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Maimonides on Freedom of the Will and Moral Responsibility*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Moshe Sokol
Moshe Sokol
Affiliation:
Touro College
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Extract

Until fairly recently, the usual view of Maimonides' position on freedom of the will was that he was a strict libertarian. This is because he appears to assert unequivocally in several places in this Commentary to the Mishna, most notably in Shemonah Perakim 8 and in Mishneh Torah (Teshuva 5), that human choice is undetermined. Alexander Altman and Shlomo Pines challenged this view in recent years by arguing, mostly on the basis of Guide of the Perplexed 2.48, that Maimonides maintained an esoteric view according to which human choice is determined by the natural order, which is itself determined by God.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 91 , Issue 1 , January 1998 , pp. 25 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1998

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References

1 For quoted references to this work throughout the article, I refer the reader to Maimonides, Moses, The Guide of the Perplexed (Pines, Shlomo, trans.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

2 Pines, Shlomo, “Studies in Abul Barakat al-Baghdadi's Poetics and Metaphysics,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 6 (1960) 195–98Google Scholar; and Altmann, Alexander, “The Religion of the Thinkers: Free Will and Predestination in Saadia, Bahya and Maimonides,” in Goitein, S. D., ed., Religion in a Religious Age (Cambridge, MA: Association for Jewish Studies, 1974) 25–51.Google Scholar See also Harvey, Warren Zev, “Perush Ha-Rambam le-Bereshit 3:22,” Da'at 12 (1984), 15–22Google Scholar.

3 Pines, Shlomo, “The Philosophic Purport of Maimonides’ Halakhic Works and the Purport of the Guide of the Perplexed,” in Pines, Shlomo and Yovel, Yirmiyahu, eds., Maimonides and Philosophy (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1986) 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Ch. 5, § 1.

5 Guide 1.34, p. 72.

6 Guide 2.6, p. 263.

7 Ibid., p. 264.

8 Gellman, Jerome, “Freedom and Determinism in Maimonides’ Philosophy,” in Ormsby, Eric L., ed., Moses Maimonides and His Time (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1989) 139–50Google Scholar.

9 Kreisel, Howard (“Individual Perfection vs. Communal Welfare and the Problem of Contradictions in Maimonides’ Approach to Ethics,” PAAJR 58 [1992] 107–41)Google Scholar also notes this contradiction but attributes it to contextual stresses.

10 Guide 3.8, p. 433.

11 Frankfurt, Harry, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person,” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971) 5–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Watson, Gary, “Free Agency,” Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975) 205–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Taylor, Charles, “Responsibility for Self,” in Rorty, A. E., ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976) 281–99Google Scholar

14 Stump, Elenore, “Sanctification, Hardening of the Heart, and Frankfurt's Concept of Free Will,” Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988) 395–420CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Wolf, Susan, “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility,” in Philip, JohnChristian, , ed., The Inner Citadel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) 137–51Google Scholar.

16 See Kelner, Menahem, Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

17 For a discussion of this point, see Korn, Eugene, “Tradition Meets Modernity: The Conflict of Halakha and Political Liberty,” Tradition 254 (1991) 34–37Google Scholar.

18 Walzer, Michael, “A Note on Positive Freedom in Jewish Thought,” Sevara 11 [1990] 7–11)Google Scholar distinguishes two different “arguments” in Maimonides: an “idealist” argument, which takes no account of the empirical realities of the person's actual will, and a “communitarian argument,” according to which evidence is necessary that the person in question affiliates with the Jewish community, and hence in some sense wills what the community wills.

19 Mamrim 3.3.

20 That is, the exculpation from responsibility under Jewish law of someone captured by non-Jews as an infant and raised in a non-Jewish environment.