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Maimonides' Critical Epistemology and Guide 2:24

2008; Indiana University Press; Volume: 8; Linguagem: Inglês

10.2979/ale.2008.-.8.213

1553-3956

Warren Zev Harvey,

Biblical Studies and Interpretation

Maimonides’ Critical Epistemology and Guide 2:24 Warren Zev Harvey (bio) In a series of essays written between 1979 and his death in 1990, Shlomo Pines argued, against Leo Strauss, that Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed does not have only two levels of interpretation, the “exoteric” and the “esoteric,” or Revelation and Reason, or Jerusalem and Athens, but four levels, which may be described as follows in order of profundity: (1) traditional or dialectical theology (kalām), (2) orthodox Aristotelianism (including “philosophical theology”), (3) critical epistemology (“critical” in the Kantian sense), and (4) intellectualist mysticism (including ṣūfī elements). This means that orthodox Aristotelianism is not the esoteric level of the Guide, as Strauss had thought, but the second most exoteric one. While on the second level Maimonides expounds venerable Aristotelian doctrines, on the third he casts doubt on them.1 Although Pines spoke of four levels in the Guide, he devoted his efforts to clarifying the third and discussed the fourth only briefly. [End Page 213] ***When Pines began publishing his findings on Maimonides’ critical epistemology they made a deep impression on me. They confirmed motifs I had found in my dissertation on Ḥasdai Crescas’ critique of Maimonides’ epistemology.2 In my own subsequent work I often tried to develop themes suggested by Pines’ new insights. Today, almost three decades of study later, I am more convinced than ever that Pines’ approach is not only correct but an understatement. There are many more than four levels of meaning in the Guide. Maimonides pursues in it multiple philosophic and religious approaches. I love Sylvie Anne Goldberg’s scrumptious metaphor: the Guide is a mille-feuille.3 Pines’ approach represented a new beginning with respect to modern scholarship on Maimonides’ Guide, but not with respect to the medieval literature. The view that Maimonides espouses a confident rationalism exoterically but teaches a critical epistemology esoterically is found in the writings of some of his most astute medieval interpreters. The following example is instructive. A fundamental claim of Pines’ is that Maimonides, according to his critical epistemology, rejected the possibility of all metaphysical knowledge, i.e., not only knowledge of God but also that of the separate intellects. In his essay “The Limitations of Human Knowledge” he finds evidence for this claim in Maimonides’ discussion of Exodus 33:18–23. According to Maimonides’ interpretation of this text in Guide 1:54 (and 1:64, 3:13, and elsewhere), Moses achieved knowledge of all things, except the unknowable divine “face” or “glory,” which Maimonides explicitly identifies with God’s essence.4 In 1:37, the Aramaic translation of Onqelos (on Exodus 33:23) is cited and interpreted somewhat freely by Maimonides to mean that the divine “face” or “glory” refers to the separate intellects.5 Pines suggests that the view affirmed explicitly by Maimonides, according to which Moses knew the separate intellects, is his exoteric view, while the view he attributes to Onqelos, according to which Moses did not know them, is his esoteric one. He concludes: [End Page 214] Maimonides had no need to give … Onqelos’ translation or to put on it an interpretation that runs counter to the explanation [End Page 215] which is put forward as his own. This … may possibly be accounted for by the supposition that he wished to hint that the natural limitations of the knowledge of a corporeal being made it probable that Onqelos’ interpretation was correct and that Maimonides’ own explanation was propounded for [exoteric] theological reasons, etc.6 Pines’ opinion that Maimonides esoterically accepts Onqelos’ view is found in the medieval literature. In his Commentary on Guide 1:37, Joseph Ibn Kaspi states that Onqelos’ view, according to which it is impossible for any human being to know the separate intellects, agrees with that of “all the best philosophers” and hints that Maimonides esoterically accepted it. He adds: “This subject is very subtle; there is nothing like it in all of Scripture or in all the speculative sciences.” Similarly, in his Commentary on Guide 3:7, he calls attention to Maimonides’ statement there that the divine “glory” is not the divine essence and notes that this contradicts the view affirmed in 3:13 (and 1:54...