Moses Maimonides, Man of No Mystery

Maimonides is one of the towering figures of Jewish intellectual history, and the perfect place to kick off our series on Jewish thinkers. He thought that the life of the mind is the best life for human beings. And he meant all human beings, not just Jewish people: it’s “not only the tribe of Levi,” he said, who can live the fullest possible life, “but also each and every individual whose knowledge gives him understanding.” Everybody has the opportunity to live a good life and get the proper reward from God, just so long as they use their reason.

That’s easy enough to agree with, perhaps, for those of us already engaged in the life of the mind, in some form or other. But is it really the best life for everybody? Maimonides thought so: he said that if you use your reason properly, you’ll come to appreciate how great the world is—a place full of bees, butterflies, and bountiful beauty—and once you’ve seen that, you’ll be grateful to whoever created it. So in spite of the apparent paradox in using logic to produce faith, Maimonides argues that reason will bring us closer to God.

Isn’t this a rather sterile picture of religious faith? Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard might think so. In his view, belief in a higher power is all about the “leap of faith”; if you’re just being logical, you’re getting it all wrong. But Maimonides might have something to say back to him. If you can use your reason to understand the universe and see how miraculously everything hangs together, you’ll end up in a vision that takes you beyond the everyday. In fact even of scientists talk this way, a lot of the time. Reason isn’t just test tubes and calculators: it’s deep-sea submarines and James Webb telescopes. Reason is enchanting!

Still—is the world really bees, butterflies, and beauty? Isn’t it also disease, death, and disaster? Plenty of theologians have bitten the bullet on that, saying that the physical world is decidedly imperfect, and that the way to reach God is by transcending it, not by admiring it. Even within the Jewish tradition there are mystics who tell us to rise above the physical if we want to find God.

Maimonides has an answer for this too. He accepts that suffering exists; he simply thinks we focus too much on that aspect of existence, and that ultimately the bad stuff is outweighed by the good. We should really quit complaining so much: once we shift our perspective and see everything as a totality, Maimonides says, we will “realize the divine wisdom manifested in [everything], [and] [our] love for God will increase.” Maimonides might well have approved of the 20th-century joke about two philosophers. One asks “Why is there something rather than nothing?” And the other says “Gee, even if there was nothing, you’d still complain!”

So can thinking on its own really be what makes for a flourishing human life? What would Maimonides say about our other capacities, like creative pursuits, or love? We’ll find out from our eminently rational guest: it’s Ross Brann from Cornell University, author of Moses Maimonides: A Very Short Introduction.