A plague which has increasingly poisoned all forms of political discourse in recent years is the inability for opposing sides to agree on a basic set of facts. Instead of broadly sharing a common understanding of the various problems and challenges facing the country – a foundation which allows for bipartisan cooperation – conflicting parties, fuelled by partisan media and social media, struggle to find any basis for sensible conversation.
In this context, Rambam’s endorsement of a lifelong religious journey in order to train one’s mind towards achieving some degree of objective rational thinking should be warmly welcomed and widely taught. Without this meticulous training of the mind and character, his claim that
“When a man finds himself inclining … towards lusts and pleasures, anger and fury…he shall be at fault and stumble wherever he goes. For he shall seek opinions that will help him believe in whatever his nature inclines towards”
is increasingly played out in the angry and fragmented 21stcentury world.
I am honoured that my analysis of Rambam’s approach to the search for objective knowledge, has been included in this exciting new collection of essays: Spinoza Strauss and Sinai, published by Kodesh Press.
In recent centuries, philosophers such as David Hume and John Locke have argued that a person's mind, shaped by subjective sense-data and experience, is wholly incapable of processing an objective rational analysis and that the world, as a "thing-in-itself," is therefore unknowable. Immanuel Kant, who adopted and furthered this theory, claimed to have effected a revolution in philosophy by demonstrating that, rather than our knowledge being shaped by an object (or concept) itself, in truth our perception of the “thing itself” is shaped by our prior knowledge and conditioning.
It is difficult to overstate the gravity of the challenge that this represents to the entire edifice of Maimonidean thought. Rambam emphasises the intellect as humanity’s crowning glory, the rational faculty endowed to it by God through which humanity can be differentiated and distinguished from the mundane physical world and all its inhabiting creatures. Only by developing the intellect to comprehend and absorb objective, universal, divine truths––by perceiving objects and concepts “as they are”––can we form a connection with the divine and thereby earn divine providence, prophecy, and the World to Come.
Crucially, however, Rambam also maintains that a rigorous curriculum of character development and intellectual training can gradually elevate the human mind from the realm of subjectivity, and provide a person with a degree of objective knowledge as to religious and philosophical truths. People whose minds are trained in this way would, in Rambam’s view, be entitled to claim that their religious values belong more to the category of knowledge than belief.
My essay in this book – which is a fuller and more developed version of some of the arguments set forward in Judaism Reclaimed – carefully examines Rambam’s approach. It argues that Rambam took very seriously the arguments which were of such concern to later philosophers, and that the difficulty facing the human intellect when it attempts to comprehend objective truths features strongly in Rambam’s philosophy. It seems to me that this understanding of Rambam’s approach not only defends his thought from the charge that it is outdated, but also bears the potential to enhance the ability of those grappling with his philosophy in the 21st century to enrich their own religious lives.
I look forward to reading and possibly reviewing some of the other essays in this book in the near future.
First posted to Facebook 6 February 2022, here.
