## 1. Methodological Preamble




Highlighting the importance of understanding Maimonides within the
context of his Islamic intellectual milieu, Kraemer begins his
magisterial study of Maimonides' life and works with the following
quote:



> We are the children of our landscape. (Lawrence Durrell,
> *Justine*)



going on to note that



> 
> Only when we read Arabic sources can we have a true picture of this
> period, identify the actors in this drama, and have reliable knowledge
> of circumstances and events. (Kraemer 2010, 15).
> 



In this spirit, Kraemer's study draws strongly on Arabic historical,
literary, philosophical, and other sources to situate Maimonides'
thinking. Sensitive to this contextual approach, Pines begins his
edition and translation of the Guide with a consideration of myriad
Islamic (and Greek) philosophical sources, and while Hyman notes that
"it should not...be inferred that medieval Jewish
philosophy was a branch of Islamic philosophy," he goes on to note
that "by and large Jewish philosophy was a continuation of the
philosophy which flourished in the Islamic world" (Hyman 1996,
678-679). Sensitive to the impact of the Islamic context, Stroumsa
reminds us that "...Maimonides was an avid reader, who took
pains to remain abreast of contemporary scholarship in general and
philosophical scholarship in particular... " (Stroumsa
2009, 173, n. 69), and "that Maimonides, who only rarely cited
his sources, read all he could find, and that he had no qualms about
perusing the theological or legal works of non-Jews..." (Stroumsa
2009, xii). Responding to Davidson's more conservative approach to
reading sources into the 
 text,[2]
 Stroumsa adds, "Maimonides'
philosophical erudition was no doubt far broader than would seem to be
the case only on the basis of his explicit references. We must
therefore be alert to the possibility that Maimonides' words reflect,
whether by way of acceptance or by way of reaction and criticism, his
knowledge of the works of thinkers whose names are not explicitly
mentioned" (Stroumsa 2009, 24-5).



## 2. Overview of Maimonides' Islamic Philosophical Backdrop: *Theology of Aristotle* and Beyond




One of the most important sources to keep in mind when reading
Maimonides and Islamic medieval philosophers is the *Theology of
Aristotle*, a text that, while thought by Jewish and Islamic
philosophers to have been a work of Aristotle, was in fact an edited
summary of parts of books 4-6 of
Plotinus' *Enneads*.[3]
 Likely dated to the 9th century and edited
by al-Kindi (and/or members of his circle), this text--as well as
the rest of the *Plotiniana Arabica* and the *Kalam
fi mahd al-khair* (lit. the *Discourse on the Pure
Good*, known to some in its later Latin translation as the *Liber
de Causis, or Book of
 Causes*)[4]--should
 be read in connection with any
serious study of Maimonides. In way of summary, we might highlight
the following key ideas in the *Theology of Aristotle* that play
important roles for later Jewish and Islamic thinkers:


* God is a pure unity who is pure goodness and pure being
* God is creator, first cause of all beings
* God emanates forth Intellect, then Soul, then Nature




Here, we have a uniquely modified set of Plotinian insights that
feature prominently in Maimonidean thought. For Plotinus (following
Plato's own highlighting of a Form of the Good over and above the Form
of Being), God is himself a pure One identical to goodness per se, and
is as such entirely above and beyond intellect and even entirely above
and beyond being. In the *Theology of Aristotle* tradition God is
identified with pure unity and goodness, but is as such *also*
identified with a pure grade of being. And while the *Theology of
Aristotle* itself describes God as the maker of Intellect, as we
move into the reception of this tradition into al-Farabi and Avicenna,
we find that qua pure being and goodness God is also a pure
intellect--a point which adds a decidedly Aristotelian element to
the description of God. Thinkers such as Maimonides working within
the *Theology of Aristotle* and Aristotle traditions in this way
combine Plotinian and Aristotelian insights about God, mutually
highlighting the Plotinian sense of God as pure unity and the
Aristotelian sense of God as self-knowing intellect. Working within
this set of parameters, Maimonides and others are also helped to a
sense of God as the ultimate cause of all being (and not simply a
picture of God as a cause of motion, as one finds in Aristotle
proper).




The *Theology of Aristotle* also introduces two critical insights
about creation which one finds too in al-Farabi and Avicenna:


* Creation is emanation
* God creates/emanates in virtue of His onwmost essential goodness




In whatever way one winds up interpreting Maimonides' own view on
creation, it is important to bear in mind that he is writing in a
philosophical context in which there is plenty of strong precedent for
identifying the language of "creation" (and even
"creation *ex nihilo*") with the idea that God
eternally emanates forth in virtue of his ownmost essence as the pure
good (a point itself rooted in Plotinus in the idea of an
"unjealous" God in Plato's *Timaeus*). It might be
additionally noted that in the *Theology of Aristotle*, this
bountiful picture of God--linked in a range of medieval Islamic
texts to the idea of God's generosity--is also overtly linked to
the idea that God creates without thought or deliberation. While in
and of itself (in another theological context) this might sound like
an insulting way to describe God (i.e. "thoughtless"), in
the context at hand, it is part of the most honored and exalted way of
describing God, emphasizing in particular just how essentially
creation flows from God's bountiful goodness. For God to deliberate
about creation in this context would be to make of creation an
afterthought when, on the contrary, giving life to the world is here
highlighted as part and parcel of who God essentially is. We can find
this idea of "thoughtlessness" in a sense in even
Avicenna's more Aristotelian description of God as an Intellect: even
qua Intellect, Avicenna's God creates "in virtue of His very
essence," and not by a process of reasoning as we might
understand it in human contexts.




Reflecting on our other sources, we ought to keep some starting points
in mind:



(a) Regarding al-Farabi: In what follows we will focus more on
al-Farabi than on Avicenna and Averroes since al-Farabi is a thinker
for whom Maimonides expresses strong respect (citing him in the Guide
more than any other Islamic thinker; Rudavsky 2010, 7), but also
because al-Farabi, as the earliest of these thinkers, exerted
influence on many of the ideas in Avicenna, Averroes, and other
Islamic philosophers.




(b) Regarding Avicenna: While Avicennian notions can arguably be found
in Maimonides, his view of the thinker is complicated. In a letter to
Ibn Tibbon, Maimonides clearly states that Avicenna's philosophy is of
lesser value than al-Farabi's. That said, even in that context
Maimonides characterizes Avicenna's ideas as subtle and exacting, and
as worthy of study.[5]




(c) Regarding Averroes: While we know that Maimonides held a great
respect for the writings of 
 Averroes,[6]
 Pines and Ivry maintain that these writings
were most likely unknown to Maimonides until after the completion of
his Guide (Pines 1963, cviii). In contrast, W. Z. Harvey has explored
the resonance of Averroes in Guide 2.25 (W. Z. Harvey 1989), and
Stroumsa--arguing that Maimonides had access to
Averroes' *Decisive Treatise* and *Exposition*--goes so
far as to suggest that "...the Guide can in some ways be seen as a
reaction and answer to Averroes" (Stroumsa 2009, 73). 




(d) Regarding al-Ghazali: While Pines concludes that Maimonides must
have been aware of al-Ghazali's work just in virtue of his
intellectual context (e.g. Pines 1963, cxxvi-cxxxi), others go further
and highlight particular textual resonances of al-Ghazali in
Maimonides. While leaving open how Maimondies might have learned of
Ghazali's ideas, Davidson addresses al-Ghazali in Maimonides'
discussion of creation (Davidson 1979, esp. 28, 30, and 33), and also
cites Maimonides' use of a particular image in al-Ghazali of a youth
who prefers toys to sexual pleasures in his attempt to describe our
own inability as embodied humans to imagine the delights of the
spiritual world,[7]
 S. Harvey argues for a link between
Maimonides and Ghazali's respective "Book(s) of Knowledge"
(Harvey 2005), Eran explores Ghazali and Maimonides on the World to
Come (Eran 2001), Gil'adi considers the possible relation between the
title of Maimonides' magnum opus and al-Ghazali's description of God
as "guide of perplexed" (*dalil al-mutahayyirin*)
(Gil'adi 1979), and Stroumsa not only identifies a reference to one of
al-Ghazali's works in Maimonides' "Epistle to Yemen"
(Stroumsa 2009, 25-26), but argues more broadly (69-70) for the impact
of al-Ghazali on Maimonides through the influence of the Islamic
theologian/mystic on the Almohads under whose rulership Maimonides
lived, and many of whose theological and legal principles, Stroumsa
argues, were influential on Maimonides' thought. Stroumsa also argues
that if Maimonides knew Averroes' *Fasl al-maqal* (as
she thinks he did), then "it is also very likely that he was
familiar with Ghazali's *Faysal al-tafriqa*"
(Stroumsa 2009, 124).


## 3. God



Like his Islamic predecessors and contemporaries, Maimonides is keenly
interested in understanding the relationship between philosophy and
religion. In the context of such an inquiry, the attempt to understand
God is doubly important, since the idea of a divine being features
prominently not only in religious tradition, but also as a
foundational element of both Neoplatonic and Aristotelian
philosophical theory.




Following on Biblical, Neoplatonic and Aristotelian insights,
Maimonides' God is an absolutely simple, absolutely necessary, and
completely uncaused unity who is a pure intellect and first cause. As
already noted, Maimonides and many of his Islamic philosophical
predecessors reveal a blend of Plotinian with non-Plotinian
Aristotelian ideas about God (and the cosmos more generally) under the
influence of such texts as the *Theology of Aristotle*. Reading
this text as Aristotle's own, Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors
hold a blend of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic views, including
Aristotelian views which are themselves often highly
Neoplatonized. The blending together of God-as-pure-unity and
God-as-intellect is one such example. In these Neoplatonized
Aristotelian descriptions of God, we might place Maimonides in clear
conversation with his Arabic philosophical predecessors.


### 3.1 Simplicity: Unity, Essence=Existence, Necessity, Attributes, Apophasis, and "Acts"




Maimonides follows the Islamic Neoplatonic tradition of envisioning
God as the purest of unlimited being, a kind of pure being so utterly
unified that it transcends any internal divisions. This theme can be
clearly found in the *Theology of Aristotle* and in
the *Kalam fi mahd al-khair* in the identification of
God as "Pure Being" or "Being Only," as well
as in Almohad (see Stroumsa 2009) and Mu'tazilite theology of the
time. It is this radical sense of unity that accounts for Maimonides'
strong negative theology (about which we will say more below): since
God is utterly and absolutely unified, He is a subject about whom we
can predicate nothing (since, after all, predication implies of a
subject that he is one thing or another, thus suggesting some
limitation). As such, God, as subject, transcends the normal
parameters of language and conceptualization.




On the theme of divine unity, Maimonides stresses:



> 
> He, may He be exalted, is one in all respects; no multiplicity should
> be posited in Him; there is no notion that is superadded to His
> essence (G 1.52, P 378)
> 


Completely different from all other existents, Maimonides' God is
one in all respects, an idea mirroring the God of the Neoplatonic
Islamic philosophers before him. Turning to al-Farabi, we find:



> 
> ...[God's] distinction from all the others is due to a oneness
> which is its essence (*al-dhat*)...Thus the
> First...deserves more than any other one the name and meaning (of
> "the one" ) (PS, 68-69)
> 


In this same spirit of emphasizing the divine oneness, and
developing too an idea of God as the unique necessary existent,
Avicenna explains of God that,



> 
> ...it is not possible that the true nature which that whose
> existence is necessary be composed of a multitude at all... (see
> HM, H 241)
> 



Avicenna concludes further along these lines that God, the being whose
existence is necessary, is "a unity, while everything else is a
composite duality" (see HM, H 247). To draw out the idea of
God's unity, Avicenna emphasizes that God alone is the essence that is
one with existence, whereas all other things enjoy an existence that
is, on the contrary, separate from their essence. In speaking about
this feature of non-God subjects, Avicenna speaks of existence being
added to essence, a claim that has often wrongly been interpreted as
suggesting that existence is for Avicenna literally an accident (see
Rahman 1958; Morewedge 1972). The details of this misreading aside,
the echo of this Avicennian insight can certainly be heard in
Maimonides' own description of existence as "an accident
attaching to what exists," as well as in his repeatedly claiming
(as above) that there is no "superadded notion" to God's
purely singular and unchanging essence (G 1.57, P 132). Maimonides
further emphasizes along these lines that attributes used to describe
God are "remote from the essence of the thing of which it is
predicated," and that such descriptions do not at all signify
"differing notions subsisting within the essence of the
agent" (G 1.52, P 378). Further mirroring the Avicennian ideas
of divine necessity and essential unity, Maimonides adds:



> 
> ...As for that which has no cause for its existence, there is
> only God, may He be magnified and glorified, who is like that. For
> this is the meaning of our saying about Him, may He be exalted, that
> His existence is necessary. Accordingly, His existence is identical
> with His essence and His true reality, and His essence is His
> existence. Thus His essence does not have an accident attaching to it
> when it exists, in which case its existence would be a notion that is
> superadded to it...Consequently He exists, but not through an
> existence other than His essence... (G 1.57, P 132)
> 


Maimonides here and elsewhere echoes Avicenna's idea of God as
"necessary being"--literally, "The Necessary of
Existence" (*wajib al-wujud*)--whose
essential nature it is to exist, and who, as such, does not rely on
another for His existence. Maimonides' God is, to use the language of
Avicenna, the proven existent which "when it is considered in
itself, has its existence by necessity" and which, as such, has
no cause (HM, H 241).



On the theme of divine simplicity, it is also worth considering the
theological context in which Maimonides' denial of divine accidents
and attributes takes place. A center-stage issue in Quran exegesis,
the theme of divine attributes--or lack thereof--was the
subject of much heated debate among Islamic theologians in Maimonides'
immediate context. While Maimonides is extremely critical of the
dialectical methods of the Kalam theologians (accusing them, for
example, of using imagination instead of intellect to come to their
conclusions about God), in stressing God's unity through the
particular idea that God does not have "differing notions"
subsisting in His essence, Maimonides is in step with those Kalam
theologians in his Islamic milieu who stress, above all, the absolute
unity of God and His lack of 
attributes.[8] Reflecting on Maimonides' upholding the
joint ideas that God is absolutely one and that God has no body,
Stroumsa argues for the influence of Almohadic legal theory and
theology on Maimonides--a point seen too in his support for
mandating belief in God's unity by
 law.[9]




Following on the theme of God's unity, Maimonides emerges as a strong
proponent of apophatic discourse, sometimes referred to as
"negative theology," which is a mode of talking about God
with the sensitivity that, since God admits of no multiplicity, we
cannot meaningfully (at least not in any straightforward or literal
sense) ascribe any traits to Him. The very act of predication involved
in attributions (formulas of the form "God is... ")
are doomed to failure in the light of God's utter unity. To approach
God apophatically is, hence, to approach God with a heightened
sensitivity to the failures of language to say very much about Him at
all. This is called "negative theology" in the sense that
claims about God (with the exception of such claims as "that He
exists," and "that He is pure being, pure goodness, and
pure wisdom qua pure intellect") are seen as never actually
telling us anything substantive about God. At best we can come to
understand what God is not. For example, Maimonides affirms that
"anything that entails corporeality ought of necessity to be
negated in reference to Him and that all affection likewise should be
negated in reference to him" (G 1.55, P 128). For Maimonides,
God "cannot have an affirmative attribute in any respect,"
and so, affirmative predications about God cannot be taken as
informing us about God's essential reality (G 1.58, P 135). As such,
positive attributions about God actually bring one further away
from--not closer to--an understanding of the divine:



> 
> Know that when you make an affirmation ascribing another thing to Him,
> you become more remote from Him in two respects: one of them is that
> everything you affirm is a perfection only with reference to us, and
> the other is that He does not possess a thing other than His
> essence... (G 1.59, P 139)
> 



For Maimonides, language is limited in its ability to capture God's
essence: "when the tongues aspire to magnify Him by means of
attributive qualifications, all eloquence turns into weariness and
incapacity!" (G 1.58, P 137).




It is in this spirit that Maimonides takes great pains to point out
how the Bible itself, in its various detailed positive attributions
about God, is not to be taken at face value. Maimonides explains that
Biblical descriptions of divine "traits" are not to be
seen as telling us anything about God's essential reality, but,
rather:



> 
> ...the numerous attributes possessing diverse notions that figure
> in the Scripture and that are indicative of Him, may he be exalted,
> are mentioned in reference to the multiplicity of His actions and not
> because of a multiplicity subsisting in His essence, and some of them,
> as we have made clear, also with a view to indicating His perfection
> according to what we consider as perfection (G 1.52, P 119)
> 



To describe God is, here, to describe the effects God's being has on
(or in) the world of humans. If we speak of God's mercy, we are
speaking not of God's essential reality, but of the ways in which
God's essential reality is manifest in the world--manifest, that
is, in the well-ordered design of this world that, to the human mind,
appears worthy of, for example, the designation
"merciful". One example Maimonides gives is of the
well-ordered design of the embryo which is supplied with all needed
protection and nourishment and with all the wonders that one can find
in a study of biology, physiology, and
embryology.[10]
While this kind of ordered design does not suggest for Maimonides that
God has the attribute of mercy, it is indeed for him a manifestation
of God's essential wisdom and goodness. When this kind of ordered
design leads one to claim that "God is merciful," what is
really being reflected is not that God has the attribute of mercy but
that the wise order of the world--stemming from God's own
essential wisdom and goodness--is, qua well-thought through
design that accommodates the embryo's every need ensuring its health
and nourishment, something that in the case of humans would well stem
from the attribute of mercy. Denying attributes to God follows, for
Maimonides, from a proper awareness of the nature of divine unity (as
an essential and trait-less being as wisdom as goodness). This
together with the idea that scriptural claims about God are not to be
taken at face value can be found in earlier Islamic philosophical
tradition as well. We will return to this theme below
[see Section 7].




It is worth noting a strong affinity between Maimonides' understanding
of God's manifestness in the order of nature and Averroes' conception
of God and providence which focuses heavily on God's essential
preservation of all species, and his role as the cause of being and
unity in all hylomorphic substances. Emphasizing God's relation in
this regard to nature, Averroes speaks of



> 
> the divine mind which is like the single form of the single commanding
> art to which various arts are subordinated. Accordingly, one must
> understand that nature, when it produces something very highly
> organized without itself being intelligent, is inspired by active
> powers which are nobler than it and are called "intellect". (CAM
> 1502-3, G 111]
> 


Envisioning, with Aristotle, a series of separate intellects moving
the various celestial spheres, Averroes, commenting on Aristotle,
speaks of sublunar nature being actualized by stars' heat, the stars'
heat being generated by the separate intellects, and these separate
intellects as ultimately being moved by God (through the separate
intellects' desire for God, their final cause). As Averroes notes in
the lines leading up to the preceding quote:



> 
> As for the heats generated by the heats of the stars, which produce
>  each distinct species of animals and which are potentially that
>  species of animal, the power present in each one of these heats
>  depends on the amount of the motions of the stars and their
>  reciprocal proximity or remoteness; this power originates from the
>  work of the divine mind... [CAM 1502, G 111]
> 



In this way, Averroes can be seen to envision God (the "divine
mind," or we might say, divine wisdom) in the very contours of
terrestrial and celestial 
nature.[11]
 This Averroean model can in many ways be
seen throughout Maimonides' Guide.


### 3.2 God as Intellect




For Maimonides, God is a pure knower described in Aristotelian terms
as purely actualized intellect and as the act of knowing that knows
itself.




As we have already seen, following a Plotinian notion of divine
transcendence alongside an Aristotelian sense of God as a fully
actualized Intellect, Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors and
contemporaries describe God as an absolutely pure and undivided unity,
and as a perfected, fully actualized Intellect (in this latter way
prima facie deviating from Plotinus' own sense of God as "above
being" and "beyond intellect"). The notion of God as
Intellect, rooted in Aristotle's own works, contrasts intellects which
are less perfected with those which are more (or, in the case of God,
fully) perfected in terms of lesser and greater degrees of actuality:
while a lesser intellect is characterized at any given time by some
degree of not-yet-actualized-potentiality (which is to say, it doesn't
yet know everything), the intellect of God alone--being in a
constant and unchanging state of complete knowledge--is described
as being entirely devoid of unactualized potencies, residing always in
a state of pure actualization.




We can certainly see this Aristotelian emphasis on the "God as
knower" theme in al-Farabi, for whom God is "the first
cause, the first intellect, and the first living" (*al-sabab
al-awwal wal-'aql al-awwal wal-hayy al-awwal*) (PS,
81). As "first cause" God is the ontological foundation of
all being; as "first intellect" He is the repository of
all knowledge and final cause of all knowing; and as "first
living" He is the source of life itself. Emphasizing the idea of
God's unique ontological status, Al-Farabi elaborates:



> 
> The First Existent (*al-mawjud al-awwal*) is the First Cause
> (*al-sabab al-awwal*) of the existence of all the other
> existences (PS 56). It is free of every kind of deficiency...Thus
> its existence is the most excellent and precedes every other
> existence...It can in no way have existence potentially, and
> there is no possibility whatever that it should not exist...It is
> the existent for whose existence there can be no cause... (PS 57)
> 


God is uncaused and admits of no unactualized potency; he is pure
act and necessary existent.




Adding to this idea of God, and following further on an Aristotelian
theme of God as pure knowing that knows
itself,[12]
Maimonides adds:



> 
> Now when it is demonstrated that God, may He be held precious and
> magnified, is an intellect *in actu* (*'aql bil-fi'l*; Munk
> 1931, 114, line 4) and that there is absolutely no potentiality in
> Him--as is clear and shall be demonstrated--so that He is
> not by way of sometimes apprehending and sometimes not apprehending
> but is always an intellect *in actu*, it follows necessarily that
> he and the thing apprehended are one thing, which is His essence
> (*dhat*). Moreover, the act of apprehension owing to which
> He is said to be an intellectually cognizing subject is in itself the
> intellect, which is His essence. Accordingly, He is always the
> intellect (*al-'aql*) as well as the intellectually
> cognizing subject (*al-'aqil*) and the intellectually
> cognized object (*al-ma'aqul*)... (G 1.68, P 165;
> Arabic at Munk 1931, 114)
> 
> 


In Maimonides' idea of God's pure activity of intellection, we are
reminded of Al-Farabi's own Aristotelian account. Not to be confused
with "active intellect" (to which we will return below),
God ("the First") is described by Al-Farabi as an
"intellect *in actu*," or, an "actual
intellect" (*al-'aql bil-fi'l*, literally, the
intellect "in act," or "actualized") (PS
70). Following on this idea, and mirrored most evidently in the quote
from Maimonides above, Farabi follows Aristotle in describing God as
the thinking subject who thinks himself:



> 
> ...for the One whose identity
> (*ipseitas*; *huwiyya*) is intellect is intelligible by
> the One whose identity is intellect (PS 70). In order to be
> intelligible the First is in no need of another essence outside itself
> which would think it but it itself thinks its own essence. As a result
> of its thinking its own essence, it becomes actually thinking and
> intellect, and, as a result of its essence thinking (intelligizing)
> it, it becomes actually intelligized...[It] is intellect and
> thinking by thinking its own essence...[In the case of God, the
> First], the intellect (*al-'aql*), the thinker
> (*al-'aqil*) and the intelligible (and intelligized)
> (*al-ma'qul*) (PS 70) have...one meaning and are
> one essence and one indivisible substance (PS 71-3)
> 


It is precisely this Aristotelian description of God (as subject
and object of the pure act of knowing), together with a heightened
Neoplatonic sensitivity to God's unity (arguably seen more
emphatically in Avicenna than even in al-Farabi) which grounds
Maimonides' own understanding of the divine.




This same identification of God as pure act can also be seen in
Averroes who shares with his Neoplatonic Islamic philosophers and
Maimonides a sense of God's purity of act, as can be seen in his
commentary on Aristotle's *Metaphysics*, and the sense there of
God as:



> 
> the first mover [who] is eternal, substance, pure actuality and free
> from matter [CAM 1599, G 151].
> 


### 3.3 On the Tension/Interplay of Immanence and Transcendence




Alongside his emphasis on God's utter unchanging and utterly
transcendent unity, Maimonides also describes God as the creator and
cause of all existence, a notion which seems to bring Him into more
direct and immanent contact with the universe (as we have seen in
Averroes' account in section 3.1 above). For thinkers like al-Farabi,
Avicenna (and arguably, Maimonides) who emphasize a more robust sense
of emanation than is found in Averroes and with it a more robust sense
of God's transcendence, there arises a philosophical tension (or
perhaps we might say interplay) between God-as-transcendent (as the
emanating source of all being) and God-as-immanent (as the power
manifest in the workings of the universe). A tension/interplay can
also be seen more broadly as a feature of Islamic and Jewish
Neoplatonized accounts (including both Avicenna's more transcendent
and Averroes' less transcendent accounts) in which the more
transcendent Greek Plotinian idea of a divine source so unified that
He is at once above intellect as well as "beyond being" is
brought together with the less transcendent Aristotelian notion of God
who is the pure being of perfected intellect.




We might also note that in the tension/interplay of divine immanence
and transcendence in Maimonides' Guide, we might discern affinities
for each of the (competing) ideas of Avicenna and Averroes, the former
emphasizing God's transcendence, and the latter identifying God as an
immanent first mover. Sometimes Maimonides' knowing God is emphasized
more immanently as "the form of the world" (G 1.69, P
166), and as the mover of the first sphere (G 1.72; G 2.1). Other
times, Maimonides' knowing God is emphasized in His
transcendence--as even more transcendent than the rest of the
separate cosmic intellects, with the reminder at Guide 2.4 that God is
not to be identified as mover of the first
sphere.[13]




Commenting on the dual description of God-as-immanent and
God-as-transcendent, Maimonides concludes at Guide 1.72,



> 
> On the one hand, there is a demonstration of His separateness, may He
> be exalted, from the world and of His being free from it; and on the
> other hand, there is a demonstration that the influence of His
> governance and providence in every part of the
> world...exists... (G 1.72, P 193)
> 



(Given, though, that the rest of this chapter talks in Avicennian
 terms about the emanating divine overflow as it is found in active
 intellect (see sections 5
 and 6 below for more on the
 "divine overflow" and "active intellect"),
 and given that providence is to be understood in terms of a human
 being's own relationship--via intellect--to this emanating
 active intellect (as becomes clear elsewhere in the Guide (e.g. G
 3.52, P 624-6), the overall weight of Maimonides' might be seen to
 lie with Avicenna on the side of a transcendent, emanating God).


## 4. Cosmos, Creation, Emanation




Following in the Greek and Islamic traditions before him, Maimonides
sets out to carefully investigate the workings of the
world--including terrestrial, celestial, and purely metaphysical
realities. Based on our consideration of divine "acts"
above, we can see how even investigations into the workings of
corporeal nature can be seen as having explicitly theological
significance in a Maimonidean context. In this spirit, Maimonides can
be seen as finding value in the cosmological argument at play in
Aristotle and Averroes according to which the workings of the world
give rise to a proof for the existence of God as a first mover
(though, it might be noted, that Maimonides, along with al-Farabi,
Avicenna--and, in a somewhat different sense,
Averroes--credits God with being the cause not only of motion,
but of existence as well). In this way, even studying the workings of
nature can be seen in the service of theology--a point borne out
further when we consider our above discussion of Maimonides and
Averroes on God's manifest role in the order of nature. In this
regard, we might note that Maimonides goes so far as to describe
divine actions at 2.32 as natural actions. Furthermore, in a context
where God Himself cannot be known *per se* and where (as we
have seen above) descriptions of God are best understood as describing
not God, but the effects of God in the world (that is, the
manifestation of God's wisdom and goodness in the well-ordered design
and workings of nature), a study of how the world works can be seen as
a study of God's actions (and as such, as an attempt to better get to
know God). As Maimonides makes clear, "There is...no way to
apprehend Him except...through the things He has made..." (G 1.34, P
74).



 
In relation to the cosmos, it is clear that Maimonides' God stands as
first cause and source for all existence. Far less, clear, however, is
Maimonides' precise understanding of what God's role as "first
cause and source for all existence"--His role, that is, as
Creator--amounts to. (For an overview of key Arabic creation
terms at play in Maimonides' Islamic milieu as well as in his Jewish
Neoplatonic context, the reader is well-served to consult
the *Encyclopaedia of Islam* entries
on *ibda'*, *khalq*, *huduth
al-'alam*; see too Altman and Stern on Neoplatonic
creation terms in Israeli's lexicon (including
also *al-ikhtira'*) and their relation to Greek and
Islamic text traditions, including al-Kindi (Almann and Stern 1958;
see Israeli's *Book of Definitions* 66-68, with comments at
68-74).



At Guide 2.13, Maimonides seems, at least prima facie, to embrace a
doctrine of creation *ex nihilo*:



> 
> 
> ...the opinion of all who believe in the Law of Moses our Master,
> peace be on him, is that the world as a whole--I mean to say,
> every existent other than God, may He be exalted--was brought
> into existence by God after having been purely and absolutely
> nonexistent, and that God, may He be exalted, had existed alone, and
> nothing else--neither an angel nor a sphere nor what subsists
> within the sphere. Afterwards, through His will and His volition, He
> brought into existence out of nothing all the beings as they are, time
> itself being one of the created things...
> 
> 




In the context of 2.13, this view is contrasted with two other
cosmogonical views: 1) creation *ex aliquo* (i.e., the Platonic
cosmogony on which God invests an eternally existing material
substrate with forms); and 2) the Aristotelian position that the world
is eternal. Suffice it to say that there is much scholarly debate over
the exact nature of Maimonides' true view on creation. First of all,
there are theorists (following in the tradition of Leo Strauss) who
view Maimonides as committed to esoteric writing strategies rooted in
socio-political considerations--essentially, on such a view,
Maimonides will often be seen to have written the exact opposite of
what he truly believed. For these theorists, the stated view of
Maimonides will almost always be in extreme contrast to his true,
unstated view [for a related discussion,
see Section 7]. Applying this theoretical
starting point to the case at hand, the fact that Maimonides seems to
embrace creation *ex nihilo* would suggest to some that he
truly believed in Aristotelian eternity, the opposite
view.[14]





There are, though, other compelling reasons to question Maimonides'
view of creation. Leaving aside, that is, any particular commitments
to Straussian writing strategies, we might simply note that
Maimonides' own treatment of creation and its various sub-themes seems
to leave room for interpretation, oftentime admitting of
ambiguous--and even changing--details. Careful readings and
re-readings of the Guide seem to support more than one way of
understanding the precise nature of and relationship between such
concepts as: creation [*simpliciter*], creation *ex
nihilo*, creation *ex aliquo*, creation taken in a temporal
sense, creation taken in a non-temporal sense, continuous creation,
ontological dependency, emanation, and will, among other inter-related
concepts. "Will," for example, is sometimes described as a
feature of creation *ex nihilo*, but other times seems to
emerge as a feature of "creation" more broadly; but, as we
have seen earlier in our discussion of *The Theology of
Aristotle*, in Maimonides' philosophical context
"creation" (and even "creation *ex
nihilo*") might in theory be used to describe even
Neoplatonic eternal 
 emanation[15]
 or Aristotelian eternity viewed in a
certain way (for the explicit reconciliation of creation language with
doctrines of eternity in Maimonides' immediate philosophical milieu,
see Averroes). And so, scholarly debates about Maimonides' true view
on this matter abound: while some attribute to him a view of creation
in time, others find in Maimonides a secret belief in Platonic
creation *ex aliquo* (Davidson 1979, 16-40), a secret belief in
the Aristotelian view of eternity, or a belief in the identity between
the notion of Biblical creation and Aristotelian eternity
(W. Z. Harvey 1981).





Whatever his ultimate view, Maimonides certainly engages the idea of
creation, describing God as the Creator (a description that is, of
course, also used in the *Theology of Aristotle* tradition in a
way that has nothing to do with the Bible, and nothing to do with
"creation in time"):



> 
> 
> For the universe exists in virtue of the existence of the Creator, and
> the latter continually endows it with permanence in virtue of the
> thing that is spoken of as overflow--as we shall make clear in
> one of the chapters of this Treatise... (G 1.69, P 168)
> 
> 




Here, God emerges as the cause (in at least some sense) of the world's
existence. We see here too an emphasis on the continuous relationship
between God and the world in this regard: As cause of the world's
"permanence," God is a continual sustainer. Here too, we
learn of the idea of a cosmic overflow, an idea to which we will
return below.




Looking to his Islamic context, it is important always keep in mind
that describing God as the source and cause of being (and even
describing God as a "creator") can mean very different
things, and so care must be taken not to assume we know what
Maimonides is talking about just because his God is a creating source
and cause. Describing God as a cause of being, or as a creator, or
even as a creator *ex nihilo* might mean--as it does in
al-Kindi--that He brings about the existence of the world in time
(in this way standing in clear opposition to an Aristotelian view of
eternity or a Plotinian view of emanation), or it might mean something
else entirely: It might mean for instance that God is an eternal
ontological source. This idea can be seen in Avicenna for whom God is
the Being eternally engaged in an ongoing process of emanation, and in
this way eternally generating existence itself. This idea of
God-as-source can be seen too in a somewhat different way in Averroes
for whom God-as-creator is the eternal-ontological source, the
Aristotelian uncaused cause who eternally sustains the universe
and--absent an Avicennian process of emanationist
intermediation--is the constant productive source--and in
this sense, the creator--of cosmic existence (see Leaman 1988,
esp. 42-71 and Davidson 1987; see too Taylor 2012a, Other Internet
Resources). Averroes in this regard champions an *ab aeterno*
generation which can in part be characterized as
not-quite-a-creation-view, and can in part be characterized as
not-quite-an-eternity-view (depending, of course, on what one means by
those terms):



> 
> 
> But in truth it [i.e. the world] is neither truly generated, nor is it
> truly eternal. For what is truly generated is necessarily corruptible,
> and what is truly eternal has no cause...Thus the doctrines about
> the world are not all so far apart from one another that some of them
> should be charged as unbelief and others not. (DT sections 19-20, B
> 15-16)
> 




According to Averroes, it is important to acknowledge that the
existence of the world has a cause, and so any philosophical account
of eternity that suggests otherwise won't do, whereas it is equally
important to recognize that existence itself along with time
"extend continuously at both extremes," and so, any
unreflective religious commitment to origination in time won't
do. Exposing the weaknesses in holding either that the world is
created in time (*muhdath*) or that it is eternal (in the sense
of "uncaused"), Averroes instead upholds a notion of the
world's being "generated *ab aeterno*."




For Avicenna and for Averroes--though in different ways--the
idea of eternity does not exclude talking about the existence of the
universe as a created effect of God: for Avicenna, God is the
"cause of being" in the sense that He is the eternally
emanating source of being, whereas for Averroes, God is the
"cause of being" in the sense of an *ab aeterno*
non-emanative source of generation. Maimonides--given all of his
overt talk of emanation (*fayd*) in the Guide--would
seem best grouped with Avicenna on this issue, though as we have seen
above, other aspects of his view of God's role in the universe
resonate strongly with Averroes. To be sure, the exact nature of
Maimonides' view--and the extent of its similarities to and/or
influences from the views of Avicenna and Averroes--seems
reasonably open to debate. Given the subtle interplay of the notions
of emanation, creation, eternal sustenance, and ontological causal
grounding--in addition to Maimonides' own arguably ambiguous
claims about creation--it is difficult to know for sure what
Maimonides is advocating, even when he is advocating
"creation."




Adding to the conceptual complexity, one might note too that there
are, in Maimonides' own Islamic context, debates about just how to
understand the Quranic description of a Creator God. While Quran II,
117 and VI, 101 describe God as the *Badi'*, or
Absolute Creator, it is unclear exactly what is meant by the activity
of *ibda'* (absolute creation, or innovation) and
how it relates to an act of
*ikhtira'* (invention, origination, or making 
anew).[16]
 Looking to certain Islamic interpretations of God's creative role as
described in the Quran, the idea of "creation  *ex nihilo* " can be seen to fall away in light of Quranic verses--such as
Quran XI, 7 ("...and His throne was on the
water...") and XLI, 2 ("Then He directed Himself
towards the sky, and it was smoke")--which can be taken
(as they are by
 Averroes; see DT section 21, B 16), 
 as overtly signifying substances co-eternal with
God (such as the "smoke" of XLI, 2 taken as denoting an
eternally co-existing something). For Averroes, the meaning of the
Quran on creation is that "[the world's] form really is
generated, whereas being itself and time extend continuously at both
 extremes..." (DT section 21, B 16). 
 Along these lines, we might note that there is no reason that the
ambiguity (or openness) of what the Quran means in its description of God should
not have carried through to Maimonides' own thoughts on the Biblical
account, where the philosophically relevant details of God's Genesis
act of creation (*bri'ah*) are arguably left unspecified and open to interpretation.




Seen in this context, interpreting Maimonides' own views on
creation--including difficulties in ascertaining what on his view
counts as "the Biblical account" of creation--is
difficult. We might add a further difficulty: Maimonides' overall
treatment of creation is tempered by his acknowledgement (G 2.16) that
the question of creation v. eternity is an open question--in
other words, there is no conclusive proof, according to Maimonides,
for creation and no conclusive proof for eternity (a claim which can
be seen too in Averroes'
*Tahafut*, 1st discussion, 1st
 proof).
 In this spirit, Maimonides offers the following summary of a chapter
in which the creation question has been considered:



> 
> 
> To sum up: Nothing in the methods we have set forth in this chapter is
> capable either of establishing an opinion [about the eternity of the
> world] as correct or of proving it false or of arousing doubts with
> regard to it... (G 2.15, P 292)
> 
> 


## 5. Overflow




Returning to our earlier citation, we find in Maimonides' description
of God's creative act the idea of a cosmic overflow:



> 
> 
> For the universe exists in virtue of the existence of the Creator, and
> the latter continually endows it with permanence in virtue of the
> thing that is spoken of as overflow--as we shall make clear in
> one of the chapters of this Treatise... (G 1.69, P 168)
> 
> 




Related to the question of God's ontologically grounding relationship
to the cosmos, there emerges not only in Maimonides but in his Islamic
philosophical context, an emanationist notion of divine
"overflow" which incorporates--and, as it were, tries
to reconcile--certain Aristotelian ideas about cosmic separate
intellects (see *De Anima* 3.5, as well as *Metaphysics*
L)[17]
together with overtly Neoplatonic ideas found in the *Theology of
Aristotle*. For al-Farabi, as for Avicenna, the cosmic overflow
is, in particular, a series of 10 emanating separate intellects, each
linked to its own celestial sphere (and in turn to the various planets
which respectively occupy those spheres), with the lowest of these
separate intellects being *al-'aql
al-fa''al*, the "active intellect"
(or: "agent intellect"). For al-Farabi and Avicenna, the
active intellect is seen as the emanating source and support of the
entire sublunar realm, and also as the source for all human knowledge,
including prophecy. In the Arabic philosophical tradition, this active
intellect is further identified with the "separate
intellect" spoken of by Aristotle at *De Anima* 3.5
(though, other Islamic philosophers--such as Averroes, as well as
ancient Greek commentators of Aristotle and contemporary Aristotle
scholars would, in their various interpretations, deny the idea of an
emanating intellect responsible for the existence of the world
in *De Anima* 3.5).





That Maimonides is influenced by at least some of these ideas about
overflow and active intellect is certain. Offering an elaboration of
the idea of overflow at Guide 2.11 (G 2.11, P 275), Maimonides
describes the cosmogonical activity through which the cosmos--as
seen first in a series of intellects--is generated. Preparing in
2.11 to address the world's having been created in time, Maimonides
talks of the divine overflow, promising us that "these views do
not contradict anything said by our prophets and the sustainer of our
Law" (G 2.11, P 276). On the views in question, there is a
divine overflow that brings about a series of cosmic intellects, these
intellects themselves being related through a process of overflow to
one another and to the realities which follow from them
respectively. He begins:



> 
> 
> the overflow (*al-fayd*) coming from Him, may He be
> exalted, for the bringing into being of separate intellects overflows
> likewise from these intellects, so that one of them brings another one
> into being and this continue up to the active intellect. With the
> latter, the bringing into being of separate intellects comes to an end
> (G 2.11, P 275; Arabic at Munk 1931, 192).
> 
> 




Here, Maimonides rehearses the idea, seen clearly in his Islamic
predecessors, that there are a series of intellects which generate one
another (i.e. the highest generating the next highest, and so on until
the lowest intellect, *viz.* active intellect). Maimonides then
goes on to mirror the idea, also found in al-Farabi and Avicenna, that
each intellect additionally generates the body of its sphere, and that
there is, furthermore, a set of influences which these spheres wield
over the generation and corruption of terrestrial, corporeal beings on
earth:



> 
> 
> Moreover a certain other act of bringing into being overflows from
> every separate intellect until the spheres come to an end with the
> sphere of the moon. After it there is the body subject to generation
> and corruption, I mean the first matter [*al-madda
> al-ula* (Munk 1931, 192), referring to Aristotelian
> prime matter] and what is composed of it. Furthermore, forces from
> every sphere enter the elements until their overflow is completed with
> the completion of generation and corruption (G 2.11, P 275).
> 
> 




All in all, Maimonides at Guide 2.11 wishes to



> 
> 
> show that governance overflows from the deity, may He be exalted, to
> the intellects according to their rank; that from the benefits
> received by the intellects, good things and lights overflow to the
> bodies of the spheres; and that from the spheres--because of the
> greatness of the benefits they have received from their
> principles--forces and good things overflow to this body subject
> to generation and corruption (G 2.11, P 275).
> 
> 




To be sure, Maimonides here mirrors ideas found in earlier Islamic
authors. In this regard, consider al-Farabi's own explanation of the
cosmic overflow:



> 
> 
> The First [i.e. God] is that from which everything which exists comes
> into existence...The genesis of that which comes into existence
> from it takes place by way of an emanation (*fayd*) (PS
> 88), the existence of which is due to the existence of something else,
> so that the existence of something different from the First emanates
> from the First's existence... (PS 89-91)
> 
> 




Going on to elaborate the unfolding of the universe from God, the
first intellect, al-Farabi describes the emanation of 10 discrete
intellects from the First, explaining how the dual intellection of
each of these intellects (intellection of its own essence on the one
hand, and intellection of God on the other) in turn results in the
coming into being of (a) a heaven or celestial sphere, and (b) the
intellect below it:



> 
> 
> From the First emanates the existence of the Second. This Second is,
> again, an utterly incorporeal substance, and is not in matter. It
> thinks of its own essence and thinks the First. What it thinks of its
> own essence is no more than its essence. As a result of its thinking
> of the First, a third existent follows necessarily from it; and as a
> result of its substantification in its specific essence, the existence
> of the First Heaven follows necessarily. The existence of the Third,
> again, is not in matter, its substance is intellect, and it thinks its
> own essence and thinks the First. As a result of its substantification
> in its specific essence, the existence of the sphere of the fixed
> stars follows necessarily, and as a result of its thinking of the
> First, a fourth existence follows necessarily... (PS 101-3)
> 
> 




And so on until the last intellect arises. This last intellect arising
in the great cosmic chain of being is the active intellect, described
by al-Farabi here as the "eleventh existence." For
al-Farabi, the active intellect is--as in other Arabic
philosophical texts--the 10th of the emanated
intellects; its description as "eleventh existence" does
not challenge that idea, but simply follows from the fact that Farabi
counts God as a first intellect above the other separate intellects,
the first emanated intellect after God as the first intellect
(separate, that is, from God), and so on until the active intellect,
which, as the 10th emanated intellect after God, is the
"eleventh existence," (see PS II.3.9-10, W 105; PS
IV.13.2, W 203).





With al-Farabi and Avicenna, Maimonides adopts a cosmology of 10
separate intellects, with active intellect governing the sublunar
realm in which we live. With his Islamic predecessors, Maimonides
additionally identifies these separate intellects with the angels
spoken of in religious tradition. One Islamic philosophical example of
this view can be seen in al-Farabi who, in the introductory summary to
his treatise on the perfect state, describes the ten separate cosmic
intellects as "the existents which should be believed to be the
angels " (PS 39), and as those "of which it should be said
that they are the angels " (PS 41).




On the question of being's source, while Maimonides shares with his
Islamic predecessors a commitment to God's role as the ultimate cause
of the world, he additionally seems to share with al-Farabi and
Avicenna, and in opposition to the views of Averroes, the idea that
the active intellect is a *dator formarum* (a giver of
forms). On this view, the active intellect actually supplies the world
in which we live with its forms and as such, plays a crucial causal
role in the very formation of existence. In this sense, the active
intellect is allowed to play a shared role in God's creative,
sustaining role as source of existence (in whatever way that process
is ultimately understood).




That Maimonides is influenced by earlier Islamic writings on overflow
and active intellect is certain. What is uncertain, though, is how all
the details of these ideas play out exactly in his own ultimate view
of creation. Maimonides' own views on the issues related to
creation--the necessitation of creation, the role of will, and
the possibility of eternality--are, as we have already said,
subject to much debate, and for good reason given how many different
things he says about these subjects. Given the complexity of
Maimonides' view of creation one must be careful not to make too many
assumptions about what exactly is entailed by the Maimonidean
"overflow" view. Not only can one not take Maimonides'
talk of "overflow" as automatically committing him to the
eternal emanation view espoused by Avicenna, but, one can't, it seems,
be too sure of what it means at all--even in Avicenna. In this
spirit, we might cite al-Farabi's own reminder of the vicissitudes of
language in trying to explain the nature of the world's deepest
underpinnings. Al-Farabi warns of taking cosmological spatial
languages of "higher and lower " too literally, and offers
the same warning for the language of "overflow":



> 
> 
> Indeed by "higher" and "lower," he means the
> venerable and superior, not spatial location...It is the same
> with what [philosophers say] about the "overflowing" of
> the intellect to the soul and the "overflowing" of the
> soul to nature. By that, he means only the benefit the intellect
> provides by assisting the soul to retain the universal forms when it
> apprehends their particulars...By the "overflowing"
> of the soul to nature, he means the benefit it provides by yearning
> for what is useful for its subsistence... (HTO sections 71-73; B
> 163-4).
> 




Yet one more reason to take care in approaching Maimonides'--or
anyone else's--emanationist account of cosmic overflow. In fact,
Maimonides himself mirrors this insight at Guide 2.12 where in the
context of trying to explain some of the different ways the term
"overflow" can be 
 used,[18]
 and trying to explain what sense there is
in using the term to describe God's activity, he stresses that
"we are not capable of finding the true reality of a term that
would correspond to the true reality of the notion" (G 2.12, P
279). In fact, this sensitivity to the temperamental nature of
language when it comes to transmitting important truths leads us to
another key aspect of Maimondean thought, one too which is deeply
influenced by its Islamic context and to which we will turn below (see
 Section 7).


## 6. Active Intellect, Human Intellect, Immortality, and Prophecy




We have seen the Islamic philosophical context of Maimonides'
cosmology of separate intellects (the "angels"), with
active intellect at the helm of the sublunar world in which we
live. For Maimonides--as for his Islamic philosophical
predecessors and contemporaries--the active intellect is an
important governing principle for the sublunar realm, a cosmic
intellectual principle which, in addition to whatever other roles it
plays in the workings of our terrestrial realm, plays a crucial role
in human knowledge--including prophecy, and in fact serves even
as the foundation for a theory of immortality.




With Islamic philosophers before him, Maimonides describes the active
intellect as an overflow from God which overflows onto humans, giving
them knowledge and leading them towards perfection. Expositing the
Psalms 36:10 verse, "For with Thee is the fountain of life; in
Thy light do we see light," Maimonides explains that



> 
> 
> through the overflow of the intellect that has overflowed from Thee
> [i.e., God], we intellectually cognize, and consequently we receive
> correct guidance, we draw inferences, and we apprehend the intellect.
> Understand this. (G 2.12, P 280)
> 
> 




Commenting on this cosmic dynamic at the very start of the Guide,
Maimonides understands the Genesis 1:26-27 idea that man was created
"in the image" of God as pointing to the divine link
between God and man found in the human intellect (and its link to
active intellect):



> 
> 
> Now man possesses as his proprium something in him that is very
> strange as it is not found in anything else that exists under the
> sphere of the moon, namely, intellectual apprehension
> (*al-idrak al-'aqli*). In the exercise of this,
> no sense, no part of the body, none of the extremities are used; and
> therefore this apprehension was likened unto the apprehension of the
> deity...It was because of this something, I mean because of the
> divine intellect (*al-'aql al-ilahi*) conjoined
> (*al-muttasil*) with man, that it is said of the latter
> that he is *in the image of God and in His likeness*... (G
> 1.1; P 23; Pines' use of italics indicates Maimonides' use of Hebrew
> in his text; for Arabic, see Munk 1931, 15).
> 
> 




It is in our intellectual apprehension that we are most like unto
God. In fact, described not only as a *likeness to* God but as
an *overflow from* God, the human moment of intellect may be
seen as the mark of divine presence in man. Bemoaning the absence
among humans of a pure state of fully actualized intellect, Maimonides
allegorically exposits the Genesis Biblical account of Adam's
transgressions in the Garden of Eden as man's falling away from his
God-given intellect--an intellect, described above as a
"divine intellect" here described further as an overflow
from God:



> 
> 
> For the intellect that God made overflow (*afada*;
> Munk 1931, 16) unto man and that is the latter's ultimate perfection,
> was that which *Adam* had been provided with before
> disobeyed. It was because of this that it was said of him that he was
> created *in the image of God and in His likeness*...(G
> 1.2; P 24; Pines' use of italics indicates Maimonides' use of Hebrew
> in his text).
> 


### 6.1 Epistemology




On the epistemological/psychological details of active intellect,
Maimonides appears to follow a Farabian tradition in at least some
respects. With Aristotle, al-Farabi describes the goal of human
existence as the attainment of happiness. Al-Farabi goes on to
describe this state of human perfection in at least partly passive
terms--as something which is "given to the possible beings
capable of receiving it " (PR, N1 35). In this context, the
"giver" emerges as active intellect. Al-Farabi describes
the purpose of active intellect as "true and supreme happiness
" (PR, N1 38), and further clarifies that the human being can
have this happiness "only when the active intellect first gives
the first intelligibles, which constitute the primary
knowledge..." (PR, N1 35).




For al-Farabi and Avicenna, as for Maimonides, this
"giving" activity of active intellect is described in
particular as an emanative overflow, and is seen as foundational to
the activity of human knowing. Contrasting human intellection from
God's own fully actualized state of intellection (see above),
al-Farabi follows Aristotle and speaks of the actualization process of
human intellect as requiring an activating cause:



> 
> 
> ...neither the rational faculty nor what is provided in man by
> nature has the wherewithal to become of itself intellect in actuality.
> To become intellect in actuality it needs something else which
> transfers it from potentiality to actuality... (PS IV.13.1, W
> 199).
> 




The activating cause needed to bring man from a state of potential to
a state of actual knowing is the active intellect (sometimes
translated as "agent" intellect). Rooted in Aristotle's
own account of soul at *De Anima* 3.5 (BWA, 591), this idea
stands as a cornerstone to Islamic--and
Maimonidean--philosophical theories of epistemology, prophecy,
and even afterlife and immortality. How to best interpret what
Aristotle is actually trying to say at *De Anima* 3.5 need not
concern us. Looking, rather, for the features of Aristotle's text
which served as a basis for various Islamic philosophical accounts of
active intellect, we find Aristotle's description of a
"separable " (BWA 592), essentially "active"
(BWA 592) intellect "without [which] nothing
 thinks,"[19]
 an "impassible," and
"unmixed" state of intellect, furthermore described by
Aristotle not only as "immortal and eternal" (BWA 592) but
as the perfected reality of the human mind once it is "set free
from its present conditions " (BWA 592). 




In thinking about the Islamic philosophical context to Maimonides'
epistemology, we can talk broadly of the influence on his thought of
Islamic Neoplatonized Aristotelian theories of Active Intellect: Human
knowledge-formation relies on the activity of this lowest of the
separate intellects. It is important, though, to keep in mind some
important Islamic philosophical points of difference in considering
Maimonides' context: Starting with al-Farabi and Avicenna, both
envision Active Intellect as a key reality outside of God and outside
of the human mind which plays a key role in the human process of
knowledge-formation. Following Taylor, however (see Taylor 2012), we
might note that while Avicenna sees the ideas contained within Active
Intellect as the source for the human intellect's own ideas, al-Farabi
sees the Active Intellect as merely preparing a person's mind to
abstract ideas from her sensory encounter with the material
world--an idea, as Taylor points out, found too in
Themistius' *Paraphrase of the De Anima* in which he speaks of a
"separate agent intellect which contains all the forms [and
which] comes to be in the human agent intellect empowering and guiding
its action" (Taylor 2012b, Other Internet
Resources). Summarizing this divide between al-Farabi and Avicena in
another way, we might note that while al-Farabi upholds a doctrine of
abstraction by which the human mind receives content from the outside
world, Avicenna instead treats the mind as receiving representations
of the intelligibles from the Active Intellect. Taylor--citing
Burnyeat 2008--reminds us (Taylor 2012b, Other Internet
Resources) that there is actually no doctrine of abstraction in
Aristotle; that said, we may nonetheless speak of al-Farabi's more
Aristotelian (because more sensory and world-reliant) approach to
knowledge as opposed to Avicenna's more Platonic/Neoplatonic approach
according to which humans receive ideas from "on high" so
to speak (in the case of Plato from the realm of forms, in the case of
Plotinus from the universal intellect, and in the case of Avicenna
from the active intellect). Taylor also emphasizes the
representationalist aspect of Avicenna's view: it is not the active
intellect's intelligibles that enter into the human mind, but rather
representations of those intelligibles (Taylor 2012b, Other Internet
Resources).




Turning to Averroes' mature view (as found in his *Long Commentary
on De Anima*), he advances the idea not only of a shared active
intellect, but of a shared material intellect, revealing, as Taylor
argues, elements of al-Farabi and Themistius in his sense of the
active intellect's role in enabling the human intellect to reliably
abstract from the outside world. In this sense, Averroes rejects the
Avicennian sense of active intellect emanating ideas into the human
mind. (Note: Taylor points to the further vestige of Themistius in
Averroes' argument that shared human discourse necessitates belief in
a shared intellect.) Along similar lines, Averroes rejects the
Platonic/Neoplatonic description--found in both al-Farabi and
Avicenna--of active intellect as a repository of ideas. Averroes
instead focuses on active intellect as a "form for us", in
the sense, says Taylor, of "intrinsically operating within
us" (Taylor 2005, 29)--though not in the sense of
suggesting that there is either an active intellect or a material
intellect for each person, and also while maintaining that active and
material intellect are themselves completely separate intellects. For
Averroes, there is for all humans one shared separate active intellect
and one shared separate material intellect, with the activation of
abstraction taking place in the shared active intellect and the
reception of the abstracted intelligibles taking place in the shared
material intellect. In using her soul's powers correctly the human
being is able to benefit from these processes of abstraction and
reception, in this way moving from a state of sensation to a state of
knowledge. Even with the involvement of shared separate active and
material intellects, Averroes describes the process as intrinsic to
the individual human soul and as active intellect becoming "form
for us" (itself understood as the human's final end) in a true
conjunction or uniting of the individual human soul with the active
intellect. (In fact, it is precisely this intimate
relation/conjunction/unification that Averroes find lacking in
al-Farabi's (and we might add, Avicenna's) view of active intellect as
simply emanating data into the human soul; see Taylor 2005, 26-31.) As
Taylor summarizes this view in Averroes: "We must use our powers
of sense, imagination, cogitation and memory to form particular
refined intentions, intelligibles in potency, for presentation to the
agent intellect [i.e. the active intellect] for abstraction, that is,
for transference to the higher level of being intelligibles in act,
and for the attendant impression upon the receptive material
intellect" (Taylor 2005, 31). (For further insights on Averroes'
epistemology, see for example: Taylor 1998, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009,
2011, 2012b (Other Internet Resources); Wolfson 1958; Kogan 1985;
Davidson 1992; Kaplan 1977; Twetten 1995).




In approaching Maimonides' own writings, it is important to keep in
mind competing epistemological views at play in his Islamic
philosophical context. In this way we can continue to work to
determine which of al-Farabi, Avicenna, or Averroes is more
influential on his epistemological thinking, and what--if
any--broader religious and philosophical implications that might
have for how we view his work.



We might here also consider the extent and nature of Maimonides' view
on the limits of human knowledge (a point about which there is much
scholarship and much debate); in two classical essays by Altmann and
Pines on this topic, the Islamic influences on Maimonides of
al-Farabi, ibn Bajja, Avicenna, and Averroes are explored (see Altmann
1987 and Pines 1979).


### 6.2 Illumination




Relevant to Islamic--and Maimonidean--ideas about the active
intellect's role in knowing and prophecy in particular is Aristotle's
additional description of this active intellectual principle as
analogous to light. Especially for the Neoplatonic Islamic readers of
*De Anima*, this
reference to light opens an interpretive floodgate, offering a clear
crossover from talk of a separable, immortal active intellect (in
*De Anima* 3.5) to overtly illuminationist and emanationist
Neoplatonic doctrines (in the *Theology of Aristotle*). For, in
the *Theology of Aristotle* (as in Plotinus' original Greek
writings, and as in Neoplatonic texts more generally), one finds
abundant metaphors of light used to describe the elusive process of
emanation through which the world exists. Looking to the Neoplatonic
cosmologies of Al-Farabi and Avicenna, we additionally find metaphors
of light to describe the unique influence that the active intellect
casts over the sublunar world. In the metaphorical idea of a light pouring
down from active intellect, there emerges the ontological idea that
this intellect emanates forth the very form of the world. There emerges too the epistemological
idea of illumination--the idea that human knowledge is actualized
not by mere encounter with the world, and not merely by some mechanism
internal to the individual's mind, but by the active intellect as a
"source of enlightenment" which pours down on it, as it
were. Here seen in its epistemological role, the active intellect
"illuminates" the human mind, enabling it to become filled with truths (in one or another way; see previous section on differences in this regard between al-Farabi and Avicenna). For Al-Farabi and Avicenna, as for
Maimonides, this illuminationist tendency (rooted at least in part, we
might say, in the *De Anima* 3.5 notion of light) goes hand in
hand with a complex Aristotelian account of the workings of the
individual human mind in the attainment of knowledge. Their commitment
to a complex Aristotelian epistemology and psychology, however, is
tempered with a doctrine of illumination on which the active intellect
plays a key role in the final attainment of knowledge--including
prophecy. For Maimonides, as for his Islamic predecessors, active
intellect is like a light: it is the overflowing illuminating fount of
human intellection and prophecy.


### 6.3 Conjunction




In addition to this language of overflow, Maimonides speaks of the
moment of perfected human contact with active intellect in terms of a
"conjunction" (*ittisal*) between the
human intellect and active intellect. The notion and language of
*ittisal* in particular can be seen in Maimonides when he
speaks, for example, of active intellect as the "divine
intellect conjoined (*al-muttasil*) with man" (G 1.1, P
23; for Arabic see Munk 1931, 15). While it might be noted that this
language of *ittisal* can conceptually be linked to a notion of unification at play in Sufi
discussions of union-with-God (with its Hebrew correlate,
*devequth*, occuring frequently in Jewish
Kabbalistic writings), Maimonides' own use of the concept of
*ittisal* (to describe conjunction with the active
intellect) is in line with the commonplace technical terminology at
play in Arabic textual traditions of [Neoplatonized] Aristotelian
epistemology.


### 6.4 Passionate Love




It might be additionally noted that Maimonides reflects mystical
Islamic Sufi language once again when, in his description of the
culminating moment of intellectual perfection, he employs the Arabic
language of "*'ishq*" (passionate love, love,
desire).[20]
This terminology is also expressly used by Maimonides' Islamic
philosophical predecessor Avicenna in his own "*Risalah
fi'l-'ishq*" ("Treatise on
Love") where he explores God's reality as the pure object of
love (a point seen already in Aristotle's idea of God as the final
object of all desire), as well as the pure subject of
love.[21]

Reflecting on the related Hebrew term
*hosheq* (one who loves passionately) as it relates
to his reading of Psalms 91:14, Maimonides explains,



> 
> 
> ...you know the difference between the terms *one who
> loves* (here Maimonides uses the Hebrew word
> "*ohev*") and *one who loves
> passionately* (here Maimonides uses the Hebrew word
> "*hosheq*"); an excess of love, so
> that no thought remains that is directed toward a thing other than the
> Beloved, is passionate love (*'ishq*) (G 3.51, P 627).
> 
> 




It is certainly not evident that Maimonides literally has a mystical
union in mind in this passage, even with his use of what might seem to
be charged mystical language. The possibility of a mystical meaning
for this and surrounding passages at Guide 3.51 remains subject to
debate, although the most straightforward account of what Maimonides
is up to here remains entirely non-mystical: purely in line with an
Islamic Neoplatonized Aristotelian epistemological tradition of
overflow/conjunction, Maimonides understands "passionate
love" of God (and related Biblical claims about God's kissing
the prophet Moses) as that moment in which the human intellect comes
into full alignment with the active intellect, thus reaching the
height of human perfection.


### 6.5 Prophecy: Overflow, Actualization, Fitness, and the Naturalized Divine




The active intellect is a divine intermediary. Not only is it a cosmic
overflow whose ultimate source is God Himself, and not only does it
stands as governor of sublunar existence and key illuminating source
in all human intellection, but active intellect is additionally
identified as the divine intermediary for prophecy. As Maimonides
notes,



> 
> 
> Know that the true reality and quiddity of prophecy consists in its
> being an overflow overflowing from God, may He be cherished and
> honored, through the intermediation of the active intellect... (G
> 2.36, P 369)
> 
> 




And, drawing upon the epistemological ideas found in his Islamic
philosophical milieu, he describes this process further in terms of
active intellect's causing the human intellect to "pass from
potentiality to actuality" (G 2.38, P 377). 




At the heart of this epistemology is a notion of human receptivity; in
line with our discussion of al-Farabian vs. Avicennian epistemology
above, we might describe this receptivity in one of three ways: (1)
the soul's receiving an overflow of intelligibles from active
intellect, (2) the soul's receiving an overflow of representations of
intelligibles from active intellect, or (3) the soul's receiving an
overflow from active intellect which enables it to abstract
intelligibles from the sensory world). There emerges additionally a
notion of human fitness: human happiness is, as al-Farabi says,
"given to the possible beings capable of receiving it"
(PR, N1 35). For al-Farabi, human beings possess different natural
dispositions, leaving some of them unable--by their very
nature--to ever rise to the level of human perfection:



> 
> 
> ...not every man is equipped by natural disposition to receive
> the first intelligibles, because individual human being are made by
> nature with unequal powers and different preparations... (PR, N1
> 35)
> 
> 




Maimonides here too appears to follow al-Farabi's treatment. Speaking
of the overflow from active intellect, Maimonides remarks that it is
that "through which there is a difference of rank between our
intellects " (G 2.37, P 373), and speaks too of the
"natural disposition" of different people's imaginative
faculties (G 2.36, P 369), speaking in various ways throughout the
Guide of the natural aptitudes of humans and how some people are
simply not as disposed towards intellectual apprehension as others:
some souls are more fit than others.




It is for the most fit of human souls, then, that we can expect the
highest level of conjunction with the active
intellect.[22]
It is precisely this corollary to the theory of human intellection
which lies at the heart of the Islamic philosophical--and with
it, the Maimonidean--understanding of prophecy. Prophecy is a
natural phenomenon, stemming precisely from the cosmological structure
of reality and the epistemological/psychological structure of human
minds. The prophet is, in this context, the person whose ability to
receive the overflow from active intellect is especially superb. And,
following on this naturalized tradition of prophecy, there will be
different levels of prophecy--as well as different levels of
providence--corresponding to different levels of engagement with
the overflow from active 
intellect.[23]





The active intellect in these traditions is a natural cosmic mechanism
at play in human knowledge, but also in prophecy (as well as in
providence and immortality). It is in this sense that such
traditions--including Maimonides--are often described as
holding "naturalized" theories of prophecy. Following this
naturalizing tendency further, we might note the fluid back and forth
between natural and supernatural descriptions of the active intellect
and other cosmic processes: In this context, the angels (the divine
emissaries, as it were) are identified with the separate intellects,
and active intellect in particular emerges as the bearer--or
even, messenger--of prophecy to the human intellect. In this
spirit, we find in Maimonides and in his Islamic predecessors
descriptions of the active intellect in divine terms. For example,
returning to the context in which Maimonides explains the Biblical
notion (Genesis 1:26-27) of man's being created in the image of God in
terms of man's possession of an intellectual faculty, we find the
description of the active intellect--whence man's own intellect
receives its power--as a "divine intellect":



> 
> 
> ...It was because of this something, I mean because of the divine
> intellect (*al-'aql al-ilahi*) conjoined
> (*al-muttasil*) with man, that it is said of the latter
> that he is *in the image of God and in His likeness*... (G
> 1.1, P 23; Pines' use of italics indicates Maimonides' use of Hebrew
> in his text; for Arabic see Munk 1931, 15).
> 
> 




Turning to al-Farabi we readily see the divine descriptions of this
natural cosmic principle at play as well:



> 
> 
> ...of the active intellect it ought to be said that it is the
> trustworthy spirit and the holy spirit; and it is called by names
> resembling these 
> two..."[24]
> 




Describing active intellect in this same sacred way in another text,
and identifying it further in this regard as the agent of revelation,
al-Farabi, in the context of describing the virtuous ruler of the
virtuous city in the *Book of Religion*, speaks of



> 
> 
> ...the spiritual being governing the king who is the first ruler
> of the virtuous city, namely the one set down as the trustworthy
> spirit, and this is the one through which God, may He be exalted,
> communicates the revelation to the first ruler of the city...(BR,
> B 111, section 26).
> 




Following on the general association (described above) of the cosmic
separate intellects with angels (with the active intellect emerging in
particular as the angel Gabriel), here and above, al-Farabi correlates
the active intellect to the Trustworthy Spirit of Quran XXVI, 193,
identifying the active intellect as the agent of prophetic
revelation.




It is in this spirit that we can approach Maimonides' own account of
active intellect as a divine overflow responsible for prophecy.
Following al-Farabi's idea above, Maimonides speaks of the perfected
human being as having his intellect in most full contact with the
active intellect, speaking in terms of "the intellect that God
made overflow (*afada*) unto man" (G 1.2, P
24; Munk 1931, 16). And with al-Farabi, Maimonides too identifies this
most perfected human intellectual state as the state of
prophecy. Speaking of prophecy as active intellect's mediation of
divine overflow onto man, Maimonides adds,



> 
> 
> ...This is the highest degree of man and the ultimate term of
> perfection that can exist for his species... (G 2.36, P 369)
> 




While the mechanics of active intellect point to a naturalizing
tendency in Maimonides' philosophical treatment of prophecy, we must
not lose sight of what at least *prima facie* appears in 2.32
to be a more robust role for God in this story. "The opinions of
people concerning prophecy are like their opinion concerning the
eternity of the world or its creation in time..." (G 2.32,
P 361) After addressing two other views of prophecy (one of which is
described as the completely naturalized view held by the
philosophers), Maimonides goes on to recount the "opinion of our
Law," which he contrasts from the completely naturalized view as
follows:



> 
> 
> [This third opinion, *viz.,* "the opinion of our
> Law"] is identical with the philosophic opinion except in one
> thing. For we believe that it may happen that one who is fit for
> prophecy and prepared for it should not become a prophet, namely, on
> account of the divine will. To my mind this is like all the miracles
> and takes the same course as they... (G 2.32, P 361)
> 
> 




This view is sometimes described as a "divine veto" view:
while with the philosophers Maimonides understands prophecy as a
natural human encounter with active intellect, he here adds the idea
that God has the power to prevent--or
"veto"--this natural phenomenon from leading to
prophecy if He were to so desire. It is not at all clear, however, how
we ought take this caveat. Together with his view on creation,
Maimonides' view on the exact mechanics of prophecy--and the
supra-natural role, if any, of God in that mechanics--is open to
scholarly debate. It is in part difficult to know for certain what
Maimonides has in mind here since, as above in the case of creation,
there are arguably different ways--some more naturalized than
others--that one might understand Maimonides' notion of
"divine Will," and hence, arguably different ways that one
might understand the import of the above claim from 2.32. There are,
hence, arguably different ways that one might understand the exact
mechanics of Maimonidean prophecy and the role that God plays in that
mechanics at 2.32 and in the Guide more broadly.




We might also note that to the extent that one sees in Maimonides a
sense that the prophet is able to arrive at truths intuitively and
directly without the ordinary processes of reasoning (as one seems to
find in Guide 2.38), one might detect the influence of Avicenna (See
Pines 1969, ci-ciii). (For more on prophecy in this context, see for
example: Taylor 2012c, Other Internet Resources; Kreisel 2001; Walzer
1957; Altmann 1978; Davidson 1979; W.Z. Harvey 1981.)


### 6.6 Providence




On the importance of the active intellect not only for a Maimonidean
theory of epistemology and psychology, but theology and ethics as
well, we might note that for Maimonides, as for his Islamic
predecessors and contemporaries, the active intellect, in its intimate
relationship with human intellects, lies also the heart of a theory of
providence:



> 
> 
> ...providence watches over everyone endowed with intellect
> proportionately to the measure of his intellect...The providence
> of God, may He be exalted, is constantly watching over those who have
> obtained this overflow...For the thing that necessarily brings
> about providence and deliverance from the sea of chance consists in
> that intellectual overflow... (G 3.51, 624-5)
> 
> 




While not here mentioned explicitly, it is indeed the active intellect
that, in the context of Maimonides' Neoplatonized Aristotelian
context, is the cosmic source of the "intellectual
overflow" under discussion in this passage. As such, the active
intellect emerges as the cosmic underpinning for Maimonides' mechanics
of providence: The more in touch a person's intellect is with the
active intellect, the more we may say of her that she is "living
providentially." As Maimonides notes, "providence watches
over everyone endowed with intellect proportionately to the measure of
his intellect..." (G 3.51, 624). Taken in the context of
Maimonides' theory of active intellect as that cosmic intermediary
responsible for human intellectual actualization, the above claim
suggests that "divine providence" is found in one's
ability to conjoin to the active intellect. This, of course, is a
decidedly naturalized understanding of providence: far from a hand of
God intervening in the lives of men, divine providence here emerges as
the properly directed life that one who conjoins with active
intellect--and who, as such, attains the heights of knowledge
available to the human mind--will be more readily able to
live.




Stressing further the theological and ethical import of the active
intellect, we find him, at the very end of his treatise, speaking of
this overflow in urgent tones:



> 
> 
> A call to attention. We have already made it clear to you that that
> intellect which overflowed from Him, may He be exalted, toward us is
> the bond between us and Him. You have the choice: if you wish to
> strengthen and to fortify this bond, you can do so; if, however, you
> wish gradually to make it weaker and feebler until you cut it, you can
> also do that. You can only strengthen this bond by employing it in
> loving Him and in progressing toward this...And it is made weaker
> and feebler if you busy your thought with what is other than
> He... (G 3.51, P 621)
> 
> 




Placing Maimonides in his Islamic philosophical context, we can say
that Maimonides is here--in his reference to "that
intellect which overflowed from Him"--adverting to the
doctrine of active intellect as key to human knowledge:



> 
> 
> It is fitting that your attention be roused to the nature of that
> which exists in the divine overflow coming toward us, through which we
> have intellectual cognition... (G 2.37, P 373)
> 
> 




We might here also note the strong affinity between Maimonides' and
Averroes' naturalized views of providence. As we saw above (see
section 3 on God), for Averroes God is the final cause who moves the
separate intellects which in turn move the heavens which in turn gives
rise to the natural heat which, by actualizing forms, activates the
entire motion and reality of nature. It is precisely this set of ideas
that lies at the heart of Averroes' conception of divine providence
(*'inaya Allah*) as the well-ordered functioning
of species (and of individuals under their species) as a result of
God's functioning as the final cause in this way. While there are
different ways to read Maimonides' final view on providence, this
Averroean view ought be treated as a serious possibility. (See
Averroes' CAM 1715, G 200-201; see Taylor 2012a, 9, Other Internet
Resources) 


### 6.7 Immortality




In their idea of the active intellect, the Islamic philosophical
tradition--and Maimonides in its wake--finds not only the
grounding mechanism for human knowledge and prophecy, but for
immortality as well. In the context of Aristotle's *De Anima*
3.5 remarks about an eternal cosmic principle which is the perfected
reality of the human intellect set free from its body, various
traditions of Islamic philosophy explain immortality in terms of a
person's truest nature (*viz*. his intellect) living on
eternally in (or, as) the reality of active intellect. Keeping in mind
that there are important differences which arise on questions of
individual, or personal, immortality between various Islamic thinkers
(Avicenna upholds a sense of individualization after death in contrast
to Averroes; see e.g. Pines 1963, cii-ciii; Stroumsa 2009, 181), and
leaving debates over Maimonides' own exact position on this question
aside (Pines and Stroumsa identify Maimonides' position as agreeing
with Averroes on this matter; see Pines 1963, cii; Stroumsa 2009,
181), we can summarily say that Maimonides follows in the spirit of
understanding the afterlife in terms of the human intellect's
relationship--individual or otherwise--to the active
intellect. In effect, the afterlife is here understood as the human
intellect's ultimate return to and joining with the cosmic active
intellect, a set of ideas pulled directly from his Islamic
philosophical context. 


## 7. Imagination, Politics, Allegory


### 7.1 Guidance




In his sensitivity to the importance of politics, Maimonides follows
in the footsteps of other Islamic philosophers, noting, with Aristotle
that man is a political animal by nature (see G 3.27, P
511). Maimonides understands that since average people cannot conjoin
with (and hence cannot receive truths from) active intellect
themselves, they need help--in the form of virtuous
guidance--to help them live in accordance with the truth. And it
is toward this end that Maimonides understands the importance of the
prophet. The prophet must not only be able to receive truths from
active intellect, but must be able to guide people to living in
accordance with those truths.




It is in this spirit that, following his Islamic predecessors,
Maimonides describes the prophet as having both a perfected intellect
(for knowing) and a perfected imagination (for guiding, teaching, and
leading). For Maimonides, even the paradigmatic prophet Moses--a
man whose prophecy is understood by Maimonides as a direct engagement
between mind and active intellect without the intermediation of
imagination[25]
--must be understood as having a perfected imagination. Along
these lines, Maimonides, draws a distinction between the philosopher
as having a perfected intellect, and the prophet as having perfected
intellect plus perfected imagination:



> 
> 
> ...the case in which the intellectual overflow overflows only
> toward the rational faculty and does not overflow at all toward the
> imaginative faculty...is the characteristic of the class of men
> of science engaged in speculation. If, on the other hand, this
> overflow reaches both faculties--I mean both the rational and the
> imaginative--...and if the imaginative faculty is in a state
> of ultimate perfection owing to its natural disposition, this is
> characteristic of the class of prophets... (G 2.37, P 374)
> 
> 




What is important about this distinction for Maimonides emerges from
the following description of two different kinds of perfect
individuals, the second kind being perfect not only in his own right,
but being further able to help others perfect themselves:



> 
> 
> For sometimes something comes from it [*viz.* active intellect]
> to a certain individual, the measure of that something being such that
> it renders him perfect, but has no other effect. Sometimes, on the
> other hand, the measure of what comes to the individual overflows from
> rendering him perfect toward rendering others perfect... (G 2.37,
> P 373-4).
> 
> 




For Maimonides, both the philosopher and the prophet receive the truth
in their intellects through conjunction with the active intellect,
but, only the prophet is able to use those truths to help other people
(*viz.* the masses--those who cannot on their own receive
truths from active intellect) live in accordance with truth. This
further ability on the part of the prophet is precisely tied to his
having a strong imaginative faculty. Following upon a decidedly
Platonic political sensibility, Maimonides, in line with his Islamic
philosophical predecessors and contemporaries, thinks that a leader
can't help average people live good lives (i.e. live lives in
accordance with truth) by merely spewing intellectual truths at them.
Rather, the only way to help average people live good lives is to
couch those truths in terms which they can understand and which can,
furthermore, actually move them to appropriate action. On this
picture, rhetoric and persuasion become key.




The importance of speaking in different ways to different people is a
cornerstone not only of Maimonides but of Islamic political philosophy
more broadly. In fact, in these contexts, religion is itself
understood as the rhetorically persuasive means, par excellence, for
directing the average person towards appropriate living. Starting with
al-Farabi, we find a distinction drawn between the ideas of philosophy
and those of religion: while the former are ideas known through
intellect and arrived at via demonstration, the latter are ideas known
only through imaginings of likenesses, and arrived at through
persuasion (AH 77). Drawing on a Platonic distinction between
truths-as-they-are (as known to the intellect) on the one hand, and
the mere likenesses (or, pale reflections) of those truths on the
other, al-Farabi explains the relationship between philosophy and
religion as follows:



> 
> 
> ...according to the ancients, religion is an imitation of
> philosophy...In everything of which philosophy gives an account
> based on intellectual perception or conception, religion gives an
> account based on imagination. In everything demonstrated by
> philosophy, religion employs persuasion... (AH 77)
> 
> 




In his *Book of Religion*, al-Farabi explains along these same
lines that most people are not able to grasp truths through an
exercise of intellect, but rather, "either due to nature or
because they are occupied with other things" these people (the
average folks) will "understand generally accepted or persuasive
things" (BR, B 98; BR, M SS 48). In this context, rhetoric
becomes an important tool, helping the virtuous leader in his attempts
to found a virtuous city by ably engaging average people's
imaginations (and affecting them in a way that philosophical argument
could never affect them), and in this way guiding them along towards
right action and the happiness that comes from human flourishing. (It
is a matter for debate whether the average person even has a chance at
a further kind of happiness, viz. the kind of true philosophical
happiness that comes from intellectual apprehension.) . In *The
Attainment of Happiness*, al-Farabi speaks in this regard of the
legislator's representing truths to "the multitude" (the
average people whom he also calls "the vulgar" in contrast
to "the elite"--a distinction employed by Maimonides
as well), providing guidance to them through images and persuasive
speech acts, all of which "take hold of their souls and dominate
them so that they are unable to resolve to do anything else" (AH
79). He describes this same sort of visceral overtaking in his
commentary on Plato's *Laws* where, speaking to the importance
of a leader's capturing the hearts of the people and leading them
towards virtue, al-Farabi takes note of Plato's own philosophical
focus on dancing and flute-playing. As al-Farabi sees it, the art of
singing is "truly very useful, especially because its working
penetrates the soul; and since the law concerns itself with the soul,
he [i.e. Plato] spoke at length about this subject" (PL
94). 




There too, al-Farabi illumines the rhetorical task of the virtuous
ruler with an insightful lesson to be drawn from Plato's analogy of
the "gentle physician":



> 
> 
> The Lawgiver ought to address every group of men with what is closer
> to their comprehension and intellects, and to set them aright with
> what they are capable of doing. For sometimes it is difficult for men
> to comprehend a thing, or they are incapable of doing it; its
> difficulty causes them to reject it and prompts them to neglect and
> discard it. [Plato] gave as an example of this the skilled and gentle
> physician who offers the sick man the drugs that are useful to him in
> his familiar and appetizing food (PL 92).
> 
> 




In spite of differences from al-Farabi's political teachings, Averroes
mirrors his predecessor, stressing the importance of rhetoric and its
impact on the imagination of the average person. In his *Decisive
Treatise*, commenting on the person who is not "adept in
demonstration," Averroes points out the sense in which "it
is difficult [for that person] to come to assent to an existing thing
that is not linked with something imaginable" (DT, B 20). In his
*Commentary on Plato's Republic* (preserved in a Hebrew
translation from the Arabic by Samuel ben Judah in the early
14th century), Averroes notes too that,



> 
> 
> No bringer of a *nomos* is to be found who does not make use of
> invented stories, for this is something necessary for the multitude to
> reach their happiness... (CPR 24)
> 
> 




And commenting on why Aristotle took an interest in the art of
poetics--here, in much the same spirit as al-Farabi's above
comments on why Plato took an interest in music, and flute
playing--Averroes notes that,



> 
> 
> Aristotle came to the opinion that this art [*viz.,* the art of
> poetics] was highly useful, because by means of it the soul of the
> multitude could be moved to believe in or not believe in a certain
> thing and towards doing or abandoning a certain thing. For that
> reason, he enumerated the matters which enable a man to devise an
> imaginative representation for any particular thing he wishes and to
> do so in the most complete manner possible for that thing... (CAP
> 84)
> 
> 




In like manner, Averroes describes Aristotle's interest in rhetoric as
an interest in "the means by which man is able to effect
persuasion about each and every one of the particular matters and to
do so in the most complete and most artful manner possible with regard
to each thing" (CAR 78). Of course, all of this is of interest
to Averroes himself in that, like al-Farabi, he is sensitive to the
fact that different people need to be guided in different ways, and
that it is the job of religion in particular to help lead "the
rhetorical people, who are the overwhelming multitude" (DT, B
26).




Leaving a detailed consideration of differences between al-Farabi and
Averroes aside, it is clear that Maimonides' own work falls within the
broad trajectory of these Islamic political philosophies, and it is in
their spirit that we must work towards understanding his own thoughts
on the relation between philosophy and religion. Maimonides' own ideas
about the prophet--as lawgiver--are certainly developed
against the backdrop of Farabian political theory. For Maimonides the
prophet/lawgiver is not only, as philosopher, possessed of a perfected
intellect, but he is also a gifted rhetorician, and (as such) teacher,
leader, and religious guide; he is able to take the philosophical
truths he knows so well, and, by imaginatively devising an effective
system of concepts, images, rituals, and stories, actually enable
these truths to work in the lives of ordinary people. As we have seen
in al-Farabi's account of religion above, these persuasive words are
impressed upon the imagination of listeners, as they are themselves
crafted in the imagination of the lawgiver. In this context, the
imaginatively devised system of concepts, images, rituals, and stories
is religion, and the prophet, as Lawgiver, is the giver of religion:
he (the one with direct access to the truths found in active
intellect) gives people a context in which they can actually live in
accordance with truth, even while they themselves do not have access
to truth directly (epistemologically failing, as they do, to conjoin
their intellects to the active intellect; see discussion of active
intellect in section 6).




In like manner, we might point to Maimonides' own appreciation for the
power of music--a point mentioned in connection with al-Farabi
above, and found too in the writings of
al-Ghazali.[26]
Contrary to some who describe Maimonides as being opposed to music
(see e.g. Idelsohn 1929, 126; Stroumsa, 52, n. 1), others emphasize
Maimonides' appreciating the importance of music for the soul,
something that Bland calls the "utilitarian hedonism" of
music according to which it can bring a soul to a better-ordered
state--either a contemplation-ready state that can lead to
philosophy, or simply an emotionally rested state that can lead to
increased human wellness. (See Bland 1993, 2000; see too Farmer
1933)




In considering Maimonides on politics and prophecy, one might also
consider Leo Strauss' emphasis on the significance of the divide
between revelation and reason in Maimonides, and his connection of
Maimonides along these lines to an ancient tradition that he sees as
exemplified in Plato's Laws and as continued in Islamic philosophical
tradition in such thinkers as al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. There
is scholarly debate about how to read Strauss, how to understand
Strauss' final sense of revelation's status vis-a-vis reason, and, as
such, how to understand Strauss' final understanding of Maimonides'
own brand of rationalism (all of which is made more difficult by
debates over whether--and if so, where and to what extent and to
what end--Strauss himself utilizes the esoteric writing
strategies that he attributes to Maimonides and to his Islamic
predecessors). The details and debates aside, we might simply note
that Strauss strongly places Maimonides into a Platonist-into-Islamic
tradition of political philosophy with implications for the way
Maimonides understands prophecy, religion, law, and the relationship
between revelation and 
reason.[27] 


### 7.2 Allegory and Obscure Writing: External Layers vs. True Ideas




It is precisely in the context of the above insights that the idea of
interpreting texts in terms of an external and internal
layer--including, as we will see, allegorical interpretation of
the Bible--becomes so important for Maimonides. For Maimonides,
allegory -- which couches difficult truths in colorful, vibrant
images--and other forms of obscure writing emerge as especially
effective tools for leading average people to live in accordance with
the truths they cannot understand on their own (in this way allowing
them the opportunity to live a good life) while shielding them from
scientific and philosophical truths which would be so hard for them to
understand as to (a) be unable to effect any positive outcomes in
their lives, and/or (b) confuse them to the point of apostasy (an
outcome which, for Maimonides, precisely blocks the opportunity to
live a good life). In this context, Maimonides sees the Bible itself
as filled with allegorical renderings -- renderings masterfully
crafted by Moses, the prophet par excellence. Here, the Bible is a
literary masterpiece penned by Moses under the inspiration of the
active intellect, but through his own imaginative lens: the Bible is
in this sense the truth couched in imaginative and rhetorically
persuasive images (such as anthropomorphic descriptions of God as
sitting, standing, etc.). Again (see 7.1), it is
precisely the Bible's construction (by Moses the prophet) through
imaginative and rhetorically effective images and stories that enables
it to operate upon the hearts (or, more technically, the imaginations)
of average people, enabling them to live lives in accordance with the
truths that they themselves cannot grasp. For his Islamic predecessors
it is, of course, Muhammad who plays this operative role as the
virtuous lawgiving prophet able to lead a community to virtue through
the creative imagery and persuasions of religion through the
imaginative and rhetorically persuasive imageries of the Quran.




As we will discuss more below, in such a context, allegorical
interpretation emerges as the key method of properly interpreting the
Bible (or, in the Islamic case, the Quran). For, if the prophet pens
the Scripture in a way designed to couch the philosophical truth in
imaginative images (e.g., anthropomorphic depictions of God), then the
true interpretation of that Scripture must aim at uncovering the
philosophical truth behind the surface images. 




Maimonides' own sensitivity to the effectiveness and necessity of
couching ideas in imaginative images -- and, as such, the
efficacy of giving voice to truth always indirectly -- can help
us understand (and, can afford philosophical significance to) what
seems to be Maimonides' own indirect (and sometimes, as we have seen
in the case of creation, downright confusing) manner of expressing
himself in the Guide. Relatedly, Maimonides' sensitivity to the
effectiveness of indirectly expressing truths can help us see
philosophical significance in his own use of metaphors and parables,
as well as his allegorical interpretations of the Bible throughout the
Guide. In fact, Maimonides himself expresses the importance of
allegory through his own allegorical rendering of the Proverbs 25:11
idea that "A word fitly spoken is like golden apples in silver
filigree casings" ("*tapuhey zahav
bi-maskiyyot kesef, davar davur al afnav*")
(G Intro, P 11). Here, following in the spirit of al-Farabi's Platonic
"gentle physician" (see above) who "offers the sick
man the drugs that are useful to him in his familiar and appetizing
food " (PL 92), Maimonides is sensitive to the importance of
hiding truth (gold) in more familiar (silver) garb--garb which,
also following al-Farabi above--must be attractive and fanciful
(silver filigree) so as to impress itself upon the imagination of the
average person. The truths which Maimonides seeks to reveal with this
image are manifold: sometimes, in order to do service to the golden
truth, one must craft delicate silver casings (*viz.,*
allegories, parables, stories, metaphors, and other effective uses of
language); these 'casings' are filigreed--incredibly
difficult to make, as well as extremely beautiful and tempting to look
at; these casings cover the golden core reality (which is to say,
allegories hide the truth in itself), and yet, they allow onlookers to
catch a glimpse--through the filigree's apertures--of the
very golden core which they cover; and, finally, in at once hiding and
revealing the true center, these filigree casings of silver are not
themselves gold: where gold stands for truth, we may say that these
filigree casings of silver are not themselves truth. Where the casings
are the allegories, parables, and other methods employed by the
Lawgiver (in the Bible and in other forms of religious guidance), the
implication is that that many of the ideas of the Bible and of
religion more generally (as, for example, anthropomorphic descriptions
of God as sitting, standing, talking, willing, etc.) are not actually
true. They are, rather, delicate craftings (even: works of art)
designed to captivate the interests of average people and, in this
way, lead them to living in accordance with the truth.




As these lessons apply to the Biblical imagery used to describe God,
we meet back up with our earlier ideas of apophasis (negative
theology) in Maimonides: Maimonides, with Islamic philosophers before
him, denies that God has attributes, and, as such, reads those
passages of the Bible which describe God in human terms as allegorical
in nature. In this regard, Maimonides seizes upon the rabbinic dictum
that the Torah speaks in the language of
humans.[28]
Beholden to the idea of using "words fitly spoken,"
Maimonides sees the Bible as filled with allegorical constructions,
constructions which admit of both an external and an internal sense:
the external sense of the text are the "words fitly
spoken" (the "silver filigree casings" aimed at the
masses), while the internal sense--the golden apple--is the
philosophical truth reserved for the elite.




Following on this general sensitivity to various layers of textual
meaning, Maimonides shares his penchant for allegorical reading
together with many Islamic philosophical exegetes, including
Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, and in this way is part of a larger
tradition of textual interpretation (*ta'wil*) in
which Scriptures are seen as having "outer"
(*zahir*) as well as "inner"
(*batin*)
 senses.[29]




On the importance of keeping philosophical interpretations (i.e. true
insights alluded to by the text) away from average people, consider
Averroes. Reflecting in particular on texts dealing with the
afterlife, he notes:



> 
> For anyone not adept in science, it is obligatory to take them [the
> descriptions of the next life] in their apparent
> [*zahir*] sense; for him it is unbelief to interpret
> them because it leads to unbelief. That is why we are of the opinion
> that, for anyone among the people whose duty it is to have faith in
> the apparent [*zahir*] sense, interpretation is
> unbelief because it leads to unbelief. Anyone adept in interpretation
> who divulges that to him calls him to unbelief; and the one who calls
> to unbelief is an unbeliever [*kafir*]. [DT 34, B 21]
> 


While Averroes himself sees the surface meaning as separate from
truth-yielding philosophical interpretations of the scriptural text,
he criticizes allegorical interpretation as an allowable mode of
scriptural interpretation for the average person as it will lead them
to confusion and possible apostasy.



 
We might here note Kraemer's reminder too about the broader context of
obscure writing in this milieu:



> 
> Alexandrian introductions to Aristotle, which were known in the
> Islamic environment, elucidated that the aim of Aristotle's obscurity
> was to exclude the unworthy, like curtains in temples (Kraemer 2010,
> 50).
> 




Turning to an example of allegorical rendering of Scriptures in
Maimonides' Islamic philosophical context, consider al-Farabi's
identification of the Trustworthy Spirit of Quran XXVI, 193 with the
active intellect. And, stressing the allegorical nature of the Quran,
Avicenna describes the prophet's proper mode of communication, stating
that "a condition the prophet must adhere to is that his words
should be symbols and his expression hints" (PP 116). Along
similar lines, speaking in general to a hermeneutics of scriptural
interpretation, Averroes points out that since the Quran does not
conflict with reason, any apparently unreasonable (or, philosophically
untenable) Quranic verses must be read allegorically so as to be
brought into accordance with reason. In this spirit of allegorical
hermeneutics, Maimonides includes "lexicographical
chapters" throughout his Guide in which he explains the various
equivocal meanings of Biblical terms; this strategy can be seen in
many Islamic contexts, as, for example in Avicenna's *fi
ithbat al-nubuwwat*, where "light" is
defined as an equivocal term partaking of an essential as well as a
metaphorical meaning (PP 116). 




In addition to sharing the sensibility that Scripture admits of
equivocal terms and "inner meanings", Maimonides and his
Islamic predecessors and contemporaries often draw their attention to
very similar sorts of scriptural claims, most notably, those
scriptural claims (in the Bible for Maimonides, and in the Quran for
the Muslim thinkers) which suggest divine corporeality on their
surface. One example can be found in a comparison of Maimonides' and
Averroes' respective allegorical analyses of the idea--found in
various guises in both the Bible and the Quran--that God rests in
a place. For both thinkers, it is simply false to say of God that He
is found in space in some place. And so, Maimonides renders this idea
of God-in-place allegorical in his treatment of a number of Biblical
terms, including the terms "place" (*maqom*)
(Guide 1.8), "throne" (G 1.9), "indwelling" (G
1.10; G 1.25), and "to sit" (G 1.11). In like manner, we
find Averroes' commenting too on texts suggesting that God has a place
(or, relatedly, that He has a body)--including the Quranic
description of "God's directing Himself [2:29] and the Tradition
about His 
 descent"[30]--as 
 texts which have a surface
meaning which "is obligatory for those adept in
demonstration" to interpret allegorically (DT, B 19).




It might be noted that while Maimonides seems to see Biblical allegory
as speaking (like any well-crafted allegory or parable) in ways most
fit for helping its average readers, there is an odd way in which he
also seems to fault the Bible's frequent allegories (e.g., its talk of
God in corporeal terms) for providing folks with ideas about God which
are false, and which stand, it would seem, as obstacles to their
attainment of knowledge. Observing that "man has in his nature a
love of, and an inclination for, that to which he is habituated"
(G 1.31, P 67), and that "man has love for, and the wish to
defend, opinions to which he is habituated and in which he has been
brought up and has a feeling of repulsion for opinions other than
those," Maimonides notes:



> 
> 
> For this reason also man is blind to the apprehension of the true
> realities and inclines toward the things to which he is habituated.
> This happened to the multitude with regard to the belief in His
> corporeality and many other metaphysical subjects as we shall make
> clear. All this is due to people being habituated to, and brought up
> on, texts that it is an established usage to think highly of and to
> regard as true and whose external meaning is indicative of the
> corporeality of God and of other imaginings with no truth in them, for
> these have been set forth as parables and riddles... (G 1.31, P
> 67)
> 
> 




Along these very same lines, Maimonides wonders why some religious
practitioners believe God to have attributes, to be corporeal and to
be essentially change-able in any way. To this he answers,



> 
> 
> For he who believes in this doctrine was not led to it by intellectual
> speculation; he merely followed the external sense
> (*zawahir* literally "external senses") of the
> texts of the Scriptures (G 1.53, P 119; Munk 1931, 81).
> 
> 




It seems fair to say, in light of such passages in the Guide as the
two above, that the allegorical artistry of the Bible, in its intended
effect--of leading average people to be able to live in
accordance with the truth--comes with some unpleasant side
effects, *viz.* it might indeed leave some people with patently
false ideas about God and reality. In a system where having knowledge
of the truth is paramount--and is even the precondition for
providence (as we have seen above)--the fact that the Bible's
"surface" (or: "external") sense leads some to
embrace false beliefs is a pretty serious problem, suggesting, it
would seem, that the average person who needs to be led by the
external sense of Biblical parables will never be able to attain the
true human perfection. Here, it seems that the persuasive rhetoric of
Scripture's external sense fills the imagination with images vibrant
enough to lead even the average person to live in accordance with
truth, but will, as such, stand always as a veil preventing that
person from ever attaining the truth *per se*.




Having explored the Islamic background, we might additionally note
that Maimonides himself associates the tradition of allegorical
interpretation of Biblical texts with Rabbinic writing strategies; as
such, we may say that Maimonides sees a kinship between philosophical
allegorization and a Biblical and Rabbinic Jewish hermeneutic at the
heart of Judaism. 




It is important to note in all of this that Maimonides emphasizes the
importance of sharing with even average people the truth of God's
absolute unity and (relatedly) the truth of God's incorporeality. This
means, of course, that in spite of his emphasis on the need to shield
the golden apple of truth from the masses much of the time, Maimonides
advocates overtly teaching every person that the anthropomorphic
images in the Bible are literally false. In other words, in spite of
Maimonides' emphasis on (a) the importance of addressing the average
person by way of imagination (not intellect), (b) the role of the
Bible's external layer (the "silver filgree") as precisely
aimed at the imagination, and (c) the repeated appearance in the
Bible's external layer of imaginative anthropomorphic images,
Maimonides nonetheless thinks it is important to tell people that God
has no body.




We might highlight a difference in this regard with Averroes for whom
it is never a good idea to share any such truths with the masses (see
Pines 1969, cxviii-cxix; Stroumsa 2009, 74-76). This can be seen as
signaling a larger philosophical-hermeneutical divide between the two
thinkers: Whereas both understand the difference between religion and
philosophy, and while both understand the role of religious scriptures
(and religion) as aiming--through its external meanings--to
address the imaginative needs of the average person, Maimonides has a
broader understanding of the external layer of the text: For
Maimonides, but not for Averroes, when it comes to the topic of divine
embodiment, even the external layer of text, when carefully read,
offers a non-anthropomorphic set of meanings. In line with his strong
sense that even the average religious person must be taught that God
is incorporeal, Maimonides sees the Bible's external claims about
divine corporeality as themselves beckoning--even within the
external layer of the text--to non-corporeal meanings, even for
the average person. Averroes does not share this sense and, as Pines
puts it, instead feels that "the simple faith of the average
nonphilosophical person should not be troubled; and he should be left
free to stick to his own unsophisticated beliefs even in such matters
as the corporeality of God" (Pines 1969, cxix).




Stroumsa sees Maimonides as actively responding to Averroes on this
very point at Guide 2.25 where he emphasizes that the "intention
of the text" is to offer, even at the external level, a
non-corporeal interpretation of anthropomorphic claims about God;
Stroumsa sees this as a response on Maimonides part to Averroes' own
talk of the "intention of the Lawgiver" which, on the
contrary, ensures that the external meaning of the scriptural text is
simply an imaginative teaching about divine corporeality aimed to
accommodate the average person's need for
 images.[31] Reflecting
 on some of the hermeneutical tensions (or subtleties) in
Maimonides' work, Stroumsa identifies the influence of
al-Ghazali's *Faysal* where Maimonides tries to save
midrashic ideas by describing them as allegories, and the influence of
Averroes where Maimonides emphasizes the importance of the reader's
staying within the limits of her ability to understand
truths.[32]


### 7.3 Dynamic Writing




Moving from Maimonides' allegorical rendering of the Bible, we might
note too his use of a dynamic of external and internal senses in the
very construction of his own treatise, a dynamism which can be seen
earlier in an even more emphatic form in Avicenna's own elaborate
"visionary recitals " (see Corbin 1960). Seen in
Maimonides own construction of parables (see Guide 3.51 for the
parable of the palace), in his use of metaphors, in his allegorical
renderings of Biblical verses, but also more broadly in the overall
construction of the Guide (in his leaving lots of ambiguities and in
his giving voice to outright contradictions), the creative spirit of
"inner vs. outer" reading and writing strategies is part
of what makes it so difficult to interpret Maimonides on such
important topics as creation, providence, and immortality. In fact,
Maimonides prefaces his Guide with a list of seven reasons for
"contradictory or contrary statements" (G Intro, P 17) in
books, together with the overt declaration that the Guide itself will
contain "divergencies" which may be explained in light of
the list. Reflecting on the writing dynamics at play in his own text,
Maimonides explains:



> 
> 
> Divergences that are to be found in this Treatise are due to the fifth
> cause and the seventh. Know this, grasp its true meaning, and remember
> it very well so as not to become perplexed by some of its chapters. (G
> Intro, P 17)
> 
> 




The fifth cause of contradictory writing is related by Maimonides to
"the necessity of teaching and making someone understand"
(G Intro, P 17-18), whereas the seventh is related to the necessity of
"conceal[ing] some parts" and "disclos[ing]
others" when it comes to treating "very obscure matters
" (G Intro, P 17). And while he does not cite the third cause
as one of his own strategies of writing, he does cite it as a
principle at play in the prophetic Scriptures; returning us again to
the idea of "external" vs. "internal" senses,
this is the case in which,



> 
> 
> [n]ot all the statements in question are to be taken in their external
> sense; some are to be taken in their external sense, while some others
> are parables and hence have an inner content... (G Intro, P 17)
> 




Starting off his treatise as he does with attention to the dynamics of
internal and external meanings (seen too in his reflections on the
golden apples and silver casings of Proverbs 25:11), Maimonides
clearly illustrates his sensitivity to the importance and pedagogical
effectiveness of various writing and speaking strategies in which
meanings are hidden, surface senses meet inner senses, and
expression-via-contradiction is an art form.




Evidence of shared ideas between Maimonides and Islamic philosophers
on these themes abounds. As is clear from even the representative
quotes from Islamic sources cited throughout, these interrelated
features of imagination, allegory, politics, and religion in
Maimonides' thought are hallmarks of the political philosophical
writings of al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes as well. Here, as
throughout our investigation, understanding the Islamic philosophical
context of the Guide is key for understanding the intricacies of
Maimonides' thought.