Maimonides

Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

A free Creator of whom one can only say what He is not

Un Dieu personnelIl le dit expressément

Maimonides places at the foundation of the whole law the knowledge that there exists a First Being who gives existence to all that exists, and in the Guide of the Perplexed he defends that the world was created by divine will, and does not emanate from God by necessity as the Aristotelians held; he grants that the question cannot be demonstrated, but holds creation to be the more reasonable thesis and the one the Torah requires. This God creates, reveals Himself to the prophets and exercises providence. But Maimonides is also the great master of negative theology: God has no positive attributes, His names describe His actions and not His essence, and everything said to praise Him contains something that diminishes Him, so that silence is most fitting. His God is personal in what He does and unsayable in what He is.

Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

What we are is intellect, and only the intellect that knows endures

Une âme créée et immortelleIl le dit expressément

Maimonides opens the Guide of the Perplexed by explaining that the image of God in which man was created is not a bodily shape but his natural form: the intellect. That is what man properly is. In the Mishneh Torah he distinguishes the soul that animates the body, which perishes with it, from the form that knows the separate intelligences, which comes from God and does not die. The world to come consists, for him, in this existence of souls without bodies, like the angels, enjoying the knowledge of God. But that immortality is not received ready-made: it depends on what each person has come to know. The true self is the intellect which, through study and right living, has passed from potentiality to act.

Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

Most evils we bring on ourselves by desiring the superfluous

Le désir et l'attachementIl le dit expressément

In the third part of the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides classifies evils into three species. The first come from matter: man, like everything that is born, falls ill and dies, and to complain of it is to ask to be something else. The second are those some men inflict on others, wars and tyrannies, rarer than they seem. The third, the most numerous, are those each person brings on himself through his vices: excess in food, drink and sex, and above all the desire for the superfluous, which has no limit, whereas what is necessary is little and easily obtained. He has noted earlier that evils are at bottom born of ignorance, a privation of knowledge. The remedy is the middle way and knowledge.

Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

The world to come is the intellect's life; resurrection, a principle of faith

Vie éternelle et résurrectionIl le dit expressément

Maimonides distinguishes three things that tradition confused. The messianic era is a historical time of peace and study, with no alteration of the natural order. The world to come, the ultimate reward, is the soul's existence without a body, like that of the angels, enjoying the knowledge of God: there is no food or drink there, and whoever imagines it as a feast has understood nothing. The resurrection of the dead is among his thirteen principles of faith; accused of denying it because the Mishneh Torah barely mentions it, he wrote a treatise to affirm it, while maintaining that the resurrected will die again and that the final destiny remains the life of the soul. What endures is the intellect that has known God.

Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

Ultimate perfection is to know God, and from that knowledge love is born

Par la connaissance directeIl le dit expressément

At the end of the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides distinguishes four perfections: of possessions, of the body, of the moral virtues and of the intellect. Only the last truly belongs to man and gives him eternal life: to know God as far as possible. The commandments and the virtues are necessary, for they order the body and society and prepare the mind, but they are not the end. In the Mishneh Torah he describes the love of God as the fruit of this knowledge: whoever contemplates the works and creatures and sees in them a wisdom beyond measure at once loves. And knowledge flows into action: whoever knows God seeks to imitate His ways of lovingkindness, judgement and righteousness on earth.

Faut-il un maître ?

A chain of tradition from Moses, and truth from whoever speaks it

La communauté et la traditionIl le dit expressément

Maimonides opens his Introduction to the Mishnah and the Mishneh Torah by tracing the chain of transmission of the oral law from Moses, generation after generation, down to the sages of the Talmud: Judaism is received within a community and its teachers. For the secrets of the Torah — the work of creation and the work of the chariot — he requires a master: they are transmitted only from mouth to mouth to a wise and able disciple, and the Guide itself is written as a letter to a pupil. But that authority does not replace reason. In the preface to the Eight Chapters he declares that he has taken ideas from ancient and modern philosophers and that one should hear the truth from whoever speaks it. Tradition transmits; the intellect examines.

Le monde est-il réel ?

A world created, ordered and good: evil is privation

Une création bonne et réelleIl le dit expressément

Maimonides defends in the Guide of the Perplexed that the world was created by God's will and does not exist eternally by necessity, and describes it as an ordered whole, comparable to a single living individual whose parts are related to one another. His acts are neither vain nor arbitrary, though their ultimate ends are not always accessible to us. Evil is not a positive reality created by God but privation: illness is absence of health, ignorance absence of knowledge, and what proceeds from God is only existence, which is a good; hence the Torah declares the work of the six days very good. The world is real, has stable laws, and its study, the science of nature, leads to knowledge and love of its Creator.

Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

To love God like a lover who cannot stop thinking of his beloved

Le désir ardent et l'unionIl le dit expressément

Maimonides, the most rationalist of medieval Jewish thinkers, describes the love of God with the most passionate image. In the Mishneh Torah he says one must love Him with a great and very strong love, until the soul is bound to Him and thinks of Him always, like someone lovesick who cannot turn his thoughts from a woman and thinks of her sitting, standing, eating and drinking. But that love is born of knowledge and is proportional to it: whoever contemplates the creatures and discovers in them a wisdom beyond measure at once loves, and the more he knows, the more he loves. That is why serving God out of love, and not in hope of reward, is the rank of the wise. Love of others is ordered in charity.

Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

Every man can be righteous like Moses or wicked like Jeroboam

Un libre arbitre réelIl le dit expressément

Maimonides makes free will a pillar of the Torah. In the laws of repentance in the Mishneh Torah he states that every man has been given the power to choose: if he wishes to incline towards the good way and be righteous, he can; if he wishes to incline towards the evil one and be wicked, he can too. Each can become righteous like Moses or wicked like Jeroboam, and no one compels him or decrees his path. Without that freedom, the commandments, repentance, reward and punishment would be meaningless. That is why he rejects astrology, which in his letter to the sages of Montpellier he calls superstition, and the opinions that make destiny something fixed. He grants that reconciling this freedom with divine knowledge exceeds human understanding.

Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

Prayer culminates in continuous intellectual contemplation of God

Voir la réalité telle qu'elle estIl le dit expressément

In chapter 51 of the third part of the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides describes the worship proper to one who has attained knowledge of God: it is no longer the outward repetition of words but the concentration of the intellect upon Him. He proposes a gradual exercise: begin by reciting the Shema and the prayers with full attention, without being distracted by anything else; then extend that attention to the reading of the Torah and the other commandments; and finally keep one's thought on God even while eating or conversing. Solitude and retreat favour that state. In the Mishneh Torah he rules that prayer without intention is not prayer; the end of worship is to contemplate, not to ask.

La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

Torah and demonstration cannot contradict each other; if they clash, the text is interpreted

L'Écriture et le raisonnementIl le dit expressément

The Guide of the Perplexed was born for the reader who, trained in Torah and in philosophy, feels perplexed by their apparent contradictions. Maimonides holds that revealed truth and demonstrated truth cannot be opposed: when Scripture seems to ascribe a body or passions to God, it must be interpreted, because demonstration proves He has none. But he also marks the limits of reason: there are things the human intellect cannot reach, such as God's essence, and questions it cannot demonstrate, such as the eternity or creation of the world; on these, and only these, prophetic tradition decides. The study of science and philosophy is therefore a religious duty, and the summit of worship is knowledge.

Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

The intellect with God and the body among men, like Moses

La contemplation dans l'actionIl le dit expressément

Maimonides rejects extreme asceticism: in the Mishneh Torah he teaches the middle way and warns against those who deprive themselves of food, abstain from marriage or withdraw to the deserts thinking they thus serve God better. His ideal appears in chapter 51 of the third part of the Guide: the patriarchs and Moses had their intellect always united with God while their bodies were busy with flocks, family and the government of the people. And the Guide ends by asking us to imitate God's ways by practising lovingkindness, judgement and righteousness on earth. He lived it himself: physician at Saladin's court, head of the Jewish community of Egypt and lawgiver, without abandoning contemplation.