Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Moses Maimonides: An Intellectual Portrait
- 2 The Guide and Maimonides’ Philosophical Sources
- 3 Metaphysics and Its Transcendence
- 4 Maimonides’ Epistemology
- 5 Maimonides’ Philosophy of Science
- 6 Maimonides’ Moral Theory
- 7 Maimonides’ Political Philosophy
- 8 Jurisprudence
- 9 Bible Commentary
- 10 Spiritual Life
- 11 Maimonides: Esotericism and Educational Philosophy
- 12 Maimonides--A Guide for Posterity
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Maimonides--A Guide for Posterity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 August 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Moses Maimonides: An Intellectual Portrait
- 2 The Guide and Maimonides’ Philosophical Sources
- 3 Metaphysics and Its Transcendence
- 4 Maimonides’ Epistemology
- 5 Maimonides’ Philosophy of Science
- 6 Maimonides’ Moral Theory
- 7 Maimonides’ Political Philosophy
- 8 Jurisprudence
- 9 Bible Commentary
- 10 Spiritual Life
- 11 Maimonides: Esotericism and Educational Philosophy
- 12 Maimonides--A Guide for Posterity
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
My respect for this man [Maimonides] was so great that I considered him to have been the ideal man and his teachings to have been inspired by the Divine wisdom itself.
Salomon Maimon (Lebensgeschichte, 1965, Volume 1, p. 307)MAIMONIDES, THE PURVEYOR OF PERPLEXITIES
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed (henceforth Guide) shaped the course of subsequent Jewish religious philosophy, especially during the later Middle Ages. Maimonides had considerable impact also on some Christian medieval thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, and was studied by several early modern philosophers, such as Spinoza and Leibniz. The reception of the Guide in the medieval Jewish philosophical tradition was quite varied: Many reacted to it so enthusiastically that it became for them a virtual canonical text; others treated it sympathetically but critically; and some rejected it completely or in large part. But even in the latter case, the critique of Maimonides was presented in the language and conceptual framework of the Guide. This diverse and pervasive impact of the Guide can be in part attributed to the paradoxical result that instead of removing perplexities it raises them and leaves some of them unresolved.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides , pp. 324 - 360Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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