Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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M ASMID ' I ' licTc is IK) sensuous paradise of ilic Moli.ini nicJans in wliich the bodies of the faitliful will participate after death. The satisfaction of ihe body accjuires its importance from the fad thai it serves as the basis and condili i siiw (jiia nun of the further reahzation of man ' s jioteiKialitics. ' I ' hus (he body is no longer a prison of the smil, a hiiuhMiKe ill man ' s search for liappiness, but its ii.uur.il Jwelhnu plaie. h is only the i nnoranl, M.iiinDiiides would s.iy, who think ih.il (he .iitain- nicnt of virlLic or of knowletlue ol the universe can be accomphslied on condition of an Icarus- hke flight from the body. Even as the hglu dove, piercing in her easy flight the air and per- ceiving its resistance, imagines that flight would be easier still in empty space. Man can walk with his head in the sky only because he walks with his body on earth. Perfect bodily health is to be considered godly because only then can man be led to a true knowl- edge of Him. When properly managed the body is the organ of the soul and not merely the source of loves, lusts, fe.irs, fancies, idols, and follies that prevent us from the proper exercise of our rational faculties, Supipose, says Maimonides, one should say: since jealousy, lust, ambition, and the like passions, are bad, and tend to bring man to an untimely end, I will withdraw from them altogether, and remove to the other extreme — and in this he might go so far as even not to eat meat, not to drink wine, not to take a wife, not to reside in a respectable dwelling house, and not to put on any proper garments, but only sackcloth, or coarse wool, or the like, just as the idolatrous priests do, — we should object to this -also as being an evil way, and unlawful to pursue, and he who walks in this way is called a sinner. Participation in the divine does not presuppose the stifling and suffocation of natural desires but their completion in accordance with the mean. If for the neo- Platonists the contemplation of Pure Being re- quired the abandonment of the body, for Maimonides the demands of the body required the abandonment of consecration to Pure Being. In the attempt to provide the bare ncccisicics of life man is thrust upon others or help. He is not a selfsullitient being as tjic fifth-ccnfur) ' sophists took him to be, nor can he live in com- plete isolation, for a being so isolated would soon jxrish because of his inability to secure those iliings which his nature requires. More than that, Man is essentially a political animal and cm only realize himself in the social organism of whidi he is a product. To become an actuality, irtiie must be practised, it must be exercised in relationships between man and his neighbor. With- out this actual exercise man can neither be called just, liberal, or righteous. If man is to act justly he must find himself in the proper social medium. In his insistence that the moral character of the individual depends upon society, Maimonides re- echoes the cry of the Hebrew prophets for social justice, although their poetical zeal yields to the prose of the mean and their superabundant gen- erosity to the calculating coolness of political sagacity. Unfortunately the persecutions Maimonides had witnessed from his early boyhood and the nomadic life he was compelled to lead prevented him from composing a treatise on the best form of political organization in the manner of a Plato, an Aris- totle, a Cicero or a Thomas Aquinas. But from his insistence upon man as a political animal and his emphasis upon the importance of social life it is clear how fundamentally vital he regarded moral and political activities for the realization of man as man. Indeed, so vital were these relation- ships for Maimonides that he felt they controlled the whole intellectual life of man and that the character of man ' s knowledge of nature would de- pend upon the degree of his successful adjust- ment in his moral and social life. It is not the social outcast, not the man who separates himself from others, not the dweller in catacombs or her- mitages, it is rather the man firmly rooted in society, who is prepared to commime with Pure Form. For man, according to Maimonides, is not a knower, a passive contemplator, a disinterested Tuentyftie

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M A S M ID tiously united to it. with soul as a dance of Dcmo- critean atoms, and with the Augustinian dichotomy between the outer man and the inner man. But though the term soul denotes a hierarchy of functions beginning with the nutritive, passing through the sensitive, imaginative, and appetitive, and culminating in the intellectual, when applied specifically to man as man it denotes the intel- lectual function. Without the intellect man is not really man. As Maimonides says: It is ac- knowledged that a m.m who does not possess this ' form ' (the nature of which has just been ex- plained) is not human, but a mere animal in human shape and form. Soul presents a con- tinuous series of functions, a series of potentialities and actualities. No higher level is possible with- out the lower, no sensation without nutrition, no imagination without sensation, and no intellectual activity without the presupposition of a living, feeling and imagining animal. Having shown the ine.xtricable relation of organ and function and the dependence of the latter upon the former, Maimonides sets forth the ways and means by which man can actualize himself and thus find his happiness. For virtue and vice are not innate in man, ready-made and given to him. It is impossible, says Maimonides, that man should be born endowed by nature from his very birth with either virtue or vice. These are capa- cities or potentialities to be brought to perfect realization through activities in the world of men and things. To say that virtue is an actuality be- stowed upon man or denied him, that he is from his very birth intelligent or stupid, is to repeat the arguments of astrologers and fatalists who say that from all eternity it has been decreed that this or that man should be either virtuous or vi- cious. Such a view, Maimonides insists, dis- penses with all human initiative and makes the entire moral and intellectual life of man impos- sible. In order that man may work out his nature and thus become virtuous he must enter into ac- tive social and political relations and feel himself an agent in shaping them. It must be understood at the outset that virtue for Maimonides is not an extreme but rather a mean state, a middle path between opposing forces. The irtuous man will be neither ascetic or sensuous, mirthful or desponding, miserly or liberal, cruel or merciful, faint-hearted or bold. In the endeavor to satisfy his nature he will follow the mean discovered by the application of rational insight. Maimonides ' insistence upon guidance by the mean must be understood as a polemic against the dogmatic extremism of the various sects of his time. He saw only too clearly the impossibility of harmonizing extremes either within society or within any one individual. Having in his own person felt the cruelties and boundless miseries that accrue to man from fanaticism, he strove for an amelioration of intemperate attitudes. In place of a blind dogmatism that excludes rational proce- dure and mutilates, if it does not destroy, the moral and social life of man, Maimonides offers the mean as the catharsis of all dogmas and the dissolving acid of all extremes. In the proper maintenance of his body lies the first step in man ' s endeavor to realize himself. Every detail necessary for the maintenance and preservation of physical strength and bodily health is laid down by Maimonides with masterly detail and with a thoroughness of which only a disciple cf Aesculapius can boast. If man is to exercise his intellectual functions he must never forget the body which supports them. He must know what to eat and when to eat, what to drink, when to bathe, when to work, and when to play. Those, says Maimonides, who deny themselves all bodily pleasures must be condemned in the same fashion as those who glorify them. The proper care of the body and the satisfaction of biologico-physio- logical needs is not an end in itself. Eating, drinking, and sleeping do not constitute man ' s purpose and aim in life. Man does not live for the sake of living but for the sake of living well. Maimonides reiterates, In the world to come, there is neither body nor frame, but the souls only of the righteous dwell therein divested of body. Tuenlyjoiir

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M A SMID spectator in a cosmic drama; he is mainly a doer. an active agent in a moral and social context. Here Maimonides follows Aristotle ' s distinction be- tween the absolute actuality of the Prime Mover and the most total and continuous happiness of man. Whereas God as Pure Form eternally con- templates, man ' s siimwiiiii boiinm as a moral and social being consists in the fact that he is able to imitate divinity only sometimes. Man is a so- cial being with some moments of solitude, and not a lonely thinker with some social moments. God must be worked for; in order to achieve di- vinity one must be a participator in all human activities. The final stage in man ' s search for earthly hap- piness consists in the knowledge and love of God. But though such knowledge is the ultimate goal of man as man, it does not consist in a direct in- tuition or embrace of God; it is not an immediate grasp of the essence of God. Another accepted axiom of metaphysics, says Maimonides, is that human reason can not fully conceive God in His true essence, because of the perfection of God ' s essence and the imperfection of our reason, and because His essence is not due to causes through which it may be known. The inability of our reason to comprehend may be compared to the inability of our eyes to gaze at the sun, not because of the weakness of the sun ' s light, but because the light is more powerful than that which seeks to gaze into it. Whatever knowledge of God man may be able to acquire, that knowledge must be mediated by the senses. It is from the raw materials presenting themselves in sense-perception that reason is able to extract universal principles. Reason performs its operations only as a conse- quence of the contact of the human body with things. In his insistence upon the importance of sensory experience Maimonides follows the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition that nothing can be in the mind which is not in the senses before. In denying the possibility of man ' s jump into divine essence Maimonides dealt a death-blow to all Platonists and mystics for whom knowledge of God without the mediation of the senses, direct intuition of God, was the acme of bliss and per- fection. He clasps hands with authoritative Jewish and Aristotelian doctrines that while some may walk uilh God it is impossible for anyone to walk ' ; God. Thus, as the Romans built a system of duties around their republican virtues to keep them free from foreign contamination, and as the Hebrew sages built a fence around the Law to keep it intact, so did Maimonides construct a fence around God ' s essence to glorify the moral and intellectual life of man on earth. More than that. By insisting that God ' s es- sence is beyond man ' s ken and that the study of God must be approached only by a well-adjusted moral and social individual Maimonides dispenses with any partial and one-sided view of the cosmos. The universe, of which God is the form or the actuality of actualities or the highest genus, must not be seen through a partial defeat or success ob- tained in man ' s communal life. He would have man know that success and defeat are inherent in earthly life and that they must not be employed as points of departure or as categories for the under- standing of nature as a whole. He would in one breath damn the Leibnitzian optimism, which pro- claims this to be the best of all possible worlds, and turn in dismay from the self-contained Schopen- hauerian motto that this is the worst of all possible worlds. Give up your prejudices, control your fan- cies, dispel your illusions, repeats Maimonides again and again, study logic, mathematics, and natural science, and then will you be able to approach nature with a single mind and an open heart. For those who approach nature through the phan- toms of their brain will endeavor to adjust things to their prejudices and will thus be unable to see things in their true relationships. We merely maintain, says Maimonides, that the earlier Theologians, both of the Greek Christians and of the Mohammedans, when they laid down their propositions, did not investigate the real proper- ties of things; first of all they considered what must be the properties of the things which should Twenty-six