3

Maimonides’ Middle Way: Teleology as a Guide

for the Perplexed

FROM ALLUDING TO ARTICULATING: ARISTOTLE

AND THE FORMATION OF NATURAL LAW THEORY

In Antigone we see the need for an intermediary aspect of law to address contra-
dictions or conflicts between human and divine law. As I have argued, if there is no
such mediating device – that is, if law is conceptualized not as a tripartite assemblage
of human, natural, and divine law but rather as discrete sets of divine and human law
that are always potentially in conflict – religious freedom will be plagued by the
constant tug-of-war between human and divine law.1 Antigone gave us some insight
as to what that mediating aspect of justice or law might be, but hers remained a pre-
theoretical version of natural law, invoking “that Justice who lives with the gods
below” (452), unknown in origin and thereby conceptually distinct from divine law,
as justification for her act in defiance of the human law. To the Greeks, however, this
natural law remained largely just that – pre-theoretical – and Antigone ultimately
sided with “those gods below,” whom she didn’t even consider reliable allies
(921–923). Natural law loomed in the background, but Antigone couldn’t, in the
end, give voice to it.
Such allusions to natural law were common to Greek thinkers, yet fully theorized
notions of it are wanting among them. The possible exception to this rule is Aristotle.
In the Rhetoric, Aristotle noted that there is something resembling justice by nature
that he observed in Antigone: “the general law . . . is based on nature, whereas the
written laws often vary (this is why Antigone in Sophocles justifies herself for having
buried Polynices contrary to the law of Creon, but not contrary to the unwritten
law . . .)” (Rhet. 1375a15).2 Likewise, in the Nicomachean Ethics, he avers that
“political justice is of two kinds, one natural, the other conventional. A rule of
1
It could be added that this binary conception of human and divine forms of law threatens human rights
more broadly, for it presents no obstacle to an understanding of divine law that is wholly in opposition
to their existence. If, for instance, one understands her religion’s divine law to command, say, gender
inequality or slave castes by birth, or if it severely squashes freedom of speech, then the free practice of
that religion undermines the very democratic system that, politically speaking, gives rise to religious
freedom (and human rights more broadly) in the first place.
2
All references to the Rhetoric come from Plato: Gorgias & Aristotle: Rhetoric, ed. Joe Sachs
(Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2009).

61
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 62 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

justice is natural that has the same validity everywhere, and does not depend on our
accepting it or not” (NE 1134b1).3 Though it is not always easy, Aristotle wrote, “to see
which rules of justice, though not absolute, are natural, and which are not natural
but legal and conventional,” this does not change the fact that “nevertheless, there is
such a thing as natural justice” (NE 1134b15–18). Whether this, together with a few
related discussions, constitutes an Aristotelian natural law remains in dispute. What
is clear, however, is that by the medieval period, natural law had become a fixture of
philosophical reasoning, due in part to Stoic developments as well as this
Aristotelian foundation.4 Law was understood to reflect what is (i.e., what exists
naturally); the natural law merely articulated the proper ordering of things by nature.
But natural law is limited to what humans can know through natural reason. This
fits well within the confines of philosophy but perhaps less well within revealed
religion, which purports to make clear the will of God. So what happens to natural
law once God reveals Himself? Does not God’s explicit revelation override any other
form of law, human or natural? This question is quite visibly in the background of
this book’s argument, for to answer in the affirmative is to render natural law
impotent to do what I am suggesting it can do, viz., bridge the human law-divine
law gap. To answer in the negative, on the other hand, would seem to suggest that
natural law is in some way superior to God’s revelation, which, apart from theolo-
gical objections, is a claim that will do little to persuade religious people and
communities to adhere to it. Therefore, if natural law is to contribute anything
toward religious freedom, it must be able to work not only with natural reason but
also from within the specific – and varied – confines of religions themselves; it must
accept God’s self-revelation and still hold as law. For it is no solution to the problem
of the conflict of divine and human law to simply assert a third, independent law;
there must be a resolution for those people who consider themselves bound by both
human and divine law but who find themselves, with Antigone, caught between
competing laws.5
It is to such people that medieval Aristotelian philosophers may provide a way
forward. It is a simplification, but not a wholly misleading one, to state that
Christianity has its Aquinas, Islam its Ibn Rushd, and Judaism its Maimonides.6
3
All references to the Nicomachean Ethics come from Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence
Irwin, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1999).
4
Cicero identified natural law with law itself: to him, law is the “the highest reason, inherent in nature,
which enjoins what ought to be done and forbids the opposite” (De Legibus 1.18) See Marcus Tullius
Cicero, The Republic and The Laws, ed. Jonathan Powell, trans. Niall Rudd (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008), 103. Indeed, the Stoic conception of law was so closely bound to the idea of
a law of nature that, as Elizabeth Asmis writes, in “strict Stoic terminology, the addition ‘of nature’ is
redundant.” Elizabeth Asmis, “Cicero on natural law and the laws of the state,” Classical Antiquity 27,
no. 1 (April 2008), 3.
5
This could be called the “existential warrant” for the existence of natural law, for which term I am
indebted to Joshua Mitchell.
6
Indeed, Leo Strauss also makes this point, albeit in a qualified way; see Persecution and the Art of
Writing (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 7.

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 Maimonides’ Middle Way 63

These philosophers sought to harmonize their medieval faiths with Aristotelian

philosophy, thereby “sav[ing] revelation from being reduced to reason, and . . . the
law from being reduced to divine caprice.”7 This tradition of integrating faith and
reason has survived differently in each of the faiths, but for Judaism, the influence of
Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon) is difficult to exaggerate. Born in Cordoba in
1138, his family fled from Spanish Almohad rule in 1148 to Fez, Morocco, from where
he would eventually be forced again to flee to Fustat, Egypt (Old Cairo). Despite
these interruptions, he was able to produce his Treatise on the Art of Logic and
Commentary on the Mishneh by the age of thirty, then his religious magnum opus,
the Mishneh Torah, which remains one of the most influential works of Jewish law
and teaching to this day.
The focus of this chapter, however, is Maimonides’ philosophical masterpiece,
The Guide of the Perplexed, completed around 1190, which has been studied con-
tinuously since Maimonides’ time both within and outside of Jewish circles. While
its name may suggest a treatise or other systematic exposition of perplexing ques-
tions, it is instead in fact an extended letter, addressed, at least ostensibly, to a former
student of Maimonides, Rabbi Joseph. Joseph had demonstrated exceptional curi-
osity and promise during his studies with Maimonides, but his precocity was
evidently not easily satisfied, and after leaving the latter’s charge, he had moved on
to study with the mutakallimūn, or dialectical theologians. But the ideas Joseph
encountered in his studies with the mutakallimūn, in Maimonides’ description, led
him to question whether the theologians’ methods were “demonstrative” (i.e.,
whether they could lead to certainty) – “and, if not, to what art they belonged.”8
Should these methods not be sound, Joseph was left wondering whether the theo-
logical training he was receiving needed to be jettisoned in favor of the philosophical
training he had received from Maimonides – or, on the contrary, whether he needed
to let go of philosophical speculation in favor of faith alone. Joseph therefore asked
Maimonides “to make clear to [him] certain things pertaining to divine matters,”9 in
essence inquiring as to the truth of the Jewish religion and how, if at all, that truth
can be squared with philosophical investigation. As the Guide makes clear,
Maimonides did not find the theologians’ methods sound, and he was eager “that
the truth should be established in [Joseph’s] mind according to the proper methods.”
Maimonides insisted that “certainty should not come . . . by accident” but rather by
rigorous intellectual activity.10 Religious truth is discoverable, for Maimonides, and
even some measure of certainty about God and the nature of the world. But arriving
7
David Novak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 97.
8
Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1963), 4. Also Dalālat al-Hāʾirı̄n, transcribed from Judeo-Arabic script into Arabic script by
Husseyin Atay (Ankara: Ankara University Press, 1972), 4. References to the Guide hereafter note
both Pines’ (English) and Atay’s (Arabic) paginations.
9
Maimonides, Guide, 3; Atay, 3–4.
10
Maimonides, Guide, Epistle Dedicatory, 4; Atay, 4.

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 64 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

at truth, even (or perhaps especially) truth about God, necessarily takes the student
through philosophy, which is what Maimonides sets out to do in his Guide.
The Guide is in some ways a strange creature, for Maimonides had already
labored to demonstrate the rationality of the Jewish faith in the Commentary on
the Mishneh and the Mishneh Torah, where he illustrated the rationally discernible
ends of Jewish law. The law, in other words, is not a collection of arbitrary divine
commands; rather, it has specific aims, namely the welfare of body and the welfare of
soul. Each commandment can be traced to one or the other end.11 So why did
Maimonides add a later, separate work (and a lengthy one at that) to achieve
essentially the same thing?
The answer to this question, and the reason why Maimonides is a useful guide for
the purposes of this book, involves the role of the mutakallimūn – and, even more
fundamentally, the tension between religion and philosophy. I said above that it
would be a simplification to align Maimonides with Aquinas and Ibn Rushd; part of
the reason for this is that his meaning is far more elusive than those found in the
works of these other Aristotelian religious thinkers. As Kenneth Seeskin points out,
the Guide opens not by stating an argument but by presenting an intellectual
conflict.12 One might add that this conflict, the aporia with which Joseph was
apparently struck, is never fully resolved but instead endures throughout the book.
Maimonides was thus a rationalist in the sense that he insisted on the rational
ordering of the world, but not, as we see below, if one takes it to mean that all things
can be explained through reason alone.13 Ralph Lerner describes Maimonides’ goal
in the Guide as providing “remedial education . . . People need rather to recognize
what philosophy has shown: That there is a world with a stable nature . . . That this
world is subject to orderly, systematic investigation by science” – but also, “there are
limits to human understanding and human efficacy.”14 Maimonides reflects this
middling approach in the Guide’s introduction, albeit in a characteristically ambig-
uous way: “I do not say that this Treatise will remove all difficulties for those who
understand it,” but then again, “it will remove most of the difficulties, and those of
the greatest moment.”15 Even such purported clarity emerges only to a point, how-
ever, as Maimonides explicitly refuses to arrange his teachings “in coherent fashion,”
for that would run counter to his purpose, which is “that the truths be glimpsed and
then again be concealed, so as not to oppose that divine purpose . . . which has
concealed from the vulgar among the people those truths especially requisite for His

11
See Kenneth Seeskin, “Maimonides,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N, Zalta,
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimonides/. Maimonides reiterates this claim in Guide III.27:
“The Law as a whole aims at two things: the welfare of the soul and the welfare of the body.”
12
Kenneth Seeskin, Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000), 12.
13
I hasten to add that this latter point would hold as true for Ibn Rushd and Aquinas as well.
14
Ralph Lerner, Maimonides’ Empire of Light (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 9–10.
15
Maimonides, Guide, Introduction to the first part, 6; Atay, 6, emphasis added.

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 Maimonides’ Middle Way 65

apprehension.”16 The Guide of the Perplexed is first of all intended, then, only for
those capable of true perplexity – those who, like Joseph, are intellectually able to
hold two truths in tension with each other without rejecting one or the other out of
hand, yet for whom that tension proves spiritually or intellectually troubling. But it
seems equally clear that it was not meant to settle those tensions once and for all
because, as we see below, Maimonides’ rationalism would not allow such bold
confidence in rationality itself.

KALĀM, PHILOSOPHY, AND MAIMONIDES’ METHOD

Kalām, the art of the theologians under whom Joseph was studying, was a form of
theology prominent in medieval Islam but the methods of which became popular in
Judaism as well, due to the era’s extensive intermixing of Muslim and Jewish
theologians. Its methods, said originally to be taken from Christian theology,17
were marked by a dialectical approach rather than the apodeictic, or demonstrative,
methods of philosophy. This gave rise to a dispute between philosophers and
dialectical theologians (mutakallimūn, practitioners of kalām), a dispute to which
Maimonides did much to contribute. At issue was the conflict between an
Aristotelian view of the world, according to which causes imbued in the nature of
the world dictated its order (including, to some extent, its moral order), and religion,
in which God was the author and cause of the universe and its events. In other words,
Maimonides was dealing with the “antithesis . . . between the God of religion who
possesses a free will, in the exercise of which He is not bound to act in accordance
with the order of nature, and the God of the Aristotelian philosophers, who is
hamstrung by the immutability of this order.”18 The battle lines were drawn quite
clearly: to the Aristotelian philosopher, kalām was intellectually dishonest, relying
on those premises it had already accepted on faith rather than by reason, whereas to
the mutakallimūn, philosophers were just as dependent on faith, for their own first
principles could not be proved, and were thus at best in denial of the incompatibility
between their discipline and religion.

16
Maimonides, Guide, Introduction to the first part, 6–7; Atay, 7.
17
The Christian origins of kalām are generally accepted, but the specific path of transmission is one of
speculation. Maimonides himself seems to indicate that mutakallimūn drew inspiration from the
(pre-Islamic) works of John Philoponus/John the Grammarian (d. 570 CE; see Guide I.71), among
others, whereas later scholars have speculated that kalām’s Muslim origins may have derived from
apologetic works of John of Damascus (d. 749 CE). See M. A. Wolfe, “The origins of kalām,” Bulletin
of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43 (1980), 32–43.
18
Maimonides, Guide, cxxvii. Again, as Pines points out, this tension was perhaps most famously
addressed in al-Ghāzālı̄’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-falāsifa) and Ibn Rushd’s
response, The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahāfut at-tahāfut). Al-Ghāzālı̄ purported to show that
the so-called demonstration of the falāsifa (Hellenizing philosophers) itself rested on a sort of
epistemological faith, not on premises that their own standards of validity could admit. Ibn Rushd’s
response then took al-Ghāzālı̄’s arguments to task as being dialectic, rather than demonstrative, in
nature.

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 66 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

In the Guide, Maimonides provides his own genealogy of kalām, beginning with
the Greek and Syrian communities “in which philosophy had first risen,” where the
dawn of Christianity seemed to force a choice between the tenets of faith, which “are
greatly and clearly opposed to the philosophic opinions,” and philosophy itself.19
Those Christians trained in philosophy thus took its tools and used them, not in the
indifferent quest for truth, in Maimonides’ telling, but rather “to establish premises
that would be useful to them with regard to their belief and to refute those opinions
that ruined the foundations of the Law [sharı̄ʿa].”20 Later Muslim communities
drew inspiration from these Christian apologists and adopted the same methods,
selecting and defending those premises that supported their religion, “even if the
later philosophers had already demonstrated the falseness of these opinions.”21
Kalām grew and expanded under Islam, especially as particularized notions of the
law became prevalent – and thereby necessary to defend using kalām methods.22
That is, as the development of Islamic law progressed, so, too, had the mutakallimūn
to progress in their defense of its precepts. But doing so meant being quite selective
with the premises they employed in their arguments.
Maimonides, who did not approve of such cherry-picking, charged the mutakal-
limūn with intellectual dishonesty; to him, the mutakallimūn were co-opting the
tools of philosophy to argue for a world they believed in, rather than to understand
the world as it is: “all the first Mutakallimūn . . . did not conform in their premises to
the appearance of that which exists, but considered how being ought to be in order
that it should furnish a proof for the correctness of a particular opinion, or at least
should not refute it.” That is, the mutakallimūn began with their religious conclu-
sions and reasoned backwards, creating the semblance of a valid syllogism but in fact
engaging in a sort of smoke-and-mirrors illusion. For Maimonides, on the other
hand, “that which exists does not conform to the various opinions, but rather the
correct opinions conform to that which exists.”23 In other words, one must always
begin with reality, the world as it is, in forming correct beliefs – even beliefs about
religion, tempting though it may be to begin with revelation or prophecy.
To illustrate the difference between his own methods and those of the mutakalli-
mūn, Maimonides takes up one of the most pressing philosophical and theological
questions of his era, that of the temporal creation of the world. The controversy
turned on the idea that “if the world were created in time, there would be a deity; and
if it were eternal, there would be no deity in existence.”24 Because Aristotle (among
other ancient philosophers) held that the world was eternal, the stage was set for
19
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 177; Atay, 180–181.
20
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 177; Atay, 181.
21
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 178; Atay, 181.
22
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 178; Atay, 181. Maimonides writes that “there arose in Islam assertions of the
Law that were particular to the members of that community [āqāwı̄l sharʿiyya khası̄sa bihim] and that
˙˙
they necessarily had need to defend.”
23
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 178–179; Atay, 181–182.
24
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 180; Atay, 183.

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 Maimonides’ Middle Way 67

a conflict between religion and philosophy, and the mutakallimūn found themselves
obliged to argue for the creation of the world in time. And so they did, according to
Maimonides, choosing their premises accordingly, then establishing from the tem-
poral creation of the world the existence of a maker, as well as his unity.25
Notably, even as he has just inveighed against the intellectual sloppiness of the
mutakallimūn in defending religion, it is not their shoddy scholarship that
Maimonides here derides. Rather, he objects to the very idea of an opposition
between religion and philosophy in the first place – and, he seems to imply, it is
the mutakallimūn who set up that opposition. This is not what we would expect from
Maimonides, given his general criticism that kalām favors religion over philosophy,
even as it dons a philosophical overcoat to lend itself legitimacy. Maimonides,
however, charges that the mutakallimūn’s defense of religion is too weak, grounded
as it is in an unprovable premise (i.e., the temporal creation of the world): “For every
argument deemed to be a demonstration of the temporal creation of the world is
accompanied by doubts and is not a cogent demonstration.”26 In other words,
meeting the philosophers on their own ground is an unwise tactic if one’s goal –
as, it seems, is Maimonides’ – is the defense of religious truth. What does he propose
in its stead? Outdo the philosophers: “The utmost power,” Maimonides writes, of
“one who adheres to a Law [mutasharʿı̄n] and who has acquired knowledge of true
reality consists, in my opinion, in his refuting the proofs of the philosophers bearing
on the eternity of the world.”27 This seems to suggest that the mutasharʿı̄n’s knowl-
edge actually surpasses that of the philosopher, but the only way to demonstrate this
(perhaps even to oneself) is to employ the methods of philosophy better than the
philosophers.
To do this is no small feat, of course, and the religious person has no guarantee
that philosophy will ever work in favor of religious teaching. What is interesting,
then, is how Maimonides models his own prescribed method. To show that the
philosophers are wrong, he claims that they have simply gone too far: “everyone
who . . . has acquired true knowledge of reality and does not deceive himself, knows
that with regard to this question – namely the eternity of the world or its temporal
creation – no cogent demonstration can be reached and that it is a point before which
the intellect stops.”28 Maimonides thus distances himself from both the dialectical
theologians and the philosophers for overstepping their bounds. The mutakallimūn
have pretended to do philosophy when what they are really doing is defending
undemonstrated premises, and the philosophers have claimed to prove the unpro-
vable. There is a realm that exceeds the capacities of the intellect to grasp, and in
that, neither theologian nor philosopher should dare claim certainty.

25
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 179; Atay, 182.
26
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 180; Atay, 183.
27
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 180; Atay, 183.
28
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 180; Atay, 183, emphasis added.

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 68 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

Crucially, however, this does not mean that one must give up on knowledge, or on
philosophy as a means to knowledge. Maimonides has his own approach to this vital
question, one which he describes to his pupil in terms we might today describe as
deontological: “the world cannot but be either eternal or created in time. If it is
created in time, it undoubtedly has a creator who created it . . ..” This, of course, was
already accepted. But if the world has eternally existed, then “it follows necessarily”
that there exists something other than the world itself, “an existent who is not a body
and not a force in a body and who is one, permanent, and sempiternal; who has no
cause and whose becoming subject to change is impossible.”29 This existent is, of
course, God, and Maimonides considers that he has demonstrated that whether or
not the world was created in time, God exists. In fact, when elsewhere he had set out
to argue the existence of God, he did so from the premise that the world is eternal,
rather than created, so as to persuade on the basis of demonstration rather than faith:
The reason is not that I believe in the eternity of the world, but that I wish to
establish in our belief the existence of God, may He be exalted, through
a demonstrative method as to which there is no disagreement in any respect.
Thus we shall not cause the true opinion, which is of immense importance, to be
supported by a foundation that everyone can shake and wish to destroy . . . This
method is particularly justified in view of the fact that these philosophic proofs . . .
are derived from the nature of existence that can be perceived.30

Maimonides insists on beginning inquiry not from beliefs, nor from pseudo-
philosophical “demonstrations” of conveniently selected premises, but from “the
nature of existence” itself. So confident is he that, to borrow from his contemporary
Ibn Rushd, “truth does not contradict truth,”31 that he will even concede the
nonreligious position, viz., the eternity of the world, in order to demonstrate the
existence of God beyond dispute – philosophy, that is, does not pose a threat to
religion.
But here we may run into difficulties, for the science of Maimonides’ day is not
the science of today; were he to argue for the logical existence of God in our own
setting, he would have more to contend with than just the eternity of the world. That
is, if Maimonides insists on beginning from “the nature of existence” and taking
truth wherever it leads us, does not his method yield different results today, given
that Aristotelian physics have been discredited? If modern science inclines us away
from a world infused with final causes and toward one of chance and survival of the
fittest, would Maimonides’ “reality-first” approach to philosophy incline him away
from the Aristotelian – and religious – conclusions he draws?

29
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 181; Atay, 184.
30
Maimonides, Guide I.71, 182; Atay, 184–185.
31
See his Decisive Treatise Determining the Nature of the Connection between Religion and Philosophy,
chapter 2.

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 Maimonides’ Middle Way 69

I believe that it would not, at least not necessarily. Maimonides returns to the issue
of the eternity of the world throughout the Guide, going so far as to state that
“everything is bound up with this problem.”32 For if one acknowledges the creation
of the world in time, then God’s will and wisdom are supreme and any question
about the law, revelation, prophecy, and miracles can be answered through recourse
to these two factors. If, on the other hand, “the world is as it is in virtue of necessity,”
as today we might interpret evolutionary biology to indicate, then, says Maimonides,
the believer is in an awkward position; he has only “recourse to unseemly answers” to
such questions, answers that deny the manifest meanings of the law in order to
maintain the existence of God.33 Indeed, everything is bound up in this question.
But here, too, Maimonides shows that he sides neither wholly with the philoso-
phers nor blindly with religion. This is a somewhat surprising approach, for the
Guide elsewhere conveys a confidence that knowledge of the truth is possible
through demonstrative, that is, philosophical, means. Indeed, Kenneth Seeskin
writes that in reading the Guide, one “is tempted to ask, ‘Is this the religion of the
prophets or a philosophically sanitized religion concocted by a medieval thinker
under the sway of Aristotle?’”34 In other words, it is easy to see Maimonides as
committed first to philosophy, then to the reconciliation of religious beliefs with that
philosophy – essentially, the reverse of the mutakallimūn, whose commitment to
religion inclined them to bend philosophy to fit the needs of religious doctrine. And
again, Maimonides seems at times so confident that philosophical demonstration
will lead to conclusions that uphold, rather than challenge, religious beliefs that
Seeskin’s suggestion is difficult to dismiss.
Still, beneath the surface, Maimonides is more aporetic than his rationalism
might first suggest. This is evident first in his interpretation of Aristotle, which
draws a sharp line between the latter’s explanations of earthly matter and the
heavens: Maimonides says that Aristotle “realized the feebleness of what he said in
setting forth and expounding the ground and the causes of these things [i.e.,
heavenly spheres].”35 In claiming that Aristotle himself saw problems with his own
explanation of the heavens, Maimonides manages, first, to salvage Aristotle’s philo-
sophical judgment while maintaining his own belief in God and the creation of the
world in time. But in doing this, Maimonides is staking a more general claim as to
the limits of our ability to know causes. In asking why there is so much variety among
the celestial beings (e.g., why some portions of the heavens contain ten stars and
others none at all), he asks whether it is more rational to hold that all of this was
necessarily so, as his Aristotle would have it, or whether “all this came about in virtue
of the purpose of one who . . . made this thus.”36 His answer, which obviously must

32
Maimonides, Guide II.25, 330; Atay, 352.
33
Maimonides, Guide II.25, 329–330; Atay, 352.
34
Seeskin, “Maimonides.”
35
Maimonides, Guide II.19, 307; Atay, 329.
36
Maimonides, Guide II.19, 310; Atay, 331–332.

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 70 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

be the latter, is nevertheless telling: “All this has been produced for an object that we
do not know and is not an aimless and fortuitous act.”37 That is, there are indeed
purposes to everything, even to the stars; he has not given up on final causes and
teleology. Still, he stresses, the final causes of the matter above the earth are not for us
to know.
We see this same idea in the paragraphs leading up to the above-mentioned
discourse on creation. At the close of a lengthy dialectical consideration of the merits
of epicycles versus eccentric circles to explain astronomical motion, Maimonides
launches an interesting charge against astronomers: arriving at a point of “true
perplexity” at which eccentric circles and epicycles seem at once both necessary
and mutually exclusive explanations, he abruptly asserts, “all this does not affect the
astronomer.” This is because the astronomer, to Maimonides, is not interested in
investigating reality but in explaining appearances: “his purpose is not to tell us in
which way the [astronomical] spheres truly are, but to posit an astronomical system
in which it would be possible for the motions to . . . correspond to what is appre-
hended through sight, regardless of whether or not things are thus in fact.”38 This is
a stunning claim, for Maimonides has repeatedly stressed the need to begin from
reality, from how the world really is, yet here we see him demote the best efforts of
scientists and philosophers to mere speculation based on appearances.
Maimonides’ charge, however, is not against all of science or all scientists; rather –
and this is the illuminating aspect – he purports to limit both science and philosophy
to their proper realms: “All that Aristotle states about that which is beneath the
sphere of the moon is in accordance with reasoning . . . However, regarding all that is
in the heavens, man grasps nothing but a small measure of what is mathematical.”39
That is, as he paraphrases (“in the manner of poetical preciousness,” in his own
description), “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth hath He given
to the sons of man.”40 Maimonides thus combines the authority of reason in what he
considers to be its proper realm (i.e., matters of the earth) with epistemological
humility as it concerns anything beyond the earth.

MAIMONIDES AND NATURAL LAW

This exegesis marks our starting point in deciphering Maimonides’ epistemological

commitments and approach to natural law. But beyond his commentaries on
philosophy and science, Maimonides was also a halakhist, a jurist of Jewish law,
who both legislated and judged case law.41 As with Ibn Rushd, the jurist-philosopher

37
Maimonides, Guide II.19, 310; Atay, 332.
38
Maimonides, Guide II.24, 326; Atay, 348, emphases added.
39
Maimonides, Guide II.24, 326; Atay, 349.
40
Maimonides, Guide II.24, 326–327; Atay, 349, quoting Psalm 115:16.
41
David Novak, “Jurisprudence,” in The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, ed. Kenneth Seeskin
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 221.

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 Maimonides’ Middle Way 71

of thirteenth-century Andalusian Islam, his treatment of both religious law and

philosophical reasoning situates Maimonides at the crux of our difficulty as we
reflect on religious freedom, namely, that divinely ordained practices and habits –
matters of divine law – must be squared with human law, habits, and practices. It is
my argument in this book that this difficulty can best – and perhaps only, at this
juncture in history – be addressed using the resources of natural law traditions,
traditions to which, I argue, Maimonides belonged.
David Novak sees in Maimonides’ teleological view of the law the hallmarks of
a natural law thinker, and I agree. Yet, as Novak points out, “natural law” is not a term
Maimonides uses, and it is not my intention here to suggest that Maimonides had
a hidden, fully developed theory of natural law. Still, I suggest that the teleological
nature of Maimonides’ law merges easily with the idea of natural law as the prioritiza-
tion of ends over purposes; in other words, Maimonides’ conception of law includes
natural law. To Maimonides, the teloi of the law are, again, “the welfare of the soul
and the welfare of the body,” meaning that all human purposes must be subordinated
to these divinely ordained ends. But lest this be taken to mean that divine law trumps
human law in a crude way, Maimonidean legal theory also leaves no room for
religious fundamentalism of the sort that either commands harm or shuts down the
intellect; the soul’s welfare, after all, “consists in the multitude’s acquiring correct
opinions,” and the welfare of the body “comes about by the improvement of their ways
of living one with another.”42 Knowledge and justice, then, are indispensable compo-
nents of the soul’s health, which brings the divine law down from heaven, as it were,
into the realm of human beings. In this way, Maimonidean law fulfills the between-
human-and-divine role that I propose for natural law throughout this book.
Maimonides’ approach brings to mind Robert Sokolowski’s definition of natural
law, discussed in Chapter 1, as the ontological prioritization of ends over purposes.
Ends are naturally given; they are a part of what is, as opposed to purposes, which are
what one intends to do, make, change, etc. Maimonides and Sokolowski share
methodological affinities in that they both insist on beginning with that which exists,
then interrogate its final cause or end, the “that-for-which-it-exists,” in the attempt to
discover truth. What this inquiry yields, furthermore, must in both cases override
whatever one might prefer in the matter of purposes: for Maimonides, this includes
even dearly cherished customs that may seem to have the force of divine law.43
Of course, one may ask if this is really what Maimonides is up to. As with natural
law theory itself, the reader may smell ulterior motives: is Maimonides really
beginning with “the nature of existence,” or is he simply creating a clever critique
of philosophy by arguing that it is incapable of demonstrating that which goes
against Judaic teaching? Leo Strauss’ famous opposition of Athens and Jerusalem
would mean that a Jew like Maimonides could not defend both Torah and

42
Maimonides, Guide III.27, 510; Atay, 577.
43
Lerner, Maimonides’ Empire, 11.

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 72 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

philosophy; still, due to the “precarious status of philosophy in Judaism,” he had to

pay lip service to the former.44 It is a position worth taking seriously, given both the
threat of persecution Maimonides faced during his lifetime and the obvious chal-
lenge of squaring free inquiry, beginning from “the nature of existence” itself, with
the revealed law and Moses’ prophecy. One does not, it is clear, lead inexorably to
the other.
These questions, important as they are, must wait for later in the chapter. For the
present, the salient point is that Maimonides’ approach to the study of philosophy
and religion departed from that of the theologians of his time but also from that of
philosophy, at once insisting that we take rationality as far as it can go while
acknowledging when we reach the “point before which the intellect stops.”

CLASSES OF LAW

The law may be teleological; this is fairly uncontroversial for an Aristotelian thinker
like Maimonides. But to claim that something incorporates natural law means that
there must indeed be some element of nature to it; in other words, there is something
about the teloi that is given by nature as opposed to ordained exclusively by either
humans or God. Maimonides does explicitly link nature and law in at least one place
in the Guide. At II.40 he states, “the Law [sharı̄ʿa], although it is not natural, enters
into what is natural. It is a part of the wisdom of the deity [hikmat allah] with regard
˙
to the permanence of this species of which He has willed the existence, that He put it
into its nature [tabı̄ʿatihi] that individuals belonging to it should have the faculty of
˙
ruling [qūwat tadbı̄r].”45 This needs some explication. First, to what does
Maimonides refer by sharı̄ʿa? It is tempting to read this sentence as meaning that
it is specifically divine law, in the sense of that which was revealed to Moses, which is
not itself natural but enters into what is natural. I believe, however, that this would
be misleading. In Maimonides’ usage, as I show below, sharı̄ʿa refers to Law with
a capital “L” – law as such, as opposed to this or that particular law, or even to this or
that particular type (human, natural, divine) of law. It is, as we will see, something
divine, but not in the same sense as we might use to describe the contents of
Leviticus as divine law. In fact, it would not be a stretch to say that inasmuch as
something is law to Maimonides, it is sharı̄ʿa – in other words, all law is, ultimately,
divine law.
In the text surrounding the above quotation, Maimonides writes that he wants to
provide the reader with “a criterion by means of which you will be able to distinguish
between the regimens of nomoi [tadābı̄r al-nūwāmı̄s] that have been laid down, the
regimens of the divine Law [tadābı̄r al-sharı̄ʿa al-ilāhiyya], and the regimens of those
who took over something from the dicta of the prophets [āqāwūı̄l al-ānbı̄āʾ], raised

44
Strauss, Persecution, 21.
45
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 382; Atay, 415.

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 Maimonides’ Middle Way 73

a claim to it, and give it out as their own.”46 Thus there are three sorts of what we might
call law: (1) human law, or nomoi; (2) truly divine law; and (3) what Maimonides calls
“plagiarisms” (muntahala) of divine law.47 But Maimonides’ description of human
˙
law is illuminating here, for there are in fact two categories of nomos/human law: it
describes either those laws “with respect to which those who have laid them down have
stated clearly that these are nomoi [nūwāmı̄s] that they have laid down by following
their own thoughts [wadʿūhā min fikratihim]”48 or human law, which may be “a Law
˙
[sharı̄ʿa] the whole end of which and the whole purpose of the chief thereof [qasd
˙
raʾı̄suhā, that is, the chief of this human law] . . . are directed exclusively toward the
ordering of the city and of its circumstances and the abolition in it of injustice and
oppression.”49 Importantly, Maimonides never refers to the first kind of human laws –
those “with respect to which those who have laid them down have stated clearly that
these are nomoi”50 – as sharı̄ʿa, only nūwāmı̄s.51 It seems, then, that there is an
exclusively human law, the nūwāmı̄s, but also a form of human law that qualifies as
sharı̄ʿa even though it is human in origin.52
Human law that is human in origin is not difficult to imagine, nor is it especially
controversial; for example, few would claim a divine or even natural origin to traffic
laws. But what is this human sharı̄ʿa, the sharı̄ʿa nāmūsiyya? Maimonides states that
the sharı̄ʿa nāmūsiyya does not concern itself with “speculative matters” or “the
perfecting of the rational faculty”; in fact, “no regard is accorded to opinions being
correct or faulty.”53 This law has immanent, not transcendent, aims; in fact, its
“whole purpose [is] . . . the arrangement . . . of the circumstances of people in their
relations with one another and provision for their obtaining, in accordance with the
opinion of that chief, a certain something deemed to be happiness.”54 In other
words, the sharı̄ʿa nāmūsiyya is Law, sharı̄ʿa, with immanent ends.
All of this is contrasted with sharı̄ʿa ilāhiyya, divine law, which is:
a Law all of whose ordinances are due to attention being paid . . . to the soundness of
the circumstances pertaining to the body and also to the soundness of belief – a law
that takes pains to inculcate correct opinions with regard to God . . . and that desires
to make man wise, to give him understanding, and to awaken his attention . . . this
Law is divine.55
46
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 383; Atay, 416.
47
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 383; Atay, 417.
48
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 383; Atay, 416.
49
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 383; Atay, 417.
50
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 383; Atay, 416.
51
Maimonides sets these nūwāmı̄s aside, claiming to “only want to give you knowledge concerning the
regimens with regard to which the claim is made that they are prophetic” (II.40, p. 383, emphasis
added), meaning that these admittedly human-in-origin nomoi do not qualify as such.
52
On this point see also Miriam Galston: “it is not precluded that a nomos may be divine.” “The purpose
of the law according to Maimonides,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 69 (1978), 32.
53
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 383; Atay, 417.
54
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 383; Atay, 417.
55
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 384; Atay, 417.

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 74 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

The human law, then, aims at happiness in this life only, whereas the divine law
aims at both body and soul: happiness in this life and correct beliefs about God for
the next. There is, finally, also the plagiarized law, or muntahala; such laws, which
˙
imitate divine law, come from a ruler who has received no revelation himself but has
rather taken the laws from those who did – that is, he has plagiarized the law.56
Technically, then, Maimonides in fact conceives of four types of law: true human
Law (sharı̄ʿa nāmūsiyya), illegitimate human law (nomoi that have been laid down
by following human thoughts), truly divine law (al-sharı̄ʿa ilāhiyya), and plagiarized
divine law (muntahala). The question then becomes, how do we know the differ-
˙
ence between each type of law?
To some extent, the text suggests that it is their origins that differentiate the types
of law. Taking just the two types of human law as examples, the nūwāmı̄s originate in
men’s own thoughts whereas the sharı̄ʿa nāmūsiyya comes from a chief (raʾı̄s) whose
opinions align with the nature of true happiness.57 Likewise, the sharı̄ʿa ilāhiyya
comes from “a perfect man to whom a prophetic revelation . . . has been vouch-
safed,” whereas muntahala comes from one who merely lays claim to, or copies,
˙
prophetic revelation.58 Nor is this the only section of the Guide to suggest that the
nature – classification, really – of the political leader might matter. At II.37,
Maimonides discusses three classes of “men of science,” distinguished by their
types of knowledge, whether rational or imaginative or both. Those individuals
who are perfected in the rational faculty, but not in the imaginative faculty, are
“men of science engaged in speculation.” Those whose imaginative, but not
rational, faculties are perfected are “those who govern cities,” a class including the
somewhat surprising array of “the legislators, the soothsayers, the augurs, and the
dreamers of veridical dreams,” as well as “those who do extraordinary things by
means of strange devices and secret arts.” Those who are perfected in both the
rational and imaginative faculties are prophets.59 In the above discussion of sharı̄ʿa
nāmūsiyya, Maimonides notes that “the man who laid [the sharı̄ʿa nāmūsiyya] down
belongs . . . to those who are perfect only in their imaginative faculty.”60 Thus, it is
possible that law is classed, for Maimonides, according to the type of ruler who
hands it down.
I am not sure, however, that such an interpretation is ultimately sufficient. First,
identifying the legislator as one who is perfected only in his imaginative faculty does
not tell us whether what he gives us is sharı̄ʿa nāmūsiyya or mere nūwāmı̄s. But
perhaps more tellingly, at II.40, Maimonides describes both true human law (sharı̄ʿa
56
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 384; Atay, 417.
57
See Maimonides, Guide II.40, 383 (Atay, 417) quoted above: “the whole purpose of that Law being, on
the contrary, the arrangement, in whatever way this may be brought about, of the circumstances of
people in their relations with one another and provision for their obtaining, in accordance with the
opinion of that chief, a certain something deemed to be happiness” (emphasis added).
58
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 384; Atay, 417.
59
Maimonides, Guide II.37, 374; Atay, 412.
60
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 384; Atay, 417.

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 Maimonides’ Middle Way 75

nāmūsiyya) and true divine law (al-sharı̄ʿa ilāhiyya) according to their ends: In the
human case, “if you find a Law the whole end of which and the whole purpose of the
chief thereof . . . ” and in the divine case, “If, on the other hand, you find a Law all of
whose ordinances are due to attention being paid . . . to the soundness of the
circumstances pertaining to the body and also to the soundness of belief.” In other
words, we know the type of law more by its ends than by its origins – the ends either of
happiness or of both happiness and correct belief.61 The only form of law that is not
described by its ends is nūwāmı̄s, which comes from men’s own thoughts – and it is
never called sharı̄ʿa.
I mentioned above that Maimonides is no pure rationalist; this has been made
clearer in the above discussion on law as always in some way is divine. Still,
Maimonides is elsewhere even more explicit: in the Eight Chapters (part of the
Commentary on the Mishneh), he denies the label, used by the mutakallimūn, of
“rational laws” to describe those injunctions against behaviors that are generally or
universally accepted to be bad, such as murder, theft, repaying evil for good, etc.62
Raymond Weiss finds in this denial a conflict with the idea of natural law; to him,
Maimonidean Aristotelianism diverges from that which the West inherited through
Aquinas and places a heavier emphasis on the need for a particular nation’s law over
and above the “‘rational law’ [that] is the Thomistic teaching of natural law.”63 But
this surely misunderstands Thomist natural law which, far from an abstract set of
rules derived by reason alone, reveals the ends of human life: natural law marks the
human being’s “share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to
its proper act and end” (Summa Theologia I–II.q.91.a.2.co). Weiss acknowledges that
while there is no set of “rational laws” as understood by the mutakallimūn, there are
indeed “reasons” for the law, to Maimonides – but these reasons “are more precisely
‘causes’ in the sense of ‘final causes’.”64 In other words, even as Weiss wants to
distance Maimonides from natural law, he asserts the deeply teleological nature of
Law for Maimonides, which takes us quite quickly to natural law’s affirmation of
ends over purposes.
I am hardly alone in claiming that Maimonides’ law is teleological in nature;
indeed, Novak devotes an entire chapter of Natural Law in Judaism to
“Maimonides’ teleology of the law.”65 Novak begins his presentation much as
Maimonides himself begins the Guide: with conflict as to how to understand the
law in light of reason. Disputes over the meaning of the law necessarily arise, leaving
the believer in limbo as to how to understand the ethical mandate. These disputes, to
61
Maimonides, Guide II.40, 384; Atay, 417. See also Seeskin, Searching, 167 and Galston, “Purposes,”
31–32, in which Galston notes that divine law is characterized by its aims or ends, not by effects or even
intentions.
62
Raymond L. Weiss with Charles Butterworth, eds., Ethical Writings of Maimonides (New York:
Dover, 1983), 79–80 (chapter 6).
63
Weiss and Butterworth, Ethical Writings, 2.
64
Weiss and Butterworth, Ethical Writings, 22.
65
See Novak, Natural Law, chapter

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 76 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

Maimonides, could formerly be settled by the religio-legal authority of the

Sanhedrin, or “Great Court,” though Novak is quick to point out that even with
such an authority reasons still needed to be given; the disputes and deliberations
simply happened behind closed doors. But because the Sanhedrin vanished by
sometime in the fourth century CE, now, according to Maimonides, legal disputes
can only be answered by giving reasons.66 For Novak, as for Maimonides, this fact
means that the law must perforce be rational – a deduction happily backed by
Maimonides’ writings, perhaps most especially the Sefer ha-Mitsvot, or “The
Commandments,” his systematic presentation of the 613 divine commandments.
These commandments, according to Novak, are always “commanded for the sake of
a more general reason (taʿam),” and furthermore, “the reasons of the command-
ments [taʿamei ha-mitsvot] [are] their purposes,” a position Novak attributes to a long
rabbinic tradition of hermeneutics as well as to the fourth-century CE halakhist
Rava, who refers to the “doctrine of purpose” (torat taʿama).67
Novak’s overall argument seems to rest more or less on the teleological nature of
the law – in short, if Jewish law is teleological, and according to both Maimonides
and larger rabbinic tradition it is, and if natural law is teleological law, which is
another way of saying that natural law prioritizes ends, which it does, then Jewish law
contains a natural law tradition. While this may at first seem simplistic, we do well to
recall Novak’s description of Maimonides’ accomplishment: “By emphasizing the
rationality of the law, without resorting to the totalizing rationalism characteristic of
some modern Jewish thinkers, Maimonides saves revelation from being reduced to
reason, and he saves the law from being reduced to divine caprice.”68 This is no
small feat, but it cannot be denied that the fulcrum of all of this is indeed teleology.
Merely asserting the rationality of divine law either fails entirely to convince, or else
it removes the transcendent element of divine law and religion altogether. Likewise,
any attempts to infuse human law with divine sanction by simple fiat either ends in
divine caprice – why does God declare this human law to be just but not that one? –
or else eventually is exposed as untrue. Without telos, there is no mediation between
divine law and human law; with telos, both God and human reason have a place.

SAADYA’S ALTERNATIVE

Ralph Lerner once wrote, “It is not too much to say that for Maimonides philosophy
is indeed the key to Scripture.”69 Given the picture that emerges from the Guide of
Maimonides’ teleological approach to Jewish law, it is easy to see how this might
have been so. But to understand what is at stake in Maimonides’ insistence on

66
Novak, Natural Law, 93–95.
67
Novak, Natural Law, 96–98. On the rabbinic hermeneutic tradition leading up to Rava’s doctrine,
Novak cites especially the Babylonian Talmud, b. Sanhedrin 21a.
68
Novak, Natural Law, 97.
69
Lerner, Maimonides’ Empire, 10.

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 Maimonides’ Middle Way 77

philosophy, rather than kalām, as a means of understanding the Jewish faith, we

need to examine the other option available to us from medieval Judaism. Saadya
Gaon, known in Arabic as Saʿı̄d bin Yūsuf al-Fayūmmi (892–942), provides perhaps
the most plausible alternative to Maimonides in this respect, as well as being one of
the most influential Jewish mutakallimūn of the era. His promise to “speak
a language which is easy and not difficult” and to pave a path for “the believer
who blindly relies on tradition . . . [to] turn into one basing his belief on speculation
and understanding,”70 not to mention his self-proclaimed status as a member of “the
race of mankind,” make him a highly appealing, proto-modern figure, and his
apparently rational basis for all knowledge seems to distance him from the pitfalls
that might plague Maimonidean teleology.
Saadya was – and remains – a towering figure of Arab Jewish philosophy. Born in
Fayum, Egypt, Saadya spent much of his life in Sura, Iraq, where he eventually
became head (gaon) of the Platonist Academy there. Like Maimonides some 250
years after him, Saadya wrote in a time of great religious and intellectual perplexity.
Rather than a forced choice between Aristotelian philosophy and Jewish faith,
however, the confusion – and perhaps exhilaration – of Saadya’s time was that of
the somewhat sudden mixture of creeds, philosophies, and newly discovered texts.
Islam had burst onto the scene only a few centuries prior (Mohammed died just over
250 years before Saadya’s birth), and the Baghdad translation movement under
Caliph al-Maʾmūn earlier in the ninth century had launched the “Islamic
Renaissance” of Hellenistic philosophy. Beyond this, Zoroastrianism,
Manichaeanism, and other systems of thought from the east were filling the philo-
sophical and religious air of Saadya’s time, leading to an intensely fruitful, but also
confusing, intellectual era.71
In this setting, Saadya wrote his greatest work, The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs
(Kitāb al-Āmānāt wa al-ʿItiqādāt). This book, although today fairly obscure in
comparison to Maimonides’ Guide, remains a landmark in medieval Jewish
thought. The Kitāb owes its existence at least in part to a struggle taking place
between Rabbanite and Karaite Jewish thinkers over whether God’s law was handed
down entirely in the Torah (the Karaite position) or whether the rabbinic oral
traditions, as recorded in the Talmud and Midrash, should also count as a part of
this law. Saadya’s insistence on the role of human rationality made a decisive
contribution toward accepting the need for an oral tradition, and thereby a human
role, in interpreting divine law; indeed, as Sarah Stroumsa writes, “after Saadya,
hardly anyone questioned the legitimacy of the rationalistic approach.”72
70
Saadya Gaon, Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, trans. Alexander Altmann, in 3 Jewish Philosophers:
Philo: Selections; Saadya Gaon: Book of Doctrines and Beliefs; Jehuda Halevi: Kuzari, ed. Hans Lewy,
Alexander Altmann, and Isaak Heinemann (New York: Atheneum, 1977), 29, 26, 30.
71
Altmann introduction to Saadya, Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, 11–13.
72
Sarah Stroumsa, “Saadya and Jewish kalam,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish
Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Learman (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 87–88.

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 78 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

I limit my analysis of Saadya’s Kitāb to his discussions on epistemology and on the

classification of the law, for it is here, I believe, that we see the problem to which
Maimonides, more than Saadya, provides a solution. Ultimately, while Saadya
sidesteps the controversial issue of teleology that Maimonides embraces, his ration-
alist assertion concerning the law ends up as simply that – an assertion – leaving the
believer with little recourse to divine caprice.
To understand this, we must first grasp Saadya’s epistemology, which he lays out
most explicitly in his Prolegomena to the Kitāb. He classifies the law (sharı̄ʿa) as
either rational or revelational (see Kitāb 3.2), and he posits four “roots” of knowledge:
sense perception (ʿilm al-shāhid, literally, “the knowledge of the witness”), rational
knowledge (ʿilm al-ʿaql), and that which is necessarily inferred from these two bases
(ʿilm ma dafʿat al-darūra alayya wa nattabiʿ dhalik bisharh wāhid wāhid min
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
hadhahi al-usūl);73 Saadya’s fourth source is explicitly “derive[d] from the three
˙
preceding ones” – it is “reliable Tradition” (literally “truthful report,” al-khabar al-
sādiq).74 Like inference, reliable tradition is “based on the knowledge of sense
˙
perception and the knowledge of Reason.”75 In a real sense, then, for Saadya there
are actually two primary roots of knowledge, sense perception and reason,76 and two
secondary ones, inference and reliable tradition. This means that when something is
known, for Saadya, it is ultimately known from sense perception and through
reason – a startlingly modern claim for a tenth-century religious leader.
Perhaps even more startling is an earlier claim, translated by Altmann as “all
‘knowledge of Reason’ is based on knowledge derived from sense perception.”77 This
is a somewhat loose translation;78 still, the idea remains that all plausible things find
their basis in the senses – quite a remarkable claim, and one which, if I am correct,
Saadya may not in fact follow consistently, as we see below. Nevertheless, he repeats
such claims throughout the book, even going so far as to state that revelation serves
essentially as a shortcut to knowledge which man could eventually arrive at through
great effort: “God knew in His wisdom that the final propositions which result from
the labour of speculation can only be attained in a certain measure of time . . . From

73
Altmann’s extraordinarily readable translation of the Kitāb’s difficult manuscript renders the section
referred to here (Prolegomenon 3, in Altmann’s own division) as “We affirm then that there exist three
sources of knowledge: (1) The knowledge given by sense perception; (2) the knowledge given by
Reason; (3) inferential knowledge” (Altmann, Book of Doctrines, 36). As Altmann acknowledges,
Saadya in fact uses the term mawādd, or “subjects” or “matters,” for “sources” in the first instance (i.e.,
“three sources of knowledge”). See Book of Doctrines, footnote 1, 36. However, after introducing the
mawādd, Saadya immediately refers to them as usūl, “origins” (see Saadya, Kitāb, 13).
74 ˙
Saadya, 14; Altmann, Kitāb, 37.
75
Saadya 14; Altmann, Kitāb, 37.
76
This might better be described as one primary source of knowledge (sense perception) and one
primary tool (reason). However, I keep Saadya’s classification so as to avoid distorting his meaning.
77
Altmann, 26; Saadya, Kitāb, 26.
78
The term that Altmann translates as “knowledge of Reason” is maʿqūlāt, which is more literally (if
awkwardly) translated as “plausibilities” or “reasonablenesses” (it is not used in Modern Standard
Arabic as a noun).

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 Maimonides’ Middle Way 79

all these troubles God (be He exalted and glorified) saved us quickly by sending us
His Messenger, announcing through him the Tradition” (Proleg. 3).79 In essence,
man’s reason would be sufficient, given enough time. Such an apparently rationa-
listic approach would seem to open Saadya to the criticism, later launched against
Maimonides, that his religion is simply philosophy in religious garb. If all knowledge
comes from sensory perception via reason, what can revelation or tradition
contribute?
What this rationalist veil conceals, however, is that Saadya in fact begins his
reasoning with the presumed truth of revelation, then seeks to understand it by
means of reason, as opposed to arriving at revelation through reason alone, as his
rationalist premises above would seem to imply. He recreates the long journey by
which reason might arrive at the same truths that revelation provides in its imme-
diacy; this journey is meant to render human what would otherwise be only divine:
“we inquire and speculate in matters of our religion . . . in order that we may find out
for ourselves what we know in the way of imparted knowledge from the Prophets of
God.”80 Note that we already have knowledge of these matters from prophecy, but
we attempt to understand them in their fullness by examining them in the light of
reason as well. As an illustration of this process, Saadya points out that we know by
reason that we owe our benefactors gratitude.81 Then, knowing that “this is a dictate
of Reason itself,” it is only “fitting for the Creator” to receive the same gratitude.82
But it is first from revelation that we know that we owe gratitude to God; Saadya
describes this debt of gratitude as an aspect of the divine law that “speculation
confirms as necessary.”83 Happily, however, we can find another basis for the same
precept in Reason itself. In other words, “In regard to all the things which [God]
commands us to do, He has implanted approval of them in our Reason,”84 and the
divine law is thereby in accordance with what reason would dictate. Thus, as Daniel
Frank writes, for Saadya, it is not abstract reason but rather “revelation [that] is
a starting point for speculation.”85
All of the above, to reiterate, concerns that class of law that is known through
reason, not revelation. There remains, then, the revelational law. Here the teaching
is somewhat unclear, as Saadya seems to take both a divine voluntarism and a quasi-
natural law stance. He states that in this category of law, “That which belongs to the
things commanded by God assumes the character of ‘good’, and that which belongs
to the things forbidden by Him assumes the character of ‘evil’ on account of the

79
Altmann, 45; Saadya, Kitāb, 24–25.
80
Altmann, 44–45; Saadya, Kitāb, 22.
81
Strikingly, the same illustration offered by Ibn Rushd as a dictate of the sunan ghayr al-maktūba in
Talkhı̄s 1.13.8, discussed in Chapter 4.
82 ˙
Altmann, 95; Saadya, Kitāb, 114.
83
Altmann, 95; Saadya, Kitāb, 113, emphasis added.
84
Altmann, 97; Saadya, Kitab, 115.
85
From Daniel Frank’s introduction in Saadya Gaon, The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, trans. and abr.
by Alexander Altmann, with introduction by Daniel Frank (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002), 9.

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 80 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

Service [i.e., to God] thereby performed.”86 That is, an act is good or evil entirely on
account of whether it conforms to God’s command. These revelational laws are “of
a neutral character from the point of view of Reason”; our motivation to follow them
“is, of course, the command of our Lord and the happiness resulting from it.”87 But
surely this is divine voluntarism – it is the “something is pious because the gods
declare it to be so” horn of the Euthyphro dilemma.88 Is there, then, anything to
prevent Saadya’s ethics from devolving into a pure divine-command form of volun-
tarism, so antithetical to religious freedom and problematic for a polity?
Saadya, at least, would seem to answer “yes.” Because revelational law concerns
those matters toward which reason is neutral, on the face of it, there need be no
worry about divinely mandated killings or castes, for reason is not neutral on such
matters. But what are these reason-neutral matters? Alexander Altmann writes that
Saadya’s rational/revelational division derives from “the character of the Biblical law
itself, which so clearly showed the two aspects of (rational) morality and (non-
rational) ritual.”89 This does make intuitive sense – the prescription of a sacrificial
goat for an individual member of the Hebrew community versus a bull for the
community as a whole (Leviticus 4), for instance, is hardly something one would
claim to arrive at by reason alone, whereas the proscription against adultery (Exodus
20:14) can easily find a basis in rationality. There is also copious textual evidence: in
his examples of revelational laws, Saadya himself includes such topics as days of rest,
the selection of priests, prohibited foods, abstinence, and so forth.90 Still, Altmann’s
division shifts the basis of classification from an epistemological one – reason versus
revelation – to a topical one (i.e., laws governing morality versus ritual), whereas
Saadya clearly divides the law into laws which are accessible to reason alone and
those which are both rational and revelational. The alignment may work for the
examples cited, but it is a happy, rather than necessary, coincidence; there is no
reason why God might not reveal moral laws that are not accessible to reason alone.
I cannot see that Saadya’s rational/revelational legal division can ultimately
prevent the voluntarism we find so worrisome in late modernity. First, even as he
grants that revelational laws also include “reasons of usefulness” (i.e., advantages
attached to them that are accessible to reason alone),91 Saadya intones, “God’s
86
Altmann, 97–98; Saadya, Kitāb, 115, emphasis added.
87
Altmann, 100; Saadya, Kitāb, 117.
88
In the Euthyphro, Socrates poses the question of whether something is pious because the gods declare
it to be so, in which case the gods may be capricious, or whether the gods command something
because it is pious, in which case there is a standard of piety that is prior to the gods (and therefore
something greater than the gods). This maps onto the rationalist/fideist dilemma of religious belief
and practice: the rationalist must answer the question why, if God’s law is ultimately rational, religion
or revelation is needed at all; the fideist, who does not require that religion or religious law be rational,
must then answer that he must obey divine law even if it seems to run contrary to reason or even
morality.
89
Altmann, 96–97, footnote 4.
90
Altmann, 100; Saadya, Kitāb, 117.
91
Altmann, 102, Saadya, Kitāb, 118.

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 Maimonides’ Middle Way 81

wisdom (be He blessed and exalted) is above all this.”92 For the believer, indeed, this
is and almost has to be true; were it not so (i.e., were man’s reason the highest
measure), God would not be God. Still, this does not change the fact that in Saadya’s
rational/revelational divide, there is no logical reason why God might not choose to
reveal moral laws that do not seem to find their basis in rationality, and in such
instances Saadya would be forced to choose between God or reason as the higher
standard. The reader is left with little doubt as to which side he would choose:
“God’s wisdom is above all this.”
In the end, Saadya’s kalām cannot escape Maimonides’ charge against the
mutakallimūn of beginning with religious conclusions and selecting premises
that support it. Maimonides’ insistence on philosophy – and specifically tele-
ology – as a key to understanding Scripture and Jewish law remains as the
mediating way, a guide pointing the way beyond either purely human or purely
divine law.

CONCLUSION

I should note here that my interpretation of Saadya parts with that of David Novak,
who finds that Saadya does have a teleology, namely, that “everything is for the sake
of the world.”93 For Novak, Saadya’s teleology – and even his theology – are too
worldly, pushing God and religion out of the picture, whereas for me they run the
risk of religious fundamentalism. Yet what I am attempting to show is that, barring
such a teleological view of the world and of law as Maimonides exemplifies, these
two undesirable options – i.e., a world without God (as Novak would have Saadya)
or a God who can act against rationality (as I interpret him) – recur in any
alternative approach. For the believer, there is a fundamental – and quite possibly
irresolvable – tension at the heart of morality, ethics, and law; namely that both
reason and God make demands on one’s conscience and life, and those demands
are not always in harmony. This same tension lies at the heart of religious freedom,
for it transfers easily to the sometimes-conflicting demands that life in human
society and life in a religious community make on a person. The only middle
ground between these would appear to be that of teleology, that of inquiring into
the naturally given final causes or given ends to human and social life, to institu-
tions, to creation and the artifacts and practices it yields. Take that away, and the
agōn between God and man remains – an agōn in which most lose if one side alone
wins.
This insight also explains why the question I alluded to earlier in the chapter,
namely whether Maimonides’ apparent integration of philosophy and Judaism was

92
Altmann, 101; Saadya, Kitāb, 117.
93
Novak, Natural Law, 130.

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 82 The Possibility of Religious Freedom

sincere rather than a ruse to escape persecution, is not ultimately germane.94 For
whether or not Maimonides himself sincerely believed that philosophy and Judaism
could be harmonized, his work and legacy suggest one way that they might.
Furthermore, in keeping with his injunction to examine things “from the nature
of existence,” the Aristotelian teleological mode of inquiry he advanced gives us
a way to keep one foot firmly planted in each realm of human law and divine law.
What exactly such a middle way could look like in a religion that, like Judaism, gives
primacy to law rather than theology (as does Christianity), emerges in the following
chapter, in which a notion of an unwritten law of nature emerges from the thought of
a figure who was at once an Islamic judge and an Aristotelian philosopher.

94
It is not, of course, an uninteresting or unimportant question nonetheless. Kenneth Seeskin sees in
Maimonides’ equivalence of physics with the prophetic “account of the beginning” (maʾaseh
bereishit), as well as the equivalence between metaphysics and Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot (maʾaseh
merkavah), “the crux of Maimonides’ claim that philosophy is not and never was foreign to Judaism,”
indicating that Maimonides’ project was a timeless, rather than occasional, one. See Searching, 15.

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