Book contents
- Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
- Cambridge Critical Guides
- Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Form
- Part II Human Beginnings
- Part III The Creator
- Chapter 5 The Scope of Metaphysics
- Chapter 6 His Existence Is Essentiality
- Chapter 7 “Whereof One Cannot Speak”
- Part IV The Created
- Part V Human Finitude
- Part VI Human Ends
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Critical Guides
Chapter 5 - The Scope of Metaphysics
from Part III - The Creator
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2021
- Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
- Cambridge Critical Guides
- Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Form
- Part II Human Beginnings
- Part III The Creator
- Chapter 5 The Scope of Metaphysics
- Chapter 6 His Existence Is Essentiality
- Chapter 7 “Whereof One Cannot Speak”
- Part IV The Created
- Part V Human Finitude
- Part VI Human Ends
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Critical Guides
Summary
Maimonides makes extensive use of metaphysics in the Guide, but he does not discuss the discipline’s nature or many of the basic issues it addresses. Instead, the Guide’s readers would need to be familiar with the tradition of metaphysical inquiry that Maimonides draws on, which is that of the peripatetic philosophers. Aristotle’s Metaphysics stands at its head, and Maimonides received it mediated through Greek and Arabic commentaries. Among the major Arabic commentators, Al-Farabi is known as “the second teacher,” after Aristotle; the titles are accorded them by Avicenna, who credits Al-Farabi with enabling him to understand the Metaphysics.
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- Maimonides' Guide of the PerplexedA Critical Guide, pp. 83 - 101Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021