maimonides || Language, Logic, and the Art of Demonstration

✍ Scribed by Rudavsky, T. M.

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 517 KB
• Edition: 1
• Category: Article
• ISBN: 1405148977
• DOI: 10.1002/9781444318012.ch2

✦ Synopsis

aimonides' philosophical works give eloquent testimony to the tensions apparent in trying to reconcile traditional Jewish beliefs with the methods and content of philosophical speculation. Often, these philosophical ideas and methods conflict with the views found in Scripture. Take for example, the doctrine of creation: while Genesis portrays God as having created the world in time, Aristotle and Plato both postulate an eternal world in which matter has always existed. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, Maimonides' major philosophical work, The Guide of the Perplexed, as well as shorter introductions to his legal works, often incorporate ideas from Greek and Islamic philosophy, and present an eclectic synthesis of Judaic and philosophical materials. In this chapter, we turn to the methods used by Maimonides in grappling with these tensions between Athens and Jerusalem, between the domains of faith and reason.

Maimonides provided to the reader clear guidelines on how to approach the Guide, and what to expect from its chapters; he suggested that the work contained both an exoteric, or surface, meaning, and an esoteric or hidden meaning that must be uncovered by the astute reader. After exploring Maimonides' purposes in writing his philosophical works, we then turn to Maimonides' wellknown "Articles of Faith," a summary of doctrinal belief in Judaism. Of these thirteen beliefs, Maimonides emphasized the unity and incorporeality of God, and provided Jews with a way of reinterpreting scriptural passages and terms that violate these two attributes. In the final section of this chapter, I shall introduce the importance of philosophical and scientific demonstration to Maimonides' overall enterprise, with particular emphasis upon the role played by demonstration in grounding our knowledge claims.