Winter 2017 Volume 43 Issue 2

199 Hilail Gildin On Rousseau’s Confession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar 215 Daniel P. Maher Simon Stevin’s Vita Politica: Pre-provisional Morality? 233 Rafael Major Poetry and Reason: A Midsummer Night’s Dream 255 Ying Zhang Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing: The Beginning and the End of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed An Exchange: 279 Lee Ward The Challenge of Modernizing Seventeenth-Century English Political Texts: A Response to Foster

287 David Foster A Reply to Lee Ward Review Essay: 289 Robert Goldberg Homer on the Gods and Human Virtue: Creating the Foundations of Classical Civilization by Peter J. Ahrensdorf

Book Reviews: 319 Stephen A. Block Principle and Prudence in Western Political Thought, edited by Christopher Lynch and Jonathan Marks

333 Eric Buzzetti The Socratic Turn: Knowledge of Good and Evil in an Age of Science by Dustin Sebell 341 Bernard J. Dobski The Philosopher’s English King: Shakespeare’s Henriad as Political Philosophy by Leon Harold Craig

347 Joshua D. King Humanitarian Ethics: A Guide to the Morality of Aid in War and Disaster by Hugo Slim 353 Peter McNamara The Foundations of Natural Morality: On the Compatibility of Natural Rights and the Natural Law by S. Adam Seagrave 357 Deborah O’Malley Beyond Radical Secularism: How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge by Pierre Manent; translated by Ralph C. Hancock

363 Lorraine Pangle Xenophon the Socratic Prince: The Argument of the Anabasis of Cyrus by Eric Buzzetti 369 Nathan Pinkoski Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet by Leon Harold Craig 375 Manu Samnotra Arendt’s Judgment: Freedom, Responsibility, Citizenship by Jonathan Peter Schwartz

©2017 Interpretation, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of the contents may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. ISSN 0020-9635 Editor-in-Chief Timothy W. Burns, Baylor University General Editors Charles E. Butterworth • Timothy W. Burns General Editors (Late) Howard B. White (d. 1974) • Robert Horwitz (d. 1987) Seth G. Benardete (d. 2001) • Leonard Grey (d. 2009) • Hilail Gildin (d. 2015) Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell • David Lowenthal • Harvey C. Mansfield • Thomas L. Pangle • Ellis Sandoz • Kenneth W. Thompson Consulting Editors (Late) Leo Strauss (d. 1973) • Arnaldo Momigliano (d. 1987) • Michael Oakeshott (d. 1990) • John Hallowell (d. 1992) • Ernest L. Fortin (d. 2002) • Muhsin Mahdi (d. 2007) • Joseph Cropsey (d. 2012) • Harry V. Jaffa (d. 2015) International Editors Terence E. Marshall • Heinrich Meier Editors Peter Ahrensdorf • Wayne Ambler • Marco Andreacchio • Maurice Auerbach • Robert Bartlett • Fred Baumann • Eric Buzzetti • Susan Collins • Patrick Coby • Erik Dempsey • Elizabeth C’de Baca Eastman • Edward J. Erler • Maureen Feder-Marcus • Robert Goldberg • L. Joseph Hebert • Pamela K. Jensen • Hannes Kerber • Mark J. Lutz • Daniel Ian Mark • Ken Masugi • Carol L. McNamara • Will Morrisey • Amy Nendza • Charles T. Rubin • Leslie G. Rubin • Thomas Schneider • Susan Meld Shell • Geoffrey T. Sigalet • Nicholas Starr • Devin Stauffer • Bradford P. Wilson • Cameron Wybrow • Martin D. Yaffe • Catherine H. Zuckert • Michael P. Zuckert Copy Editor Les Harris Designer Sarah Teutschel Inquiries Interpretation, A Journal of Political Philosophy Department of Political Science Baylor University 1 Bear Place, 97276 Waco, TX 76798 email [email protected] Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 255

Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing: The Beginning and the End of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed*

Ying Zhang Department of Philosophy, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China yzhang@philo.ecnu.edu.cn

I The Bible is, as Arthur Hyman states, “central to Maimonides’ thought.”1 This is especially true of his Guide of the Perplexed. Though widely treated as a philosophic book, the purpose of the Guide, as the author himself states, is to explain certain biblical “terms” and “very obscure parables in the books of the prophets.”2 It is therefore not strange that the Guide begins and ends with a series of lexicographic renderings of what Maimonides presents as the key terms in the Bible. The first two words Maimonides treats in the Guide are ṣelem (image) and demuth (likeness) in Genesis 1:26: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Guide I 1, 21). According to Maimonides, the term ṣelem in this verse does not mean “the shape and configuration of a thing,” as is usually

* Earlier versions of this article received valuable comments and suggestions from Professors Ralph Lerner and Mayer I. Gruber. The author would like to thank them for their great support and help. The research project that led to this essay was supported by Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science Projects Fund.

1 Arthur Hyman, “Maimonides as Biblical Exegete,” in Maimonides and His Heritage, ed. Idit Dobbs- Weinstein, Lenn E. Goodman, and James A. Grady (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 2. 2 Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, ed. and trans. Shlomo Pines, with introductory essay by Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 5–6. It needs to be noted that in the texts of the Guide of the Perplexed, the italicized words are those originally in Hebrew.

held. Rather, it should be rendered as “natural form,” that is, “the notion in virtue of which a thing is constituted as a substance and becomes what it is” (Guide I 1, 21–22, bold emphasis added). Likewise, Maimonides states that demuth here should be treated as “likeness in respect of a notion,” rather than the visible appearance. He further cites other biblical verses to support his rendering of the words, and concludes that “it was…because of the divine intellect conjoined with man, that it is said of the latter that he is in the image of God and His likeness, not that God, may He be exalted, is a body and possesses a shape” (Guide I 1, 23; bold emphasis added). In other words, according to Maimonides, the image and the likeness that man shares with God is no other than intellect, the highest natural endowment of a human being, which separates man from all other earthly living beings. With this interpretation of the ṣelem of God, Maimonides begins his journey in the Guide. For students of philosophy, it may not be too hard to recognize Aristotelian concepts in this interpretation. For most Jews in the twelfth century, however, this rendering would seem quite odd, because it introduces certain pagan or alien elements, totally unfamiliar to the Jewish rabbinic tradition, into biblical interpretation. What then is the concern or purpose behind such a rendering? One thing is clear: what Maimonides offers is a kind of allegorical or figurative interpretation of the Bible. According to him, the true or intended meaning of the Bible’s equivocal terms and parables lies not in their external or literal, but rather in their internal or figurative, levels (Guide I Introduction, 5–12). In the very first chapter of the Guide, Maimonides emphasizes that the “image” by which man partakes in the deity is intellect; on the other hand, he also attempts to correct the mistaken opinion that God is corporeal. As Leo Strauss points out, “the first subject of the Guide is God’s incorporeality.”3 For Maimonides, the incorporeality of God is one of the three most important foundational teachings of the Torah, next to the existence and the unity of God. He thus states in his great Code, Mishneh Torah, “It is clearly set forth in the Torah and in the prophet that the Holy One (Blessed be He) is not a corporeal body, as it is said: For the Lord your God, He is the God in heaven above and upon earth beneath [a conflation of Josh. 2:11 and Deut. 4:39]. And a body cannot be in two places [simultaneously]” (“Laws concerning

3 Leo Strauss, “Introduction to Maimonides’ The Guide of the Perplexed,” in Leo Strauss on Mai- monides: The Complete Writings, ed. Kenneth Hart Green (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 448. Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 257 the Foundations of the Law,” 1.5).4 Now this principle of the incorporeality of God appears, at first glance, to contradict many biblical terms, such as “His feet” (Exod. 24:10), “the finger of God” (Exod. 31:18), “the hand of the Lord” (Exod. 9:3), and so on. According to Maimonides, these figurative expressions were not more than “substitutes for the divine Name,” whose function was to help “the sons of man who cannot acknowledge anything other than bodies” in understanding the true teaching concerning God (“Laws concerning the Foundations of the Law,” 1.6).5 The establishment of the principle of the incorporeality of God is, for Maimonides, a necessary step towards eradi- cating the impulsion toward idolatry from the human heart, because idolatry always takes the form of the worship of images. On the other hand, as Leo Strauss incisively notices, “the belief in corporeality is one of the major reasons for the conflict between the Bible and philosophy.”6 Now the tension between the teaching of the Torah and that of philosophy is the biggest problem that perplexes Maimonides’s student Rabbi Joseph ben Judah—who is also the addressee of the Guide—and his like (Guide, “Epistle Dedicatory,” 3–4). It is thus not strange that Maimonides devotes his second chapter to the interpretation of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Maimonides’s interpretation of the Garden of Eden story begins with an objection that “a learned man” raised with him. Before elaborating the objection, he explains that the equivocal term elohim7 in the verse “and ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5) refers neither to the deity nor the angels, but to “rulers governing the cities,” as shown in Onqelos’s Aramaic translation of the Torah (Guide I 2, 23). For the common reader, this insertion must appear a little odd. Why would Maimonides begin his interpretation of the story with attention to the word elohim, which occurs in a rather late stage of the story? Furthermore, elohim plays no other role in his interpretation. Although the word appears within biblical quotations twice again in the second chapter of the Guide—one of them even taken again from Genesis 3:5—neither occurrence is highlighted or suggested by Maimonides

4 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Introduction and “Book of Knowledge,” trans. Ralph Lerner, in Maimonides’ Empire of Light: Popular Enlightenment in an Age of Belief, by Ralph Lerner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 142. Notes in square brackets are added by the translator. 5 Ibid. 6 Leo Strauss, “Introduction to Maimonides’ The Guide of the Perplexed,” 449. 7 The word elohim is most often rendered as “God,” sometimes as “angel(s),” despite its being a plural noun. 258 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2

to confirm the specific rendering of the word as “rulers.” In other words, the explanation of the word elohim as “rulers governing the cities” does not have an explicit echo.8 Yet for readers who are familiar with Maimonides’s style, this oddity is not unusual in the Guide. As Maimonides points out in the introductory part of the book, the way he discloses the “secrets” of the Torah in the Guide is by no means in an obvious order. Maimonides rather follows the rabbinic teaching that the secrets should not be taught publicly. Accordingly he scatters the subjects and arranges them in an intertwining way. As he says, “My purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again be concealed” (Guide, “Introduction to the First Part,” 6–7). It is therefore not unusual that the Guide is itself like a jigsaw puzzle and requires the reader to link up one scattered piece or clue with others and put them together to get the whole picture by himself. Based on the biblical text, the anonymous objector holds that the capacity for distinguishing good from evil with which man was endowed after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is the intellect, “the great perfection peculiar to man,” which is “the noblest of the characteristics existing in us.” As to the question of why man is endowed with perfection through disobedience, the objector simply responds with a story that it is not impossible for a criminal to be finally elevated to a high status Guide( I 2, 24). For Maimonides, the objector’s opinion is just the opposite of the inten- tion of the biblical text.9 In accordance with his explanation of the image of God in the first chapter of the Guide, Maimonides states that the intellect, that is, “the ultimate perfection of man,” had been provided to Adam “before he disobeyed,” because commandments are given only to living beings with intellect. And through this perfect state of intellect one is able to distinguish between truth and falsehood. What Adam lost after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is this very perfection. In place of it, he gained another kind of knowledge, the knowledge of “fine and bad.”10 Now according to Mai-

8 The two biblical quotations are from Psalms 8:6, “Thou hast made him but little lower than Elo- him,” and from Genesis 3:5, “And ye shall be like Elohim knowing good and evil.” The emphasis of the latter quotation is rather on “knowing good and evil,” in contrast to “knowing the false and the true,” thus it does not appear to be an echo of the earlier quotation of the same verse and the explanation of the term elohim as human “rulers.” See Guide I 2, 25. 9 Josef Stern analyzes “three errors” of the “learned man” and how Maimonides teaches him in three respects. See his “Maimonides on Education,” in Philosophers on Education: Historical Perspectives, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (London: Routledge, 1998), 109–11. 10 Shlomo Pines explains that he chooses “fine and bad” for the Arabic words ḥasan and qabīḥ because they are not the more common terms for “good and bad” (al-khayr wa’l-sharr) in Mai- monides’s text. See The Guide of the Perplexed, 24n6. See also Shlomo Pines, “Truth and Falsehood versus Good and Evil: A Study in Jewish and General Philosophy in Connection with the Guide of the Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 259 monides, “fine and bad…belong to the things generally accepted as known, not to those cognized by the intellect” (ibid.). This distinction is further elaborated by Maimonides in the following passage: Now man in virtue of his intellect knows truth from falsehood; and this holds good for all intelligible things. Accordingly when man was in his most perfect and excellent state, in accordance with his inborn disposition and possessed of his intellectual cognitions—because of which it is said of him: “Thou hast make him but little lower than Elo- him” (Ps. 8:6)—he had no faculty that was engaged in any way in the consideration of generally accepted things, and he did not apprehend them.…However, when he disobeyed and inclined toward his desires of the imagination and the pleasures of his corporeal senses—inasmuch as it is said: “that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes” (Gen. 3:6)—he was punished by being deprived of that intellectual apprehension. (Guide I 2, 25) Here Maimonides explicitly points out that the knowledge of fine and bad is inferior to knowledge of the true and the false. In other words, the change of state of Adam for his disobedience to God’s commandment is a kind of degradation rather than elevation. This interpretation of the Garden story “surely disposes of one perplexity,” says Strauss, the one posed by Mai- monides’s objector, “but it may give rise to other perplexities.”11 Picking up on what Strauss left unexplained, Ronna Burger explores in detail what the other perplexities may be. She observes that Maimonides unusually applies the literal reading to the biblical verse “that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes” (Gen. 3:6a). In other words, Maimonides treats what the man and woman ate as a “real fruit,” rather than as “the fruit of knowledge” as the biblical text implies.12 Moreover, Mai- monides seems intentionally to omit the rest of the verse, “and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6b),13 which was the “the decisive feature” of the action of eating.14

Perplexed, I, 2,” in Studies in Maimonides, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 98. 11 Leo Strauss, “Introduction to Maimonides’ The Guide of the Perplexed,” 451. 12 Ronna Burger, “Maimonides on Knowledge of Good and Evil: The Guide of the Perplexed I 2,” in Political Philosophy Cross-Examined: Perennial Challenges to the Philosophic Life, ed. Thomas L. Pangle and J. Harvey Lomax (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 87. 13 The verb for “make one wise” is sākal rather than ḥākham: the latter is the more usual word for “be wise,” whose nominal form is ḥokhmah (wisdom). It is worth noting that sākal (to understand) also occurs in Jeremiah 9:23, a crucial verse for Maimonides’s interpretation of “wisdom” in the final chapter of the Guide. 14 Ronna Burger, “Maimonides on Knowledge of Good and Evil,” 86. 260 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2

Why does Maimonides deliberately omit the crucial part of the sentence, and even apply a literal mode of interpretation to the fruit? What can be seen here is his mentioning of imagination, a cognitive faculty lower than intellect, which may well serve to match the “knowledge of fine and bad,” as distin- guished from that of true and false.15 But this may not be the sole nor even the main reason for his omission and interpretation. According to Burger, “by omitting this one characterization of the forbidden fruit, Maimonides covers over the biblical distrust of the human desire for wisdom.”16 Burger’s acute reading explains the concern behind Maimonides’s omission. However, she does not raise the further question how, if “human desire for wisdom” refers to philosophy, knowledge of good and evil (or in Maimonides’s terms, “fine and bad”) could represent the knowledge that the philosophers are pursuing—after all, the forbidden knowledge, that is, the knowledge of good and evil, is surely not the highest knowledge according to Maimonides. It may suffice to mention that, in the strict sense, the knowledge of what is good or what is the right way of life is the theme of the classical philosophers—which is surely well known to Maimonides. On the other hand, it would indeed be more manifest, if one reads Genesis 3:6 as a whole, to see the connection to wisdom in its classical sense: the object of “a delight to the eyes” can specifically be the object of the desire to know, “without which theo- ria is inconceivable.”17 In this sense, Burger’s argument, that by not quoting the whole verse of Genesis 3:6, Maimonides intentionally conceals the deep- est conflict between philosophy and the Torah, is quite convincing. However this may be, in this chapter Maimonides implicitly expresses his preference for philosophy through affirming the supreme status of knowledge of truth and falsehood. Let us not forget that this implication occurs in the very first chapters of the Guide.18 There is another difficulty in Maimonides’s reading of the Garden story. If man was created in a perfect state, that is, “in the image of God,” how then could he be subject to “his desires of the imagination and the pleasures of his corporeal senses,” and thus transgress the divine commandment? The

15 In Guide I 73, Maimonides elaborates in detail the distinction between intellect and imagination. See Guide, 209–12. 16 Ronna Burger, “Maimonides on Knowledge of Good and Evil,” 87. 17 See Heinrich Meier, On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life: Reflections on Rousseau’s “Rêveries” in Two Books, trans. Robert Berman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 85; and Ronna Burger, “Maimonides on Knowledge of Good and Evil,” 99n42. 18 Later on Maimonides repeats this notion by stating that “only truth pleases Him…and only that which is false angers Him.” See Guide II 47, 409. Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 261 contrast between being dominated by desires and possessing the highest intellectual apprehension is so striking that it cannot have escaped the notice of Maimonides. An answer to this question may be found in Guide III, 8, where Maimonides states that the corruption of the bodily things is due to “their matter,” and has nothing to do with the “form.” Inasmuch as it is clear that this is so, and as according to what has been laid down by divine wisdom[,] it is impossible for matter to exist without form and for any of the forms in question to exist without matter, and as consequently it was necessary that man’s very noble form, which, as we have explained, is the image of God and His likeness, should be bound to earthy, turbid, and dark matter, which calls down upon man every imperfection and corruption. (Guide III 8, 431–32) The above passage clearly shows that Maimonides does not take the man who is endowed with perfect intellectual apprehension, that is, “the image of God and His likeness,” as not also being overwhelmed by desires rooted in the imagination and pleasures. As long as man is a bodily being, that is, consists of matter, he is bound to have desire for “pleasures of corporal senses.” While it is “the human form” or intellect that can exercise “control over matter” or desires (Guide III 8, 432), the knowledge of judging whether an action is advantageous or disadvantageous is not knowledge of distinguishing truth from falsehood, but that of distinguishing good from bad. For according to Maimonides, one can say only that it is not good, rather than not true, to disobey the commandment.19 The first two chapters of the Guide of the Perplexed, which in a way complement each other, set the general tone of the book as a whole. The purpose of the first chapter is to establish the foundation of the incorporeality of God, the most difficult of the three roots of Judaism, that is, the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God. The statement that “God is incorporeal” is not easily accepted by most people, not only because “the vulgar” or ordinary people are used to thinking in images, thus not being able to conceive a being without body, but more importantly, because there are plenty of terms assuming the corporeality of God in the Bible! Therefore in the first chapter of the Guide, Maimonides tries to demolish the ordinary understanding of God by reinterpreting the terms ṣelem (image) and demuth (likeness), with which God created human beings. He has to explain in a nonliteral way those

19 As Leo Strauss points out, this does not mean that the man (and the woman) in the Garden of Eden was not “aware of the naturally good and bad, that is, of the pleasant and painful,” such as what is “good for food,” and “delight to the eyes.” See Leo Strauss, “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” in The Guide of the Perplexed, ed. Pines, xxvii. 262 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2 terms that may imply the corporeality of God. The rendering of ṣelem as “the natural form” or the intellect of man is like a bridge, carefully built by Mai- monides, over the gap between the Jewish Law and philosophy. This does not necessarily mean that Maimonides tries to “synthesize” or “harmonize” the tension or even opposition between them. One may say that the first chapter of the Guide is devoted to establishing one of the foundations of the Law; the second chapter, however, cannot but be seen as an advocacy of philosophy. The pursuit of truth is always the vocation of the philosophers. Maimonides’s interpretation of the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil implies a new understanding of the perfection of human beings, that the highest perfection lies in the perfection of the intellect (knowing the true and the false) rather than in that of moral virtue (knowing the good and the evil). In disobeying the prohibition of God and eating the forbidden fruit, man loses the supreme intellectual perfection that God endowed him with at creation. Still, man does not lose everything when leaving the Garden of Eden. He attains the knowledge of good and bad/ evil and thus paves the way for a communal life. This knowledge of good and bad/evil is necessary for political life outside the Garden.20 So too are rulers (elohim) needed for this new kind of human life. Only now do we understand the insertion of the explanation of the meaning of elohim in Genesis 3:5 in the first part of the second chapter of the Guide. The biblical texts that the first two chapters of the Guide deal with are the very first three chapters of the Bible. To some extent, it can be said that this beginning suggests that the Guide attempts to give a comprehensive interpretation of the Bible: from its beginning to its end. The beginning of the Guide shows that philosophy, or the true knowledge pursued by the philosophers, has an irreplaceable supreme status for Maimonides.

II If we take the first two chapters of part I as the beginning of the Guide of the Perplexed, the last two chapters of part III (III 53–54), that is, the very end of the book, can be seen as corresponding to that beginning. At first blush, these two chapters do not look like the conclusion of the Guide: Mai- monides himself states that part III, chapter 51 is “a kind of a conclusion [šibh al-khātima]” of the book (Guide III 51, 618); also, he claims at the end of this chapter that “this guidance [of human perfection and the spiritual

20 See Robert D. Sacks, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1990), 37. Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 263 worship] is sufficient in view of the purpose of this Treatise,” which makes it look like the climax of the whole book (628). Yet it is part III, chapters 53 and 54 that formally complete the whole book; in this sense, they are “the end” of the book. Still, we need to think about the question: why does Maimonides not end the Guide of the Perplexed with this “conclusion” in III 51?21 A tentative answer may be given by the word that modifies the “conclusion,” šibh, which means “quasi,” “semi,” or “a kind of.” In other words, this “conclusion” is not a definitive one. Maimonides states in the beginning of III 51 that he has nothing new to add in this chapter, thus it serves no more than a summary or “quasi-conclusion” of “what is comprised in the other chapters.” By making up a parable of the ruler’s palace and giving his own multilevel interpretations of it, Maimonides seems merely to reiterate his view of the degrees of men’s perfection in accordance with their capacity for apprehending different levels of knowledge, which echoes his discussions of prophecy and providence. However, right in the middle of the chapter, Maimonides says: “A most extraordinary speculation has occurred to me just now,” which looks quite like an impromptu idea.22 Besides, the very subject of the chapter—the notion of “intellectual worship” as a state of perfection “after apprehension”—is novel. These questions are not easy to answer before we understand the importance of the last two chapters: after all, the last two chapters, being lexicographic again,23 echo in literary form the very first two chapters of the Guide. This cannot be merely accidental. In Guide III 53, Maimonides interprets three terms that are related to the observance of the Law, or so to speak, to the practical life: ḥesed (loving- kindness, steadfast love), mishpat (judgment), and ṣedaqah (justness/fairness, righteousness). In the first place, Maimonides points out that he has already explained the meaning of ḥesed in his Commentary on Aboth. In his view, ḥesed means “excess,” especially “excess in beneficence.”24 He further elabo-

21 The tension between III 51 and III 54 can in a way be resolved by some scholars’ contention that the last four chapters (III 51–54) as a whole constitute “the final section” of the book. Of course, this contention does not necessarily make one neglect the different emphases Maimonides puts on the subsections of III 51–52 and III 53–54. See Leo Strauss, “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Per- plexed,” xiii; Ralph Lerner, “Maimonides’ Governance of the Solitary,” in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, ed. Joel L. Kraemer (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civiliza- tion, 1996), 33, 41. 22 Guide III 51, 624. See David Shatz, “Worship, Corporeality, and Human Perfection: A Reading of Guide of the Perplexed, III: 51–54,” in Jewish Thought in Dialogue: Essays on Thinkers, Theologies, and Moral Theories (Boston: Academic Studies, 2010), 55–56. 23 These two are the only lexicographic chapters in part III of the Guide of the Perplexed. 24 In his Commentary on the Mishnah, Aboth V 7, Maimonides clearly points out that “exaggeration in a matter would be termed ‘ḥasid’ [one possessing ḥesed], whether that exaggeration would be in the 264 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2

rates that there are two kinds of beneficence, the differences depending on the receivers: one “has no right to claim” the beneficence, the other deserves it, but he receives the beneficence “in a greater measure than he has a right to [that is, deserves] it” (Guide III 53, 631). As readers of the Bible clearly know, the word ḥesed is always applied to God.25 Thus Maimonides states: “Hence this reality as a whole—I mean that He, may He be exalted, has brought it into being—is ḥesed” (ibid.). Here Maimonides suggests that not everyone who has received loving-kindness from God deserves it. The biblical text Maimonides chooses in order to illustrate this notion is Psalm 89:3: “the building-up of the world [‘olam] is loving-kindness [ḥesed].” It is noteworthy that here Maimonides does not cite a biblical verse which applies the term bara’ (to create)—the very word for God’s creation; rather, the term referring to the bringing of the world into being in his quotation is banah (to build up). In other words, it is not unreasonable to suggest that he may be avoiding the term bara’ in this context. Moreover, the word ‘olam in the biblical texts is usually rendered as “forever.” However, Maimonides obviously refers to its postbiblical meaning “world” and thus alters the usual understanding of the verse.26 One may also wonder whether Maimonides’s interpretation of the term ḥesed does not have a derogatory implication: after all, in Aristotle’s Ethics, like deficiency, excess is something that ought to be avoided in feelings and actions, that is, in practice, whereas what is praised is the mean.27 It goes without saying that all three terms, ḥesed (loving kindness),

good or in the evil.” The biblical example of this negative usage of ḥesed is Leviticus 20:17. See Moses Maimonides, The Commentary to Mishnah Aboth, ed. and trans. Arthur David (New York: Bloch, 1968), 104, 157n70. 25 For example, Gen. 39:21; Exod. 15:13, 20:6, 34:6–7; Deut. 5:10, 7:9, Ps. 33:5, 52:10, 103:8; 2 Sam. 9:3. 26 In a letter of September 10, 1956, Shlomo Pines wrote to Leo Strauss explaining his method of translation with the example of ‘olam: El ‘Olam], adopted after some hesitation, was due to a wish to keep consistently’] אל עולם My translation of to the method adumbrated [that is, “(to) give the reader the possibility of appreciating Maimonides’s method of exposition and all that is involved therein”]. For while it is evident, that Maimonides wanted in petto [secretly] to say “God of the World,” it is more than likely that he was aware that the uninitiated reader, having some knowledge of Hebrew and of the Bible, would understand the words to mean: God of Eternity. This may however have been one of the errors of judgment on my part to which I have alluded. Joel Kraemer and Josef Stern, who found the letter and published it with an analytic essay, point out the ambiguity in “God of Eternity” and its critical implication, that “it can either mean (what seems to be its correct biblical meaning) ‘eternal (or everlasting) God’ or it can mean ‘God of that which is eternal,’” in the context of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed. See Joel Kraemer and Josef Stern, “Shlomo Pines on the Translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8, no. 1 (1998): 13–24 (quoted material at 22, 19). 27 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1006b25, see also 1006a–1009b. Maimonides discusses the concept of the mean on several occasions, for example, in the Fourth Chapter of his Eight Chapters (see Ethical Writings of Maimonides, ed. Raymond L. Weiss with Charles Butterworth [New York: Dover, 1975], Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 265 mishpat (judgment), and ṣedaqah (justness/fairness, righteousness), in their relation to the observance of the Law, belong to actions or the practical life. In the second place, Maimonides does not follow the sequence of his list of the three terms in the beginning of III 53 to explain the meaning of mishpat. He interprets ṣedaqah instead. Does he suggest that these two words are interchangeable?28 Maimonides points out that “the word ṣedaqah derives from ṣedeq, which means justice; justice being the granting to everyone who deserves something, that which he deserves and giving to every being that which corresponds to his merits” (Guide III 53, 631). This view of justice is quite close to the classical understanding of the term. In the Republic, Plato has Socrates state that “minding of one’s own business” or “having and doing of one’s own and what belongs to oneself would be agreed to be justice.”29 “But,” Maimonides states further, this is not to be seen as ṣedaqah “in books of the prophets.” Rather, “what is called ṣedaqah” lies in the “fulfilling of duties with regard to others…on account of moral virtue” (ibid.). For Maimonides, the biblical ṣedaqah amounts to moral virtue (he especially mentions faith in the case of Abraham) and is relational, hence it too belongs to the practical life. Maimonides does not mention excess or mean in his explanation of ṣedaqah. He may be reminding the reader of an earlier passage. In explaining the biblical verse “just statutes and judgments” (Deut. 4:8), Maimonides says: “the meaning of just [ṣaddiqim] is equibalanced. For there are manners of worship in which there is no burden and excess…nor a deficiency necessarily leading to greed and being engrossed in the indulgence of appetites” (Guide II 39, 380). This passage is to illustrate the perfection of the Law of

67–74); and in “Laws concerning Character Traits,” 1.3–7, especially in 1.4, where Maimonides states clearly that “the right way is the mean in every single one of a man’s character traits. …This [middle] way is the way of the wise men.” See Ethical Writings of Maimonides, 29. 28 In Plato’s Symposium, when it is Aristophanes’s turn to make a speech praising the god Eros, “hic- cup had just come over him,” so Eryximachus, who should be after him, makes the speech in his stead. According to Leo Strauss, “the general meaning of such change is that the speakers are interchangeable—they are in an important respect identical, though not simply identical.” See Leo Strauss, On Plato’s “Symposium,” ed. Seth Benardete (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 95–96. Mai- monides also exchanges the positions of arts and moral virtues in the two lists in III 54. According to Ralph Lerner, “Maimonides may be hinting that he views them as somehow interchangeable, as being alike in that they are instruments, not ends in themselves.” See Lerner, “Maimonides’ Governance of the Solitary,” 42. 29 Plato, Republic 434a. See also 433a–434a. The English translation is taken from Allan Bloom, The “Republic” of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 111–12. On a more specific occasion, Maimonides applies this view of justice, that “the just one among men is he who gives everything its due,” to explain a moral teaching by Solomon in Proverbs. See Guide I 34, 76. Yet we should not confuse this view of justice with the biblical (divine) retributive justice, one “conferring a benefit or punishment,” which according to Maimonides belongs to mishpat (judgment); see Guide III 53, 631. 266 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2

Moses, which, according to Maimonides, is “equibalanced and wise” (ibid.). At the same time, in our chapter Maimonides seems to go back to the classical view of justice in saying that “when you walk in the way of the moral virtues, you do justice unto your rational soul, giving her the due that is her right [that is, justly hers]” (Guide III 53, 631). Now, what is the “rational soul” of man? Maimonides briefly defines it in his explanation of the term nephesh (soul) that it is “the form of man” (Guide I 41, 91), which in turn reminds the reader of the intellect or “intellectual apprehension” through which man par- ticipates in the “image” of God at Creation (Guide I 1, 22). This mentioning of the “rational soul” seems at first glance not to be in tune with the nature of the term ṣedaqah, which belongs to the moral or practical rather than theoretical realm. Yet a second thought would save us from this confusion. For Maimonides, “the moral virtues are a preparation for the rational virtues” (Guide I 34, 76–77). In other words, moral virtues are necessary for achieving intellectual apprehension, the end of which is the apprehension of God (Guide III 54, 636). On the other hand, it is worth noting that faith and observance of the Law are both categorized by Maimonides as moral virtues (Guide III 53, 631), which means that he does not treat them as being supreme. As to the term mishpat (judgment), Maimonides simply states that it refers to judgment in the sense of both reward and punishment (Guide III 53, 631). By the end of this chapter, Maimonides reminds us that we have already explained that every attribute by which God is described in books of the prophets is an attribute of action. Accord- ingly He is described as ḥasid [one possessing loving-kindness], because He has brought the all into being; as ṣaddiq [the righteous] because of His mercy toward the weak—I refer to the governance of the living being by means of its forces; and as Judge because of the occurrence in the world of relative good things and of relative great calamities, necessitated by judgment that is consequent upon wisdom. (Guide III 53, 632) The central sentence of this passage, “I refer to the governance of the living being by means of its forces,” calls for special attention. What are “the forces” of the living beings? Careful readers of the Guide will recall that Maimonides has discussed “four forces” in Guide II 10. He mentioned there that the four elements, water, fire, air, and earth, moved successively by the spheres of the moon, of the sun, of other planets, and of the fixed stars; and that “the forces proceeding from the spheres into that which exists in general are four” as well. They are Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 267 the forces causing the generation of the minerals, of the vegetative soul, of the animal soul, and of the rational soul (Guide II 10, 270–71). Maimonides further points out that this is the meaning of “nature,” which is said to be wise, having governance, caring for the bringing into existence of animals by means of an art similar to that of a craftsman, and also caring for their preservation and permanence through the bringing into existence of formative forces, which are the cause of the existence of living beings, and nutri- tive forces, which are the cause of their lasting for whatever duration is possible. (272; bold emphasis added) This definition of “nature,” to some extent, can be seen as a key for the understanding of the Guide of the Perplexed. Maimonides seems to suggest that the forces that cause the generation, preservation, and permanence of all kinds of beings—especially living beings—or so to speak, the forces that “having governance,” originated from “nature.” Also, it is helpful for our understanding of the “forces” and “governance” in the aforementioned sentence in III 53: the forces are natural forces that cause the living beings to exist and per- sist, and the governance of the living being derives from nature as well. If “nature” is indeed central to the Guide as a whole, it becomes less strange that Maimonides puts ṣedaqah in the center of the three terms that are related to the observance of the Law. While natural or cosmic order is necessary to the generation, preservation, and permanence of all beings, ṣedaqah is necessary to keep order in “our” community. By the end of chapter 53, Maimonides says that his interpretation of these three terms is to “prepare the way” for the next chapter (Guide III 53, 632). The next chapter, chapter 54 of part III, is the very last chapter of the book. In this chapter, Maimonides devotes himself to the term ḥokhmah (wisdom) and its multiple meanings. Choosing ḥokhmah (wisdom) as the end of the book would create the impression that this is an ascent from the practical to the theoretical. Is it true? Maimonides begins the chapter with a typical beginning of those lexicographic chapters, that the term ḥokhmah (wisdom) has “four senses”: 1) “the apprehension of true realities, which have for their end the apprehension of” God; 2) “acquiring arts”; 3) “acquiring moral virtues”; and 4) “the aptitude for stratagems and ruses” (Guide III 54, 632). Accordingly, the term ḥakham (the wise) also has four senses: 1) “one possessing the rational virtues”; 2) “one 268 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2

possessing moral virtues”; 3) “everyone skilled in a practical art”; and 4) “one possessing ruses in working evil and wickedness.”30 Now if we compare these two “four senses,” it is clear that the “rational virtues” should correspond to “the apprehension of true realities”—for Maimonides, the highest level of this apprehension, or the end of it, is the apprehension of God. The ḥokhmah or wisdom in this sense is no doubt the highest wisdom. How then do we have to understand these four levels of wisdom from the perspective of the Bible? After all, “to explain the meaning of certain [equivocal] terms occurring in books of prophecy” is one of the purposes of the Guide (Guide I Introduction, 5). In regard to one’s knowledge of the whole of the Law, Maimonides states, the wise can be recognized in two ways: through their possession of the rational virtues and through their possession of the moral virtues. “But,” he elaborates further, since the rational matter in the Law is received through tradition and is not demonstrated by the methods of speculation, the knowledge of the Law came to be set up in the books of the prophets and the sayings of the Sages as one separate species and wisdom, in an unrestricted sense, as another species. It is through this wisdom, in an unrestricted sense, that the rational matter that we receive from the law through tradition, is demonstrated. (Guide III 54, 633; bold emphasis added) As the English translator claims in the corresponding note, while it is is for the Hebrew ḥokhmah or for the Arabic חכם not clear whether the word ḥikma, Maimonides “undoubtedly” has in his mind “philosophy.”31 In inter- preting the words of the Sages, Maimonides points out that “wisdom” and “the knowledge of the Torah” are not the same species (Guide III 54, 633, lines 22–23). For him, only philosophy, the way of searching for wisdom par excellence, supplies the genuine demonstration by “methods of speculation”

30 One may notice that the fourth type in the second list does not strictly correspond to that of the first list: while the fourth sense of “wisdom” is “the aptitude for stratagems and ruses,” which does not specifically refer to using them in a good or evil way, the fourth sense of “the wise” as “one possessing ruses in working evil and wickedness,” refers exclusively to evil use. It is worth noting that the Arabic word that is translated as “stratagem(s)” here is talaṭṭuf, which is used by Maimonides for God as a kind of “divine graciousness” or “divine ruse,” such as one “causing them to wander perplexedly in the desert until their souls became courageous” (Guide III 32, 528). See also Guide III 32, 525–29; III 45, 580. The word talaṭṭuf is also used for man as “graciousness” (I 67, 161) or “stratagem” (III 54, 632– 33). On this particular word, see Shlomo Pines, “Translator’s Introduction: The Philosophic Sources of The Guide of the Perplexed,” lxxiii–lxxiv. See also Strauss, “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” xxxix. In both cases, the Arabic word that is translated as “ruses” is iḥtiyāl, which does not solely signify evil ruses or tricks. See Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. J. M. Cowan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1961), 219. 31 Guide III 54, 633n10. Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 269

(633).32 But why does Maimonides call this wisdom “unrestricted”? In any case, philosophic wisdom has the highest status here. Still, “philosophy” is hidden behind the veil of “wisdom.” Maimonides points out that what is required of man is to obtain first “knowledge of the Torah,” next “wisdom,” then “to know what is incumbent upon him with regard to the legal science of the Law—I mean the draw- ing of inferences concerning what one ought to do.” Corresponding to this sequence, he further states the order in which those should be observed: 1) opinions should be known as being received through the tradition; 2) opinions should be demonstrated; 3) the noble actions should be precisely defined (Guide III 54, 633–34). Maimonides reiterates that wisdom is different from science of the Torah in species, and that “wisdom is the verification of the opinions of the Torah through correct speculation” (634). Now it becomes clearer that the term “wisdom” here refers to philosophizing: the demonstration of various opinions “through correct speculation.” One may see that in both orders, that is, the order of knowledge that should be obtained and the order in which those should be observed, there is the same route, that is, from the generally accepted opinion ascending to verified or demonstrated knowledge, then descending to actions or the practical realm. This is the route of the philosophers in Socrates’s city in speech.33 Maimonides’s familiarity with this theme of “ascending-descending” can be seen in his explanation of the biblical parable of Jacob’s ladder: How well put is the phrase ascending and descending (Gen. 28:12), in which ascent comes before descent. For after the ascent and the attaining of certain rungs of the ladder that may be known comes the descent with whatever decree the prophet has been informed of—with a view to governing and teaching the people of the earth. (Guide I 15, 41; bold emphasis added)

32 Cf. also Guide I 71, 175–84. 33 Plato, Republic 519c8–d6, where Socrates tells Glaucon, “Then our job as founders, is to compel the best natures to go to the study which we were saying before is the greatest, to see the good and to go up that ascent; and, when they have gone up and see sufficiently, not to permit them…to remain there, and not be willing to go down again among those prisoners or share their labors and honors, whether they be slighter or more serious.” When Glaucon questions this “compelling” as doing injustice to the “best natures,” Socrates explains that “it’s not the concern of law that any one class in the city fare exceptionally well, but it contrives to bring this about in the city as a whole, harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share with one another the benefit that each is able to bring to the commonwealth” (519e1–520a4, trans. Bloom; emphasis added). See also Leo Strauss, “The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952), 89–90. 270 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2

This passage, together with the lexicographic chapter on yarod (to descend) and ‘aloh (to ascend), pave the way for our understanding of his last chapter on “wisdom.”34 Here Maimonides states clearly that the ascent is followed by descent, “with a view to governing and teaching the people of the earth,” that is, with a view to actions or practice. We shall see that the notion of “governance” also appears later in our last chapter. Although it is hardly the true view of Maimonides that to achieve the highest apprehension of knowledge is for the sake of “governing and teaching the people of the earth,”35 he nevertheless suggests that the Law requires man not to stop at achieving the demonstrated true opinions. In the remaining part of III 54, Maimonides elaborates the views of “the ancient and the modern philosophers” on the perfections of man. He states that there are four kinds of perfection of man according to the philosophers. The first is “the perfection of possessions,” which is outside oneself; the second is “the perfection of the bodily constitution and shape,” which is a corporeal perfection and belongs to man “qua animal”; the third is “the perfection of the moral virtues,” the end that most of the commandments serve; the last is “the perfection of the rational virtues,” which is “the true human perfection” (Guide III 54, 634–35). The reason that the highest or true perfection of man consists in acquiring the rational virtues is twofold: on one hand, it is only through rational virtue that man can reach the true opinion about divine things, or so to speak, obtain the knowledge of God, which is “the ultimate end” of man. On the other hand, this perfection belongs to the individual human being alone, so that man can achieve it permanently without resort- ing to anyone else. In other words, according to the philosophers, man can achieve rational virtues self-sufficiently.

34 See Guide I 10, 35–37, where Maimonides explains that one of the meanings of these two terms is “a state of speculation.” On the interpretations of Jacob’s ladder with the final chapters of Mai- monides’s Guide, see further Ralph Lerner, “Maimonides’ Governance of the Solitary,” 44; and Steven Harvey, “Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace,” in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, 61–63. 35 When speaking of the highest human perfection, Maimonides points out: “Thus it is clear that after apprehension, total devotion to Him and the employment of intellectual thought in constantly loving Him should be aimed at. Mostly this is achieved in solitude and isolation. Hence every excellent man stays frequently in solitude and does not meet anyone unless it is necessary” (Guide III 51, 621; bold emphasis added). See also Guide III 54, 636. Ralph Lerner has made a subtle and thorough examina- tion of this state of solitude in the last chapters of the Guide through the perspective of Platonic political philosophy. He differs from others on the theme in stating that “nowhere in the Guide does Maimonides characterize the solitary’s involvement with others as a ‘duty.’” See Lerner, “Maimonides’ Governance of the Solitary,” 44. Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 271

After the philosopher’s view of human perfection comes that of the prophet: Thus saith the Lord: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me. That I am the Lord who exercise loving-kindness [ḥesed], judgment [mishpat], and righteousness [ṣedaqah], in the earth. For in these things I delight, saith the Lord. (Jer. 9:23–24; bold emphasis added)36 Now this passage from the Book of Jeremiah becomes the core text of the sub- sequent discussion. One notices immediately that all three terms explained in the previous chapter—ḥesed, mishpat, and ṣedaqah—occur here. Mai- monides explains that the prophet’s view is in fact identical to that of the philosophers, that the rich ones are lower in perfection than the mighty ones, and the mighty ones are in turn lower than the wise ones. Maimonides makes clear here that the “wise man” in this verse means one “who possesses the moral virtues,” whereas what God requires is to “understand” and “know” Him. Or to use the wording of Maimonides himself: “the term wisdom [ḥokhmah], used in an unrestricted sense and regarded as the end, means in every place the apprehension of Him” (Guide III 54, 636; bold emphasis added). Now we may realize that when Maimonides takes the philosophic wisdom as “unrestricted” in the previous passage, he is trying to differentiate it from the “wisdom” applied in the prophetic books: at the very beginning of the chapter, he points out that the term ḥokhmah has four senses, among which are moral virtue and rational virtue. Although in the prophet’s order of the perfections there is no mention of the phrase “rational virtue,” according to Maimonides, this order of the prophet concerning human perfections is exactly the same order as that of the philosophers. What corresponds to the rational virtue in the passage of Jeremiah is the understanding and knowing of God. One may notice that the sequences of the order of perfection in the philosophers and in the text of the prophet Jeremiah are not the same: whereas the perfection of rational virtues as true or ultimate perfection is listed at the

36 Maimonides quotes in full only Jer. 9:23 (Guide III 54, 636). After a thorough discussion of that passage, Maimonides adds that “in this verse he [the prophet Jeremiah] makes it clear to us that those actions that ought to be known and imitated are loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness.” Yet the terms “loving-kindness,” “judgment,” and “righteousness” are mentioned in Jer. 9:24 rather than in Jer. 9:23. Hence the phrase “in this verse” must refer to Jeremiah 9:24, rather than Jeremiah 9:23, as noted by Shlomo Pines in n31 of the chapter. See Guide III 54, 637. 272 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2

end according to Maimonides’s philosophers, in the passage of Jeremiah as quoted above, “understanding and knowing God” is not the final word of the prophet. Therefore Maimonides explains further that in the aforementioned passage of Jeremiah (9:24), the prophet “does not limit them [that is, human perfections] only to the apprehension of Him” (Guide III 54, 637). In other words, human perfection does not stop at apprehending or knowing the existence, the unity, and the incorporeality of God. Rather, the prophet further raises the requirements of imitating the divine actions, that is, ḥesed, mishpat, and ṣedaqah. Maimonides emphasizes again that he who reaches the highest perfection should not be satisfied with obtaining the rational virtues, but should descend again to the practical life and take care of the exercise of the moral virtues on the earth (ibid.). This passage in Jeremiah combines perfectly the themes of the last two chapters of the Guide, that is, loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness, on one hand, and wisdom on the other. Moreover, Maimonides points out that the knowing and imitating of these moral virtues “on the earth” is “a pivot of the Law” (Guide III 54, 637). For Maimonides, this shows that the “overbold” opinion that providence terminates at the sphere of the moon is not true.37 He states that by saying “that the earth is the Lord’s,” Moses means that “His providence also extends over the earth in the way that corresponds to what the latter is, just as His providence extends over the heavens in the way that corresponds to what they are” (ibid.). The issue of providence is a very important topic in part III of the Guide. Maimonides points out in his discussion of it that providence does extend to the human individual, but it watches over man in accordance with the degree or measure of his perfection. In other words, the more one possesses the rational virtues or the more one perfects one’s intellect, the more one is watched over by providence.38 Here, in the last chapter of the book, Mai- monides does not mention the relationship between the perfection of the intellect and providence. He merely emphasizes that providence extends to “the earth” and thus naturally to the human beings on the earth. It should be noted that “what the latter (i.e., the earth) is” and “what they (i.e., the heavens) are” is natural knowledge that belongs to the inquiry of philosophizing. Maimonides ends the main text of the Guide with the following paragraph:

37 It is worth noting that Maimonides also quotes a verse from the prophet that “the Lord hath forsaken the earth” (Ezek. 9:9) to be a representative of this opinion, which he seems to attribute to Aristotle in III 17–18, 464–77. 38 Cf. Guide III 18, 475; III 51, 624–25. Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 273

It is clear that the perfection of man that may truly be gloried in is the one acquired by him who has achieved, in a measure corresponding to his capacity, apprehension of Him, may He be exalted, and who knows His providence extending over His creatures as manifested in the act of bringing them into being and in their governance as it is. The way of life of such an individual, after he has achieved this apprehension will always have in view loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment, through assimilation to His actions, may He be exalted, just as we have explained several times in this Treatise. (Guide III 54, 638; bold emphasis added) In this passage, Maimonides reiterates the necessity and significance of the route from understanding to actions, or of descending. At the same time, the perfection of man, providence, and actions are once again brought together. For Maimonides, the achieving of the apprehension of God is a sign of man’s achieving intellectual perfection, which, being the true perfection, belongs to the human individual alone (Guide III 54, 635). On the other hand, he also stresses that man ought not to be content with his own perfection, but to practice and teach the moral virtues such as loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment. No ending would be more appropriate than this one for “a Jewish book” devoted to the Jews.39 However, this may not be the whole story. The same passage seems to invite an alternative reading when one notices that Maimonides does not mention the human individual being watched over by providence according to his intellectual perfection. He mentions only that providence extending over the generation and preservation of beings on the earth. In other words, it is the generation and preservation of the species that providence watches over. According to Maimonides’s own classification, this is the opinion of Aristotle.40 Is it the truly final word of Maimonides on providence?

III We may now be in a better position to reflect on the questions, why does Mai- monides call III 51 “a kind of conclusion,” and why does he not end the Guide at III 51? Looking back through III 54, one sees clearly that throughout the

39 Strauss, “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” xiv; Leo Strauss, “Notes on Maimonides’ Book of Knowledge,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 192. Warren Zev Harvey has made a brilliant analysis on this statement of Strauss. See Harvey, “Why Maimonides Was Not a Mutakallim,” in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, 106–7. 40 See Guide III 17, 464–65. 274 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2 whole book Maimonides is consistent in one respect: the highest perfection man can achieve is intellectual perfection. To a large extent, III 51 emphasizes this point in a new light with the notion of “intellectual worship.” A clear understanding of this notion and the account that is related to it should at least help us to try to answer the above questions. According to Maimonides, This kind of worship ought only to be engaged in after intellectual conception has been achieved. If, however, you have apprehended God and His acts in accordance with what is required by the intellect, you should afterwards engage in totally devoting yourself to Him, endeavor to come closer to Him, and strengthen the bond between you and Him—that is, the intellect. (Guide III 51, 620; bold emphasis added) This worship, whether it is a further “step”41 or “ontologically a different kind of intellectual activity than apprehension,”42 is purely “intellectual,” as Maimonides himself later calls it (623).43 In other words, it is a theoretical activity, and thus it has nothing to do with worship in actions or moral practices, nor is it a mystical practice, as its language seemingly suggests.44 Furthermore, in light of III 54, where Maimonides clearly mentions “knowing and imitating” God’s actions (637), we may reach a better understanding of the nature of the intellectual worship in III 51. According to Maimonides, the true reality of God is not His actions, which are merely His attributes.45 The essence of God that is known to man consists in His existence, unity, and incorporeality. Now in Maimonides’s view, the philosophers too regard God as One: “the following dictum of the philosophers with reference to God…

41 Steven Harvey, “Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace,” 66. 42 Josef Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ “Guide” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 324. 43 It might be his failing or perhaps refusing to identify the purely “intellectual” and “individual” nature of this “worship” that makes David Shatz insist that “III:54 leaves the casual reader with two mistaken impressions: that intellectual apprehension is the end of man, and that the commandments play no role in the life of the one who has achieved intellectual perfection.” See David Shatz, “Worship, Corporeality, and Human Perfection,” 61. In fact, Maimonides makes it very clear that “when…you are alone with yourself and no one else is there and while you lie awake upon your bed, you should take great care during these precious times not to set your thought to work on anything other than that intellectual worship consisting in nearness to God and being in His presence in that true reality that I have made known to you and not by way of affections of the imagination” (Guide III 51, 623; bold emphasis added). On the other hand, as we have shown, Guide III 54 does include commandments in its account by requiring the one who has achieved intellectual perfection to “always have in view loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment, through assimilation to His actions” (III 54, 638). 44 Josef Stern points out that despite his “appropriating mystical language,” Maimonides “endows words nonmystical, philosophical content” for this intellectual worship. Josef Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ “Guide,” 324. See further Lerner, “Maimonides’ Governance of the Solitary,” 45; and Harvey, “Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace,” 64n64. 45 See Guide I 47, 106. Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 275

is generally admitted…that He (i.e., God) is the intellect as well as the intellectually cognizing subject and the intellectually cognized object…one single notion in which there is no multiplicity” (Guide I 68, 163).46 In the aforementioned passage of III 51, when Maimonides refers to God as “the intellect,” does he tacitly imply that by imitating God on the highest level, man should make himself the object of his thinking or cognizing so as to achieve his self-knowledge?47 For the closeness and union with God, as a figurative or poetical expression, could be understood as being union with the intellect, in the sense that the imitation of God on the highest level would lead to self-thinking or self-knowledge. If this is so, then that solitary intellectual activity, the one Maimonides named “intellectual worship,” which requires being wholly devoted to thinking oneself and detaching oneself from bodily needs as much as possible, would be no other than philosophizing: after all, Know Thyself is the motto of the genuine philosophers. In addition, “the passionate love” of God to which the attainment of pure thought or of intellectual perfection leads (Guide III 51, 627–28), despite its being “an excess of love,”48 may be seen as the philosophers’ eros for knowledge.49 For Maimonides, “love is proportionate to apprehension” (621), thus he who apprehends more deeply and truly will love more passionately and

46 See Strauss, “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” l; Pines, “Translator’s Introduc- tion,” xcvii–xcviii. 47 See Pines, “Translator’s Introduction,” cxv. 48 Guide III 51, 627. This “excess of love,” however, does not have the same status as that of the “excess of ḥesed [loving-kindness].” Inasmuch as this passionate love is related by Maimonides to intellectual apprehension of God, it is not like the moral virtue ḥesed, for which the mean is the right way to follow. According to Maimonides, the vices of moral virtues “consist in being deficient or excessive,” whereas the vices of rational virtues are “the contrary of these [virtues] or their opposite” (The Second Chapter of Eight Chapters). See Ethical Writings of Maimonides, 65. 49 See, for example, Plato, Symposium 209e8–212a10. Cf. Diotima’s speech in 211e5–212a10 (emphasis added): “do you believe…that life would prove to be a sorry sort of thing, when a human being gazes in the direction of the beautiful and beholds it with the instrument with which he must and is together with it? Or don’t you realize…that only here, in seeing in the way the beautiful is seeable, will he get to engender not phantom images of virtue—because he does not lay hold of a phantom—but true, because he lays hold of the true; and that once he has given birth to and cherished true virtue, it lies within him to become dear to god and, if it is possible for any human being, to become immortal as well?” with one of Maimonides’s descriptions of intellectual worship: “in my opinion it [intellectual worship] consists in setting thought to work on the first intelligible and in devoting oneself exclusively to this as far as this is within one’s capacity. …The exhortation [of David to Solomon in 1 Chron. 28:9] always refers to intellectual apprehensions, not to imagination; for thought concerning imaginings is not called knowledge but that which cometh into your mind. Thus it is clear that after apprehension, total devotion to Him and the employment of intellectual thought in constantly loving Him should be aimed at” (Guide III 51, 621; bold emphasis added). It should be noted that both texts can be seen as poetic expressions of the highest state of theōria or contemplation. The translation of Symposium is taken from Plato’s “Symposium,” trans. Seth Benardete (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 42. 276 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2 constantly. Maimonides illustrates the intensity of this passionate love with the rabbinic saying that Moses, Aaron, and Miriam “died by a kiss.” This kiss is interpreted by Maimonides as “the generally accepted poetical way of expression that calls the apprehension that is achieved in a state of intense and passionate love of Him”50—that is, the Intellect! Does this scene not remind us of the final moments of the lover of philosophy, Socrates, who by saying “to philosophize is to practice dying and being dead” makes even the extremely sad Simmias laugh?51 The pertinence of Socrates’s statement to Maimonides’s explanation of the rabbinic saying regarding the death of Moses and his sib- lings52 depends not only on the fact that both texts mention the separation of soul and body shortly afterwards;53 more importantly, the self-understanding of Socrates—that “the true philosophers construct their understanding of the ‘pure beings’ to which the pure psychē [soul] is thought to be akin,” and that “if the union of these assumed kindred were realized, the psychē of the philosopher would be indistinguishable from its object of knowledge”54—closely echoes Maimonides’s understanding of “intellectual worship.”55 In this sense, intellectual worship, which is meant to be understood as the highest individual intellectual activity, may rightly be taken as philosophizing.

50 Guide III 51, 628 (bold emphasis added). 51 Plato, Phaedo 64a4–b1. The concise expression quoted here is from Seth Benardete, Socrates and Plato: The Dialectics of Eros / Sokrates und Platon (Munich: Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, 2002), 31. See also Benardete, On Plato’s “Symposium” / Über Platons “Symposion” (Munich: Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, 1993), 29–31. Heinrich Meier sketches the dialectic tension between the “practice of dying and being dead” and philosophic eros as a tension “between the necessarily anonymous truth and its individual understanding, between the devotion to the beautiful and the knowledge of our needy nature, which allows this devotion to be good for us.” See Meier, “On the Genealogy of Faith in Revelation,” in Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, trans. Marcus Brainard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 42–43. 52 Plato’s writings, including Phaedo and Symposium, might have been known to Maimonides, at least through Alfarabi’s “Philosophy of Plato.” See Alfarabi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, ed. and trans. Muhsin Mahdi, rev. ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 59–63. 53 See Guide III 51, 628: “it holds good for all of them [i.e., the prophets] that the apprehension of their intellects becomes stronger at the separation.” Plato, Pheado 64c4: “is it anything but the freeing of the soul from the body?” Translation from Plato: Phaedo, ed. and trans. Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 1998), 35. It is worth noting that throughout the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides is reticent about the immortality of the soul (see Pines, “Translator’s Introduc- tion,” lxxvii). The same is true of Alfarabi in his “Philosophy of Plato.” See Leo Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), 371–72. 54 Ronna Burger, The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth (New Heaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 39. 55 We do not intend to establish a historical connection between Plato’s Socratic dialogues and Mai- monides’s Guide. Rather, our purpose is to attempt to show that classical and medieval philosophers are at one with respect to the question “what is philosophy?” Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing 277

As many scholars have noticed, when Maimonides says that III 51 is “a kind of conclusion,” he calls the reader’s attention to the significance of this chapter and its implication.56 Yet, he knows clearly that his readers are not uniform,57 even though he claims that he “prefers to address that single man by himself,” and does “not heed the blame of those many creatures.”58 Given the twofold character of Maimonides’s reader, it is inappropriate to end the Guide of the Perplexed with a highly cryptic and abstract chapter. Moreover, as a book that teaches its readers to know and understand various beings “as what they are,” the Guide itself needs a more comprehensive ending to its teaching as a whole. Thus it is no strange thing that the true opinion of “love of God” highlighted in III 51 needs to be complemented by “fear of God,” that is, by “all actions prescribed by the Law” (III 52, 629–30; bold emphasis added). Through this descending,59 Maimonides suggests a twofold end of the Law: to apprehend the true being of God through loving Him, and to follow the commandments of God through fearing Him. Of course, the higher end is for those who are able to achieve it. It is from this perspective that we maintain that the last two chapters, being lexicographic again, in a more comprehensive and intelligible way, not only supplement III 51–52, but also perfectly complete the whole book. In more than one respect the last two chapters of the Guide correspond to the first two chapters of the book. First of all, as we have said, the genre or form of both parts is lexicography. In the first two chapters, Maimonides devotes himself to explaining the equivocal terms ṣelem (image), demuth (likeness), elohim (God/angels, rulers), panim (faces), and so on, in order to establish the incorporeality of God, on one hand, and the supreme status of philosophic truth, on the other. In the last two chapters, by elaborating

56 See, for example, Harvey, “Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace,” 63–64. 57 See Leo Strauss, “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” xxvi; Ralph Lerner, “Aver- roes and Maimonides in Defense of Philosophizing,” in The Trias of Maimonides: Jewish, Arabic, and Ancient Culture of Knowledge / Die Trias des Maimonides: Jüdische, arabische und antike Wissenskul- tur, ed. Georges Tamer (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 230. 58 Here “that single man” refers to “a single virtuous man,” whom Maimonides takes as his intended or ideal reader. Some may regard this man as Rabbi Joseph, the addressee of the Guide (see Guide, “Epistle Dedicatory,” 3–4). Yet obviously, the singular in the statement is used in sharp contrast with “ten thousand ignoramuses” or “those many creatures.” Therefore, it should not be taken literally. See Guide, “Instruction with respect to this Treatise,” in The Guide of the Perplexed, 16. 59 Although it might not be too far-fetched to regard III 51 as the “real end” of the Guide, as David Shatz insists, his statement that III 54 “conceptually precedes III 51,” and thus “presents a highly simplistic and misleading picture of Maimonides’ views on human perfection,” is not acceptable. See Shatz, “Worship, Corporeality, and Human Perfection,” 50, 59. 278 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2

the ambiguous terms ḥesed (loving-kindness), mishpat (judgment), ṣedaqah (justness/fairness, righteousness), and ḥokhmah (wisdom), he makes clear the differences between the moral virtues and the rational virtues in both philosophers and prophets, and treats the latter as the highest or ultimate human end. Second, there are clues that point to Maimonides’s praise of the philosophic life throughout all these four chapters. Maimonides interprets the “image” of God in which man participated at creation as the natural form of man or as intellectual apprehension, and thus extols intellect as the highest faculty of human cognition. Also, Maimonides interprets the knowledge that the first man lost through his action of eating the forbidden fruit as the knowledge of truth and falsehood. By doing so, he makes it clear that the pursuit of truth is higher than the pursuit of the good or noble. In other words, the theoretical life is for him higher than the moral or practical life. In the same way, by defining the wisdom of the prophets as moral virtue, Mai- monides differentiates it from the wisdom of the philosophers, which is taken as rational virtue, and further confirms the higher status of philosophizing. Last but by no means least, when emphasizing the supreme status of intellectual apprehension, rational virtues, and philosophizing as a way of life, nowhere in these chapters does Maimonides ignore the importance of practical life. For Maimonides, the generally accepted opinions on good and evil are necessary to the human communities, and so are they to “our” community; and the man who achieves intellectual perfection ought to descend to the community to teach people to practice correctly what he knows about divine and human things. In other words, the moral virtues, or the observance of the commandments of the Torah, are no less important than the rational virtues or philosophizing. As he states, things “greater in nobility” are not necessarily or always identical to those prior in nature and time (Guide III 27, 510).