Maimonides the Rationalist
Maimonides the Rationalist
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Abstract
Maimonides was not the first rabbinic scholar to take an interest in philosophy, but he was unique in being a towering figure in both areas. His law code, the Mishneh torah, stands as one of the two most intensely studied rabbinic works coming out of the Middle Ages, while his Guide of the Perplexed is the most influential and widely read Jewish philosophical work ever written. Admirers and critics have arrived at wildly divergent perceptions of the man. We have Maimonides the atheist or agnostic, Maimonides the sceptic, Maimonides the deist, Maimonides the Aristotelian, the Averroist, or proto-Kantian. We have a Maimonides seduced by the blandishments of ‘accursed philosophy’; a Maimonides who sowed the seeds that led to Spanish Jews' loss of faith and mass apostasy and who was therefore responsible for the demise of Spanish Jewry; a Maimonides who incorporated philosophical elements into his rabbinic works and wrote the Guide of the Perplexed not to propagate doctrines to which he was personally committed but in order to rescue errant souls seduced by philosophy; a Maimonides who was the defender of the faith and defined the articles of Jewish belief for all time. In his own estimation, Maimonides was neither exclusively a dedicated philosopher nor exclusively a devoted rabbinist. This book examines Maimonides' efforts to reconstitute this all-embracing, rationalist worldview that he felt had been lost during the millennium-long exile.
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Front Matter
- One The Study of Philosophy as a Religious Obligation
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Two
The First Two Positive Divine Commandments
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Three
Maimonides’ Knowledge of the Philosophical Literature in his Rabbinic Period
- Four Maimonides’ Shemonah perakim andAlfarabi’s Fuṣūl Muntazaᒼa
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Five
Maimonides’ Knowledge of the Philosophical Literature in his Later Period
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Six
Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge
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Seven
A Problematic Sentence in Moreh nevukhim, ii. 24
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Eight
Maimonides’ Ethical Systems
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Nine
Maimonides the Rationalist
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End Matter
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