About the author
Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), known as Maimonides or the Rambam, was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher, jurist, and physician born in Córdoba and active in Egypt. The preeminent medieval Jewish thinker, he codified Jewish law in the Mishneh Torah and reconciled it with Aristotelian philosophy in the Guide, influencing Jewish, Islamic, and Christian thought.
Synopsis
Maimonides addresses the educated believer torn between faith and philosophy. He argues that anthropomorphic language about God is metaphorical, defends a negative theology, examines prophecy, providence, and the problem of evil, and gives reasons for the biblical commandments — many aimed at social order, moral discipline, and weaning people from idolatry. Law and reason, for him, converge on human flourishing and the knowledge of God.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Public domainMaimonides argues that the Law aims at two perfections — the welfare of the body (a well-ordered society) and the welfare of the soul (true beliefs and knowledge of God) — and that Scripture, rightly read, never truly contradicts demonstrated reason.
By reading Scripture philosophically and grounding the commandments in rational purposes — social and intellectual — Maimonides binds revealed law to reason and to the political good. His synthesis became central to Jewish thought and to later debates over faith, law, and politics.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with more traditionalist and mystical Jewish responses that resisted Maimonides's rationalism, and with the perennial question — pressed by Strauss in his famous reading — of how far Maimonides truly subordinates revelation to philosophy, or the reverse.
Reading note
Long and deliberately layered; read selections (on divine attributes, prophecy, and the reasons for the commandments) with a guide. Pair it with Al-Farabi and Averroes for the shared medieval project of reason and revelation.
Best paired with
Averroes, The Decisive Treatise; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica.