated from childhood in the customs, mores and texts proper to his particular faith, although unlike the others he ran a considerable risk for a large part of his childhood and early adulthood by practising his religion openly.12 Indeed, not only did Maimonides not grow up in a religious vacuum, he was steeped in the faith of his ancestors, and the overwhelming majority of his literary output was devoted to the clarification and codification of post-Biblical Jewish sacred texts and the religious law contained therein. Despite his view that in a sense these texts have a socio-political function, and that they are provided as a supplement to the use of unaided reason, he did not thereby automatically reject them as unnecessary for those whose intellectual faculty was sufficiently well developed.13 For example, in Part III of The Guide of the Perplexed he devotes a considerable amount of space to establishing rational grounds for as many of the injunctions contained in the Mosaic Law as he can.14 He splits them into (a) those commandments whose rationale is as obviously relevant at the time he was writing The Guide of the Perplexed as it was in Moses’ day, such as the prohibitions on murder or theft and (b) those commandments whose rationale can only be explained by reference to relevant historical condi- tions pertaining at the time of their enactment – conditions which no longer obtain, such as much of the legislation regarding sacrifices. However, he does not suggest that those injunctions described in (b) need no longer apply because the historical conditions which gave rise to them do not apply. On the contrary, in the Mishneh Torah he states that in the time of the Messiah ‘All the ancient laws will be reinstituted in his days; sacrifices will again be offered’.15 Not only is he sympathetic to the purpose of religious texts, despite regarding them as a less effective tool for grasping truth than unaided reason, which in his day was to a large extent co-extensive with the philosophy of Aristotle, but he also appears to be unwilling for the philosopher, who, almost by definition, has a highly devel- oped ratiocinative faculty, to be allowed to abstain from adherence to religious law in all its detail. This is certainly seen from the events of his own life. Despite his wide-ranging and eclectic grasp of the philosophy of his contemporaries and of his predecessors, regardless of their cultural origin, he remained right to the end of his life a devout Jew, the majority of whose literary output was, as stated earlier, devoted to the clarification and codification of post-Biblical Jewish sacred texts. Whatever philosophical insight he personally achieved, he main- tained a lifelong devotion to the faith of his fathers and a full adherence to the requirements of Jewish religious law.16 One implication of the above seems to be that not only in his theory, but also in his practice, Maimonides regards religion and religious texts as having intrinsic value of some description, and does not view them as being merely of socio- political utility,17 although their protreptic role is an important part of their

3 ENFRAMING significance in human life. Now even a cursory glance at The Guide of the Perplexed will reveal that some of the key doctrines contained therein appear at first glance to be difficult to reconcile with the Bible, at least as traditionally interpreted. Most of the first half of Book I is devoted to an examination of certain Biblical terms which, if interpreted literally, would connote corporeality in God, such as those whose primary signification is of bodily organs or sensory powers. Maimonides reinterprets the terms in question to remove the possibility of attributing corporeality to the deity. He believes that not only is it essential to reinterpret such terms to ensure that the ascription of corporeality to God, which demonstrative reason (in the Aristotelian sense) has conclusively shown to be improper, is avoided at all costs, but also that such ascriptions are to be viewed as worse than idolatry.18 His willingness to perform such reinterpretations is a key methodological principle of the Guide. Once demonstrative reason has indicated that a given proposition must be true – in this case, the proposition that ascrip- tions of corporeality are not to be made with respect to God – then all other propositions which appear, on a literal reading, to clash with this first proposition, such as the attribution to God of bodily parts or organs, must be interpreted in a non-literal way. This principle applies even when the set of propositions to be reinterpreted is found in sacred texts,19 and is relatively unproblematic, given a certain view of the power of human reason, at least when this is used properly.20 What is potentially much more problematic for traditional religious faith is the uncompromising apophatic theology put forward in Book I of the Guide, which severely circumscribes what can be said about God in ordinary language. Put as simply as possible,21 attributes to be ascribed to God must be either essential or accidental. Essential attributes must be entirely negative in content, inasmuch as they can only be used to state what God is not, and accidental attributes can only be used to describe effects of God’s actions. Neither type of attribute expresses positive knowledge of His essence. If this doctrine is followed with rigour, as Maimonides appears to intend, the conception of the deity that emerges is so austere and distant that it is hard to reconcile with the traditional God of the Bible – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who created the universe from free choice, and who cares for His creation, in particular for the human element of this creation, and who while capable of inspiring love, awe and fear, communicates with His creation. This traditional God also is not only aware of the needs of human beings, but is responsive to pleas for help, and indeed welcomes and expects human supplications and expressions of love and thanks. We now have, on the one hand, a philosophical conception of the deity, inspired by Aristotelian logic, physics and metaphysics, and presented by Maimonides in the Guide – one in which God appears to be supremely and essentially unknow- able, at least to mankind, as He is in Himself, as opposed to how He manifests Himself in the universe. On the other hand, we have the traditional God of Judaism, as described earlier, who, although undoubtedly the Supreme Being and creator of all that is, is apparently more accessible and open to human cognition, and is more evidently at work in the world. Nevertheless, in an important sense,

4 ENFRAMING the tension is not so much between two conflicting conceptions of God, as is the case with the contrast between Averroes’ and Al-Ghazali’s accounts of the deity, as between two conflicting accounts of what ordinary language can say about God and His activities in the world. After all, even if we accept Maimonides’ negative theology in its full rigour, we are not thereby logically compelled to accept, for example, that God did not create the universe or does not exercise providential care for the beings that He has created, or even that he does not communicate with human beings via the medium of prophecy. What we would be compelled to accept is that we cannot discuss the quiddity of God, or why and how He does what He does. God’s essence completely transcends not only human intellectual powers but also human language, and our statements about His actions are really being made by our drawing analogies with our own actions. The conflict between Averroes and Al-Ghazali is one between a conception of God as the eternally existing and eternally acting Prime Mover, who did not create the universe by voluntarily acting but who necessarily and eternally underpins its continuing exis- tence by the consequences of His essence, and who is unaware of the existence of anything other than the purest, most abstract thought, and a conception of God which is in most important respects similar to that of the Torah. On his own principles, Maimonides is able to put forward a conception of God which shares many of the features of that of Al-Ghazali, insofar as he can defend the creation of the universe in time, the validity of prophetic revelation, and the existence of divine providence, but what he cannot do is to discuss God in the ordinary language used in the Torah, which is carefully crafted to meet human intellectual and linguistic limitations.22 Ultimately, the apophatic theology of The Guide of the Perplexed, if followed consistently to its logical conclusion, forces us to acknowledge that the purest worship of which human beings are capable, once all undesirable anthropomorphic accretions have been expunged, is a silent, numinous contemplation of God. Maimonides is quite explicit about this.23 Human language is a poor tool for expressing the highest truths available to the unaided human intellect, and they cannot be adequately represented in such a medium, which can only confine itself to conveying them in a pictorial, and thus easily envisaged, manner to the unlettered masses, who rely much more on the faculty of imagination than they do on the intellect. The philosopher can grasp these truths conceptually, without using the imagination but simply by applying the intellect, assuming that his or her 24 intellect has been adequately prepared, and from a purely epistemic point of view would appear not to require religious texts. Nevertheless as stated earlier, the philosopher is not given any dispensation to refrain, for example, from adherence to religious law, even where the law in question relates to ceremonies of worship, thanksgiving or supplication. There appear from The Guide of the Perplexed to be two main for this. First of all, religion and the collective opinions which it fosters, and the behaviours which it engenders, are a force for social cohesion and political stability, but over and above this there is another, no less important, reason, which is rather less instrumental. The practical demands on the time of the philosopher are distractions from metaphysical

5 ENFRAMING thought, but cannot be entirely evaded. Worldly affairs place intellectual demands on people, which may involuntarily intrude even into times set apart for quiet reflection. Reading sacred texts, reciting prayers and performing other prescribed religious activities, may help to focus the mind on God and away from more mundane matters.25

II This view of the twofold function of religion as a vehicle for socio-political stability and as an aid to facilitate the focus of thought on the divine, and, furthermore, a vehicle which is apparently as essential for the practised - sopher qua member of his or her community as for all the other non-philosophising members of the same community, automatically raises the question of how essen- tial revealed religion is for a philosopher who lives in isolation. That is, for a philosopher who either does not participate in the life of the community in which he or she lives,26 or in a more extreme case, who lives completely independently of any community, both economically and geographically. The most extreme example of isolation, and one which transcends the economic and geographic isolation of Defoe’s shipwrecked sailor, , is that of Ibn Tufail’s eponymous hero whose life is described in Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. Ibn Tufail’s allegory tells the life story of a man – Hayy Ibn Yaqzan – who from babyhood until middle age lives a life of total isolation on an island devoid of any other human beings, and who consequentially is unaware that such exist. Living as he does completely cut off from the rest of mankind, Hayy has no language of his own, and no access to any knowledge other than that with which his sense and his intellect provide him. Blessed with an acute and enquiring mind, his life story as related by Ibn Tufail is an allegory of a spiritual journey towards God, which commences with the first stirrings of interest in the corporeal world of which he is a part, and which charts his progress through to grasping intellectually the metaphysical structure upon which the sublunary world and the superlunary realm are founded, and finally, to acquiring the ability to contemplate his creator through prolonged and intensive meditation. Having reached this latter stage in his journey, he remains meditating in the cave in which he dwells unless he is forced to interrupt his contemplation by his physical needs, and at this point in his life, when he is approximately 50 years of age, for the first time he meets another human being – a man named Asâl, who is a devout resident of a neighbouring island who has come to Hayy’s island seeking solitude, and is unaware of the latter’s presence. The meeting between Asâl and Hayy, and their subsequent friendship introduces Hayy for the first time to language, the doctrines of revealed religion, and the ways of mankind in general, and he eventually visits Asâl’s island. Hayy tries to present to the islanders the abstract spiritual truths that he has discovered, and to persuade them to put aside their crude religious parables, which lead to errors such as ascribing corporeality to God, but his teachings meet with such a hostile reception that he realises not only that the generality of mankind are incapable of

6 ENFRAMING digesting any other type of spiritual fare than these parables, but also that this parabolic material is what God in His infinite wisdom has provided for them as most suited to their appetites and intellectual abilities. At this point, both Hayy and Asâl return to Hayy’s island, where they remain worshipping God in their own manner until their deaths. Hayy’s isolation is more extreme than Crusoe’s, simply because as well as experiencing the two forms of isolation described earlier he is also culturally isolated, and furthermore, as culturally isolated as it is possible to imagine. Crusoe is shipwrecked as a mature man, not only with the mental cultural imprints which would have been normal for an Englishman of his age, era and socio-economic class,27 but in addition has the benefit of some Bibles and some prayer books,28 from which he is able to draw succour and guidance when the difficulties of life as a threaten to overwhelm him with despair. On the other hand, Hayy, depending on which version of his birth is allowed to prevail, is regarded as either cast ashore as a tiny baby on his island or spontaneously generated with divine assistance,29 is reared by a roe, and has no human contact of any description until Asâl appears on his island when Hayy is well into adult life.30 What intellectual progress he manages to achieve is entirely due to his use of his own unaided reason, and he has no religious background which may function, consciously or unconsciously, as a foundation and underpinning for his philosophical thought, which slowly and inexorably turns to God as he matures, both mentally and physically. Taking the scenario laid out in Ibn Tufail’s story as the apotheosis of human isolation, it can be seen that there is little, if any, role for religion to play in such a scenario. There is no community, the members of which need to have their opinions formed, and their behaviour towards each other guided by the prescriptions and proscriptions found in many sacred texts of revealed religion, so the socio-political instrumentality of religion is not required. Neither is religion required for the second purpose identified earlier – that of providing a focal point by the reading of sacred texts, and the performance of ritual prayers and other duties enshrined in religious law, to allow human beings to transfer their thoughts from the pressure of everyday concerns to reflection on God.31 Hayy undoubtedly has pressing concerns, if only pertaining to the difficulties of providing sus- tenance, clothing and shelter for himself, but there can be little real doubt that the nature of his existence away from other people would remove many of the complications and stresses that are so endemic in life in a community of any size. He does not have the feelings or wishes of any other of his species to take into account when exercising his practical reason; indeed, for a significant part of his life he is unaware that any other human beings exist. Certainly, in his everyday life as described by Ibn Tufail, there appears to be an abundance of time available to him for both physical activity and metaphysical reflection. So the question posed at the beginning of the previous paragraph – how essential is revealed religion for the philosophical understanding of the isolate? – can be refined now to focus on the ultimate isolate as represented by Hayy, rather on the merely political isolate – the virtuous man in the vicious city.32 Of course, in this context,

7 ENFRAMING

Ibn Tufail’s allegorical account of Hayy’s intellectual and spiritual development, which culminates in his eventual achievement of an intellect perfected to the maximum degree possible for a living human being, and subsequent salvation from death, is important mainly as a metaphor for the progress of human reason unaided by anything other than basic sense perception. This book is, after all, about Maimonides’ Guide and not Ibn Tufail’s text; the point is simply that through the eponymous Hayy we are provided with a figure who is an apotheosis of the isolate, and who is, therefore, perfect as a metaphorical exemplar for an exploration of what can be achieved as far as salvation from death is concerned by human ratiocination unassisted by revelation. Returning to Maimonides, at the very end of The Guide of the Perplexed he discusses human perfection, which he conceives as essentially intellectual in nature. In the course of doing so he puts forward a view which can be read as suggesting that in order to realise as fully as possible the ultimate perfection available to human beings, who qua living and created beings necessarily consist of matter and form, and whose perfection is correspondingly limited by the hylic element in their metaphysical constitution, any aspirant to this state would be well advised to isolate himself or herself as far as this is possible.33 To achieve this level of perfection is to achieve a state which prepares one, as far as possible, for the eventual dissolu- tion of the body, and the transcendence of the state of existence in which one is ‘screened off’, as Maimonides puts it,34 from God by this hylic element. Moses, Aaron and Miriam are described as having achieved this state immediately prior to their deaths, and as having ‘died by a kiss’.35 The following passage lets him speak for himself about what befalls an individual who dies in this manner.

[The Sages]...mention the occurrence of this kind of death, which in true reality is salvation from death, only with regard to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. The other prophets and excellent men are beneath this degree; but it holds good for all of them that the apprehension of their intellects becomes stronger at the separation.... After having reached this condition of enduring permanence, that intellect remains in one and the same state, the impediment that sometimes screened him off having been removed. And he will remain permanently in that state of intense pleasure, which does not belong to the genus of bodily pleasures....36

This is a considerable advance beyond the merely epistemological considerations mentioned earlier. What is at issue is not simply the possibility of acquiring meta- physical knowledge, but of actualising the potentiality for attaining what is explicitly referred to as ‘salvation from death’. It will become clearer later on37 that what Maimonides means by this phrase is a long way from the individual immortality as sometimes envisaged by, for instance, and Christianity, but that is not relevant at this stage. The epistemological issue has not been discarded, but given that in The Guide of the Perplexed salvation is inextricably linked to noesis, it has been subsumed and transcended by the soteriological one.

8 ENFRAMING

Although a full treatment of Maimonides’ soteriology will be given in later chapters, it is important to provide a brief justification at this early stage for the importation into the examination of a text by a Jewish philosopher of a notion which may be thought to be primarily, although not solely, a Christian concept. The notion of salvation extracted from the pages of the Guide, albeit with some assistance from Aristotle and Alfarabi, will be shown to be completely philo- sophical in character, and as such owing nothing whatsoever to the concepts presented in any revealed texts. Salvation, for Maimonides, will be shown to be a state of post-death existence whereby the individual incorporeal human intellect achieves conjunction with the Active Intellect38 at the point of death, and although the former loses its pre-death individuality at the point of conjunction, this is a fully acceptable consequence of the fact that at death the intellect sloughs off the hylic component of its metaphysical make-up which individuated it prior to death. Textual evidence will be adduced to show that Maimonides had an almost Platonic contempt for matter, and that salvation for him consists in the sempiternal transcendence of the grossly39 hylomorphic existence which is the lot of all sublunary creatures. This austere doctrine is clearly far removed from the more homely notions of salvation espoused by some versions of monotheism, whether these are conceived as primarily national or individual in nature, and the point here is that salvation in the Guide is philosophical rather than religious, and hence it matters little that it is a concept which perhaps traditionally has stronger Christian connotations than Jewish ones. Obviously, there is a strong incentive for creating the right preconditions to maximise the possibilty of one achieving this exalted state, at least as far as a given individual can hope to aspire to it, given the differing intellectual capacities and opportunities for development which people have. The question to be addressed now is whether on the basis of Maimonides’ philosophical theology Hayy – or, to be more precise, an isolate in a position comparable to that of Hayy – could attain the level of enlightenment which is described at the end of the Guide, or whether his complete separation from a community and an associated religious and cultural tradition would prevent him from reaching this goal. After all, the excellent man whom Maimonides advises to stay ‘frequently in solitude’ and not to meet anyone ‘unless it is necessary’40 is already a member of a particular tradition, in this case Judaism, and in that respect is more like Robinson Crusoe than Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, contemplating not in a vacuum, but within, and upon, that tradition. What is ultimately at stake here is the possibility of a salvation based on human efforts alone.41 This type of salvation would be completely independent of the Torah and purely philosophical inasmuch as it is based solely42 on ratiocina- tive thought unassisted by revelation as practised by Aristotle, for example, rather than on the teachings of Moses and the prophets.43 If human language is, as Maimonides appears to believe, a tool which can only convey the truths of pure, unaided reason in a somewhat inadequate way, and the explanatory force of which is centred on the imagination rather than the intellect, then perhaps the isolate44 is better placed to attain salvation by not having the opportunity to use such a tool,

9 ENFRAMING let alone the necessity imposed upon him or her to do so. On the other hand, perhaps the lack of a religious tradition based on divine revelation will result in a somewhat stark, architectonic conception of salvation – one which lacks the rich content of revealed religion, which in a sense ‘puts flesh on the bones’ of the philosophical conception of salvation. The approach to be taken in tackling this question will be by offering a reading of the Guide that views Maimonides’ text through the early philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and a subsidiary aim of this book will be show that on purely philo- sophical grounds such an approach is illuminating, at least as far as the question of the possibility of an entirely naturalistic soteriology is concerned. This reading will be underpinned by the fundamental awareness common to the authors of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and The Guide of the Perplexed that human language is an inherently inadequate tool for the work which it is called upon to perform by mankind. As will be made clear, Wittgenstein and Maimonides differ in their conceptions of what it is that lies beyond direct linguistic expression – for the Austrian, this is value in general, be it ethical, aesthetic or religious, whereas for the Andalusian, it is positive descriptions of God’s essence. However, what the philosophies of the Tractatus and the Guide have in common is more important than that which separates them, at least for present purposes, and this approach is intended to be self-justifying inasmuch as the rationale behind it is best revealed as it unfolds. Before this overarching question concerning the isolate can be addressed, however, there is one important element in it, the coherence of which needs to be justified. Reference was made two paragraphs ago to ‘Maimonides’ philosophical theology’. Unfortunately there is no consensus as to what Maimonides’ meta- physical views actually were. Indeed, it is probably reasonable to claim that in the history of Western philosophy there can be few, if any, thinkers whose actual views were so difficult to ascertain. This is not because he was not a clear writer – on the contrary, his prose is clear and lucid, containing few of the obscurities that plague, for example, much post-Kantian German philosophy. The difficulty lies not so much in what he says, as in why he says it,45 or whether he even means what he seems to say so clearly. This difficulty of interpretation has been largely fuelled by comments made in the Dedicatory Epistle and his Introduction to the first part of The Guide of the Perplexed, where he discusses his use of equivocal terms and other devices to hide certain secrets which must not be revealed to those readers of his book who are not properly prepared for their reception. He also claims that the diction of the book has been chosen with ‘great exactness and exceeding precision’,46 and that any contradictory or contrary statements in a book, and hence, by extension, in his book, are due to one of seven causes, which he then proceeds to enumerate.47 These comments have led to a plethora of conflicting interpretations of the Guide, all of which appear to receive textual support, not only in this book, but also in his other works. The existence, nature and extent of this welter of different views makes it practically mandatory that one begin any discussion of Maimonides’ work, in particular,

10 ENFRAMING

The Guide of the Perplexed, with an orientation of where one stands in respect to the various schools of thought into which these different views can, with greater or lesser degrees of difficulty, be placed. The next task therefore is to undertake this process of orientation, which, in this case, is intended to make clear what Maimonides’ philosophical theology is intended to denote. With this in mind then, the next chapter will locate the book in the context of the various hermeneutic positions taken by recent and contemporary commentators on the vexed question of how the Guide should be read, with the subsequent chapter extracting from the first book of this text the basic philosophical theology contained therein, which both permeates and underpins the entire text. The conclusions of both these chapters will be mutually integrated and refined in the fourth chapter, which completes the preliminary work of offering a basic interpretative position on the Guide which is conducive to dealing successfully with the question with which the book is primarily concerned. The fifth chapter will adduce for the first time the Wittgensteinian element, to build upon the basic position constructed in the previous four chapters, and is intended to provide a helpful perspective from which texts of revealed religion can be viewed to help ascertain their indis- pensability or otherwise for the salvation-seeking isolate. The sixth and seventh chapters are an essential excursus to attempt a reconstruction of Maimonides’ soteriology, with some assistance from Aristotle and Alfarabi, as the whole project of the book only makes sense if it can be shown that a doctrine of salvation is indeed contained within The Guide of the Perplexed. The eighth, and the final, chapter draws together the hermeneutic position, the Wittgensteinian aspect and the soteriology, and produces a final answer to the question under review. At this stage – at the end of only the first chapter – there is no point in offering any more than the admittedly rather adumbrative thumbnail sketch given in the last paragraph. Subsequent chapters will provide more methodological explanation as they unfold.

11 BIBLIOGRAPHY

RELIGIOUS TEXTS

The Upanishads. Translated with an introduction by Eknath Easwaran. London: Routledge, 1988.

OTHER PRIMARY SOURCES

Alfarabi (1972a) ’s Laws, trans. Muhsin Mahdi in Medieval : A Sourcebook, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Alfarabi (1972b) The Political Regime, trans. Fauzi M. Najjar in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Alfarabi (1987) The Letter Concerning the Intellect, trans. Arthur Hyman in Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Al-Ghazali (1980) Deliverance From Error, trans. R. J. McCarthy in Deliverance From Error, Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae. Al-Ghazali (1997) The Incoherence of the Philosophers, trans. and intro. Michael E. Marmura, Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press. Aquinas, St Thomas (1987) Commentary on the De Trinitate of (Questions I to IV), trans. and intro. Armand Maurer, entitled Faith, Reason and Theology, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Aristotle (1984) The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Aristotle (1986) De Anima (On the Soul), trans. and intro. Hugh Lawson-Tancred, London: Penguin Books. Aristotle (1993) De Anima Books II and III, trans. and intro. D. W. Hamlyn, Oxford: . (1972) The Governance of the Solitary, trans. Lawrence Berman in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Averroes (1954) Tahafut al Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), trans. and intro. Simon Van Den Bergh, Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust. Averroes (1976) On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy; trans. George F. Hourani, London: Luzac. Defoe, Daniel (1998) Robinson Crusoe, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications. Halevi, Judah (1964) The Kuzari, trans. H. Hirschfeld, intro. H. Slominsky, New York: Schocken Books.

176 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ibn Tufail (1910) The Awakening of the Soul, trans. and intro. Paul Brönnle, London: John Murray. Ibn Tufail (1972) Hayy the Son of Yaqzan, trans. George N. Atiyeh in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ibn Tufail (1986) The History of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, trans. Simon Ockley, intro. A. S. Fulton, London: Darf Publishers. Kierkegaard, Søren (1985) Fear and Trembling, trans. and intro. Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Maimonides, Moses (1963) The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. and intro. Shlomo Pines, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Maimonides, Moses (1972) Mishneh Torah, selections in A Maimonides Reader, ed. and intro. Isadore Twersky, New Jersey: Behrman House. Maimonides, Moses (1997) Treatise on Resurrection, trans. Fred Rosner, New Jersey: Jason Aronson. Maimonides, Moses (1998) Maimonides’ Introduction to the Talmud, trans. Zvi Lampel, New York: The Judaica Press. Ockham, William of (1987) Summa Totius Logicae, trans. Philotheus Boehner in Philosophy in the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Hyman and James J. Walsh, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Plato (1974) Republic, 2nd edn, trans. and intro. Desmond Lee, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Spinoza, Benedict de (1951) A Theologico-Political Treatise, trans. and intro. R. H. M. Elwes, New York: Dover Publications. Tolstoy, Leo (1977a) Master and Man, trans. Paul Foote in Master and Man and Other Stories, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Tolstoy, Leo (1977b) Hadji Murat, trans. Paul Foote in Master and Man and Other Stories, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Tolstoy, Leo (1997) The Gospel in Brief, trans. Isabel Hapgood, ed. F. A. Flowers III, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Tolstoy, Leo (1998) Twenty-Three Tales, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude in Walk in the Light and Twenty-Three Tales, Robertsbridge, East Sussex, and Farmington, PA: The Plough Publishing House. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1958) Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1961) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1979) Notebooks, 1914–1916, 2nd edn, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Arbel, Ilil (2001) Maimonides: A Spiritual Biography, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. Benor, Ehud (1995) Worship of the Heart: A Study in Maimonides’Philosophy of Religion, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Berman, Lawrence (1988) ‘Maimonides, the Disciple of Alfarabi’, in Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Joseph Buijs, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

177 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Broadie, Alexander (1997) ‘The Nature of Medieval ’, in History of Jewish Philosophy – Routledge History of World Philosophies, Volume 2, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, London: Routledge. Buijs, Joseph (1988a) Introduction to Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Buijs, Joseph (1988b) ‘The Philosophical Character of Maimonides’ Guide – A Critique of Strauss’ Interpretation’, in Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Joseph Buijs, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Cohen, Abraham (1995) Everyman’s Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages, New York: Schocken Books. Edmonds, David and Eidinow, John (2001) Wittgenstein’s Poker, London: Faber and Faber. Faur, José (1999) Homo Mysticus: A Guide to Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed, New York: Syracuse University Press. Feldman, Seymour (1988) ‘A Scholastic Misinterpretation of Maimonides’ Doctrine of Divine Attributes’, in Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Joseph Buijs, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Fox, Marvin (1990) Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Franck, Isaac (1988) ‘Maimonides and Aquinas on Man’s Knowledge of God: A Twentieth Century Perspective’, in Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Joseph Buijs, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Frank, Daniel H. (2003) ‘Maimonides and Medieval Jewish Aristotelianism’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Galston, Miriam (1988) ‘The Purpose of the Law according to Maimonides’, in Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Joseph Buijs, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Gillman, Neil (1997) The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought, Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing. Gilson, Etienne (1955) History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, London: Sheed and Ward. Green, Kenneth Hart (1997) ‘Leo Strauss’, in History of Jewish Philosophy – Routledge History of World Philosophies, Volume 2, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, London: Routledge. Gruenwald, Ithamar (1991) ‘Maimonides’ Quest beyond Philosophy and Prophecy’, in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, ed. Joel L. Kraemer, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gullan-Whur, Margaret (2000) Within Reason – A Life of Spinoza, London: Pimlico. Guttman, Julius (1964) Philosophies of Judaism, trans. Daniel W. Silverman, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Hartman, David (1976) Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest, Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication . Harvey, Steven (1991a) ‘Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace’, in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, ed. Joel L. Kraemer, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, Warren Zev (1991b) ‘Why Maimonides was not a Mutakallim’, in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, ed. Joel L. Kraemer, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

178 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Heschel, Abraham John (1982) Maimonides, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Husik, Isaac (1969) A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy, New York: Atheneum. Hyman, Arthur (1988) ‘Interpreting Maimonides’, in Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Joseph Buijs, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Hyman, Arthur (1991) ‘Maimonides on Religious Language’, in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, ed. Joel L. Kraemer, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ivry, Alfred L. (1991) ‘Neoplatonic Currents in Maimonides’Thought’, in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, ed. Joel L. Kraemer, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Janik, Allan and Toulmin, Stephen (1973) Wittgenstein’s Vienna, New York: Simon and Schuster. Kenny, Anthony (1973) Wittgenstein, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Kirsch, Jonathan (1998) Moses – A Life, New York: Ballantyne Books. Klagge, James C. (2001) Preface to Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kraemer, Joel L. (1991) Introduction to Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kraemer, Joel L. (2003) ‘The Islamic Context of Medieval Jewish Philosophy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kreisel, Howard (1997) ‘Moses Maimonides’, in History of Jewish Philosophy – Routledge History of World Philosophies, Volume 2, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, London: Routledge. Kreisel, Howard (1999) Maimonides’ Political Thought, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Langermann, Tzvi (2003) ‘Maimonides and the Sciences’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leaman, Oliver (1985) An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leaman, Oliver (1988) Averroes and his Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leaman, Oliver (1990) Maimonides, London: Routledge. Leaman, Oliver (1999) A Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy, Cambridge: Polity Press. Leaman, Oliver (2003) ‘Introduction to the Study of Medieval Jewish Philosophy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lerner, Ralph (1991) ‘Maimonides’ Governance of the Solitary’, in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, ed. Joel L. Kraemer, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lerner, Ralph (2000) Maimonides’ Empire of Light, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McGuinness, Brian (2001) ‘Wittgenstein and the Idea of Jewishness’, in Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy, ed. James C. Klagge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Magee, Bryan (1997) The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

179 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Magee, Bryan (1998) Confessions of a Philosopher, London: Phoenix. Malcolm, Norman (1995) Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View, New York: Cornell University Press. Malcolm, Norman (2001) Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Monk, Ray (1991) Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, London: Vintage Books. Monk, Ray (2001) ‘Philosophical Biography: The Very Idea’, in Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy, ed. James C. Klagge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pines, Shlomo (1988) ‘The Limitations of Human Knowledge according to Al-Farabi, ibn Bajja, and Maimonides’, in Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Joseph Buijs, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Seeskin, Kenneth (1991) Maimonides: A Guide for Today’s Perplexed, New Jersey: Behrman House. Shatz, David (2003) ‘The Biblical and Rabbinic Background to Medieval Jewish Philosophy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Solomon, Robert C. (1988) Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stern, David (2001) ‘Was Wittgenstein a Jew?’ in Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy, ed. James C. Klagge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strauss, Leo (1963) ‘How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed’, introductory essay to Moses Maimonides’ The Guide of the Perplexed, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Strauss, Leo (1988a) ‘Persecution and the Art of Writing’, in his own Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Strauss, Leo (1988b) ‘The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed’, in Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Von Wright, Georg Henrik (2001) ‘A Biographical Sketch’, in Norman Malcolm’s Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

180