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Maimonides on Perfecting Perfection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2017

Roslyn Weiss
Roslyn Weiss*
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Lehigh University
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Extract

This article addresses two critical questions concerning Maimonides's views on human perfection at the end of his Guide of the Perplexed. The first is: For those who have reached the highest category of perfection—intellectual perfection, apprehension of the divine, the divine science—what prescription does Maimonides offer for perfecting that perfection, for solidifying the bond between them and God? I will argue: 1) that there is more than one method—that Maimonides indeed specifies two distinct methods—for stabilizing and intensifying the highest kind of perfection; 2) that the two methods yield two distinct ranks of perfect individuals; and 3) that Maimonides, in his attempt to perfect his own perfection, adopts the second method but achieves only the rank of those who employ the first.

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 110 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 339 - 359
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2017 

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References

1 Maimonides, Moses, Guide of the Perplexed (trans. Shlomo Pines; 2 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963)Google Scholar, page references appear in parentheses in the text.

2 There is simply no gainsaying the fact that the Guide suggests both that knowledge of the divine is possible—as the closing chapters of the Guide indicate—and that it is not. That even Moses may not—or cannot—see God's face, that is, know God's essence, but may know only his ways (1.54), strongly indicates that no human being can attain knowledge of the divine. See also 3.9:436–37 for a particularly strong statement of this position. Scholars continue to attempt either to reconcile the two opposing views or to privilege the one or the other. Howard Kreisel suggests a more fruitful approach in Maimonides’ Political Thought: Studies in Ethics, Law, and the Human Ideal (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999). Kreisel treats Maimonides's statements as context-dependent, with different aspects of his view variously highlighted and emphasized as his purposes dictate. Another, related, instance of this sort of internal contradiction is Maimonides's vehement denial, on the one hand, in Part 1 of the Guide, of any relation whatsoever between God and anything else, insofar as there is no commonality of any kind—not even existence itself—between God and any other existent, and insofar as there is no category that God shares in any way with any other existent (see esp. 1.52); and, on the other, Maimonides's several references in Part 3 to a “bond” between human beings and God which is intellect (3:51:620, 621; 3.52:629), and even of “union” with the divine via intellect (3.51:623–24; also 1.18:44; see also 1.1:22-23). I proceed henceforth on the assumption that apprehension of God is in some sense possible for human beings, and that human beings, even while embodied, have some relation to God via their intellects. The final chapters of the Guide, with which this essay is most directly concerned, tend to endorse these assumptions. For further discussion, see n. 48.

3 Fervent worship by those who have incorrect beliefs concerning the divine can only compound their imperfection, since what they worship is essentially a figment of their imagination (3.51:620).

4 See, e.g., 3.8, 3.27, 3.51, 3.54; also 1.34, 3.28; Mishneh Torah, Laws concerning the Foundations of the Torah, 3:8–13.

5 In 3.27, welfare of the soul (i.e., holding correct opinions) takes precedence over welfare of the body (i.e., moral and political virtue). For the superiority of theoretical to practical wisdom see, too, Maimonides's brilliant analysis in 1.2 of the saga of Adam and Eve and their eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

6 In his Mishneh Torah, Laws concerning the Foundations of the Torah 4.13, Maimonides quotes the Talmud (b. Sukkah 28a), where it is said that the Account of the Chariot (which Maimonides equates with metaphysics) is “the great thing,” and the discussions of the Sages Abaye and Rava, “the lesser thing.” According to Maimonides, the matter of the forbidden and permitted, which occupies the debates between Abaye and Rava, is to precede the deeper and more important topics of metaphysics, the secrets of the Torah. The oral tradition, Maimonides maintains, contains the truths of metaphysics, but these truths were not written down for fear that they would become corrupted and would give rise to confusion (see Guide 1.71:175–76).

7 Maimonides's analysis of Jer 9:22–23 will be considered in Section V.

8 I read יתהלל (yithallel) as a passive, in the sense of “be praised for,” rather than as a reflexive meaning “glory in.” See Prov 31:30: היא תתהלל, where the woman of valor is one who is to be praised for her virtue, not one who glories in or prides herself on it.

9 3.51 indeed begins with Maimonides's explicit assertion that he means in this chapter to explain “the worship as practiced by one who has apprehended the true realities peculiar only to Him after he has obtained an apprehension of what He is” (618) [italics added]. Stern, Josef, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ “Guide” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013) 315 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in order to avoid the implication that human beings attain such apprehension, reads “after” as “when,” and in his subsequent discussion places “after” within scare quotes. Yet, Maimonides repeatedly and consistently uses the preposition “after.”

10 It would appear that the purpose of observance of miṣvot for those who have attained apprehension differs from its purpose for those who have not. For the latter the purpose is two-fold: welfare of the body and welfare of the soul (3.27:310–11).

11 The members of this second group are distinct from those of the first: “And there may be a human individual . . .” (636). Their achievement is thus not the next stage in the spiritual journey of the members of the first group. For the contrary view, see Kogan, Barry S., “What Can We Know and When Can We Know It? Maimonides on the Active Intelligence and Human Cognition,” in Moses Maimonides and His Time (ed. Ormsby, Eric L.; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989) 121–37Google Scholar; and Hartman, David, Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1976)Google Scholar. For Hartman, there is a single process that begins with an individual's undertaking the miṣvot-centered training practices Maimonides outlines, and culminates in a state in which this person's “activities go forward automatically, and his inner consciousness is engaged with that which is lofty” (351).

12 On the uniqueness of Moses's prophecy, see Bland, Kalman, “Moses and the Law according to Maimonides,” in Mystics, Philosophers, and Politicians: Essays in Jewish Intellectual History in Honor of Alexander Altmann (ed. Reinharz, Jehuda and Swetchinski, Daniel; Durham, NC.: Duke University Press, 1982) 49–66 Google Scholar. Bland does not raise the question of why the patriarchs are presented in 3.51 as Moses's equals. Galston, Miriam argues persuasively, however, in “Maimonides: Philosopher-King v. Prophet,” Israel Oriental Studies 8 (1978) 204–18Google Scholar, at 214, that Moses is “the sole instance of legislative prophecy and always will be.” See, too, Reines, Alvin J., “Maimonides’ Concept of Mosaic Prophecy,” HUCA 40–41 (1969–70) 325–61Google Scholar, at 331: “Moses apprehended prophecy through the Active Intellect and the human intellect alone; he did not make use of the imagination which the other prophets all found it necessary to employ.”

13 Love comes in two types: the love that is apprehension and the love that is worship. This second kind of love comes after apprehension (3.51:627). It is captured in the following two rabbinic passages: 1) “Another explanation of, ‘And thou shalt love the Lord thy God’ (Deut 6:5): cause Him to be beloved by human beings, even as your father Abraham did” (Sifre on Deut 6:5); and 2) “‘And thou shalt love the Lord thy God’ means that: because of you the name of Heaven will become beloved” (b. Yoma 86a). Maimonides quotes the former of these rabbinic dicta in his treatment of the commandment to love God (the third commandment in his enumeration of the 248 affirmative commandments in his Book of Commandments). As Maimonides understands the love of God in this verse, it is not a command to love God but rather a command to make God beloved.

14 Pines, Guide, 634, as seen in the quoted passage, makes the construction passive: the present state of extreme perfection of these four men “was necessarily brought about by” their directing all their actions to the end of coming near to God. The construction is actually active: their directing all their actions to the end of coming near to God “necessitated” their perfect state. See Maimonides, מורה נבוכים (Guide of the Perplexed) (trans. Michael Schwarz; Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2002) 662: חייב.

15 An anonymous referee astutely notes that the practices that constitute the first method were unavailable to the patriarchs and Moses. The important point, however, is that these four men eschewed the seclusion that was available to them. It does not then appear that Maimonides is drawing a merely historical distinction.

16 The joy experienced by the second group approaches the intense pleasure that accompanies the separation of soul from body, represented by God's kiss of death in the case of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (3.51:627–28).

17 Note the reversal from those who pray and fulfill commandments “with their limbs only” while their thoughts are directed to worldly things (3.51:622), to those who engage in worldly things “with their limbs only” while their thoughts are directed exclusively to God (3.51:624).

18 Maimonides twice mentions the efforts of the second group specifically: “For the end of their efforts during their life was to bring into being a religious community that would know and worship God. . .. Thus it has become clear to you that the end of all their efforts was to spread the doctrine of the unity of the Name in the world and to guide people to love Him, may He be exalted” (3.54:624) [italics added]. The divine overflow does not, then, produce of itself the religious community these four men strove to bring into existence, nor was their achievement automatic or effortless.

19 Training by performance of commandments is mentioned, too, in 3.52 (630).

20 David may not lag far behind Moses and the patriarchs. The level of closeness to God that Maimonides attributes to him is one in which “I do not empty my thought of Him” (3.51:622). Yet, insofar as Maimonides cites this verse (Ps 16:8) to make the point that those who are excellent regret the time they spend in non-God-related occupations, perhaps Maimonides is commending David for not deliberately emptying his mind of thoughts of God, rather than implying that David's mind is in fact never occupied with worldly thoughts.

21 Schwarz, Guide, 622, n. 66: 1) דרגה זאת אינה דרגה שאיש כמוני יבקש להדריך אל השגתה; and 2) דרגה זאת אינה דרגה שאיש כמוני יבקש להיות מודרך אליה.

22 See 1.34 where Maimonides recognizes the obstacles that hinder the successful instruction of others.

23 On the question of whether Maimonides regards himself as a prophet, see the opposing views of Warren Zev Harvey, “בין פילוסופיה מדינית להלכה במשנת הרמב״ם” (“Political Philosophy and Halakhah in Maimonides”), Iyyun 29 (1980) 198–212; “Maimonides on Human Perfection, Awe, and Politics,” in The Thought of Moses Maimonides (ed. Ira Robinson, Lawrence Kaplan, and Julien Bauer; Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1991) 1–15; and Shlomo Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge according to Al-Farabi, Ibn-Bajja, and Maimonides,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History (ed. Isadore Twersky; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979) 82–109, the former of whom answers in the affirmative, the latter in the negative. If we judge by the criterion for the prophet found in 3.51, namely, one's exerting extra effort after and beyond the attainment of intellectual apprehension in order to draw nearer to God and to strengthen one's bond with him, it would appear that Maimonides must see himself as a prophet. After all, he rather explicitly says of himself (or of those who are like himself) that they are able to achieve the lower rank within this elite group (3.51:624). It is unclear, however, whether he thinks he experiences excess divine overflow to the imagination, a feature that is characteristic of prophets as described in 2.36. See n. 12.

24 In a letter to Joseph, written slightly later, in the 1190s, Maimonides, after having been stung by criticism of his legal work, the Mishneh Torah, tells Joseph that he wrote that work primarily for himself. But that remains highly unlikely. See Maimonides, אגרות הרמב״ם : מכתבי רבנו משה בן מיימון ומכתבי בני דורו אליו (Maimoides's Epistulae) (ed. David Zvi Baneth; Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1946) 50–52.

25 One may hear Aristotelian resonances in this position—for Aristotle maintained, in Book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics, after devoting nearly the entire work to moral virtue, that the highest human life, the one through which alone the greatest happiness is attained, is the life of the intellect, with the life of moral virtue coming in a distant second.

26 Earlier in this chapter (3.54:634), Maimonides makes reference to a saying of the Sages according to which, when the moment of judgment arrives, one will have to render an account first concerning one's knowledge of the Torah, then concerning the acquisition of wisdom—that is, is one able to demonstrate what one has learned from the tradition?—and, finally, concerning one's having derived the actions through which one's life will be ennobled. In summarizing the Sages’ view, Maimonides points out that knowledge of the Torah is distinct from wisdom, and that wisdom is “the verification of the opinions of the Torah through correct speculation.” Nothing more is said about action; moreover, Maimonides immediately and explicitly (3.54:635) ranks moral perfection lower than the intellectual perfection that leads to correct metaphysical views with respect to God. See Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, abridged (ed. and introd. Julius Guttmann; trans. Chaim Rubin; new introd. Daniel H. Frank; Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1995) 225, n. 21, for Guttman's distinction between moral perfection and moral conduct, according to which the former requires no philosophical knowledge (of God) but the latter does. This distinction is not, however, borne out by the text. For, in discussing moral perfection, Maimonides contends, unlike Aristotle, that moral virtues that are dormant are no perfections at all: “For if you suppose a human individual is alone, acting on no one, you will find that all his moral virtues are in vain and without employment and unneeded, and that they do not perfect the individual in anything” (3.54:635). For Maimonides, then, moral perfection is necessarily active. Nevertheless, its rank is below that of intellectual perfection.

27 I depart here from the Pines translation, Guide, 638. See n. 8.

28 See, e.g., Guttmann, Julius, Philosophies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig (trans. Silverman, David W.; intro. Zvi Werblowsky; NY: Holt, Rinehart, 1964) 200 Google Scholar: “Ethics, though previously [i.e., before apprehension] subordinate to knowledge, has now become the ultimate meaning and purpose of the knowledge of God.”

29 In the view of Lawrence Kaplan, “‘I Sleep, but My Heart Waketh’: Maimonides’ Conception of Human Perfection,” in The Thought of Moses Maimonides (ed. Robinson, Kaplan, and Bauer) 145, actions can only constitute “pure worship of great import” if they “flow from the intellectual contemplation of the divine cosmic governance . . . if they constitute a perfect imitation of that divine cosmic governance . . . namely the ‘bring[ing] into being [of] a religious community that would know and worship God.’” In my view, the “pure worship of great import” in 3.51, which brings a religious community into being, is distinct from the imitatio dei of 3.54. As we have seen, the former brings about the closeness to God enjoyed by Moses and the patriarchs. The latter, however, whose prerequisite is knowledge of (the limits of) God's governance, may be pursued by each apprehender of God “in a measure corresponding to his capacity” (3.54:638).

30 Pines, “Limitations,” 100, seeks to assimilate “apprehension of God” to “knowledge of God's governance.” The text in 3.51 (620), however, leaves no doubt that the two apprehensions are distinct, as does the consideration of Jer 9:22–23 in 3.54 (637 and 638).

31 In an illuminating paper on the final four chapters of the Guide, David Shatz, “Worship, Corporeality, and Human Perfection: A Reading of Guide of the Perplexed, III:51–54,” in Thought of Moses Maimonides (ed. Robinson, Kaplan, and Bauer) 77–78, discounts the qualification, “kind of,” and treats 3.51 as the Guide’s true conclusion. In his view, 3.54 “presents a highly simplistic and misleading picture of Maimonides’ views on human perfection; III.51, on the other hand, is fraught with complexities, tensions, ambiguities, and uncertainties that better reflect Maimonides’ thinking” [italics in original]. Shatz argues that in 3.54 persons who have reached the fourth and highest perfection have no further need for miṣvot; they have in effect escaped corporeality. In his view, 3.51 is, then, both more pessimistic and more realistic in recognizing that philosophers, even though they have attained the highest perfection, remain corporeal and so need the commandments in order to train for a higher level of worship.

32 See Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought, 137: “The individual who attains the identity of an intellect separate from matter no longer feels the afflictions that continue to accompany the corporeal dimension of his existence.” In the words of Eliezer Goldman, “העבודה המיוחדת במשיגי האמתות: הערות פרשניות למורה נבוכים חלק ג פרקים נא–נד” (“The Unique Worship of Those Who Apprehend Truth: Exegetical Remarks on Guide of the Perplexed, Part 3, Chapters 51-54”), Bar-Ilan Annual 6 (1968) 300: “At the time of intellectual attachment a human being's true essence is that of a separate intellect, and therefore he is not affected but only active,” or (in a variant of this view [301]): “From the perspective of attachment to God via the apprehension of his intellect, the only good is the condition of attachment, and the only evil is the cancellation of this attachment; all other evils and goods are merely imaginary.” See also Alfred L. Ivry, “Providence, Divine Omniscience and Possibility: The Case of Maimonides,” in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy (ed. Tamar Rudavsky; Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985) 156: “In connecting his intellect fully with that of the divine intellect, man assumes a new identity, at least for as long as he can maintain the conjunction. . .. The natural evils which can befall all men cannot touch him, for he is no longer mortal—at least, not essentially so. Should anything happen to his physical body while in this state, it will not affect his mind, his true being, which is with God.” Several of Maimonides's medieval commentators offer similar interpretations.

33 Maimonides explicitly links the Aristotelian view with this verse from Ezekiel at 3.17:466.

34 Maimonides in 3.23 regards the “object of the Book of Job as a whole” (497) to be to teach that divine and human providence and governance have nothing in common “except the name alone” (496).

35 Jerome Gellman, “Radical Responsibility in Maimonides’ Thought,” in Thought of Moses Maimonides (ed. Robinson, Kaplan, Bauer) 262, interestingly derives from the limits of God's intervention in the world that the human individual is “self-initiating, self-chosen, not dependent on God in any way that implies his own inadequacy as agent or cognitive being.”

36 How could a perfection be one “for which one may truly be praised” if it is automatic and effortless? That prophets undertake their mission despite their reservations and reluctance (2.37:375) is surely what would justify their being praised.

37 Goldman, “Unique Worship,” 312, argues suggestively that, although God is an unmoved mover, he is also a creator, and that it is in his creation that his loving-kindness lies; were creation an emanation from God's essence as intellect (and not a product of divine will), it would signify only his righteousness. Imitatio dei, then, according to Goldman, requires that the prophet function similarly—that is, not only as an intellect but also as political leader who brings a nation into existence and sustains it. This view, however, problematically assumes that God has middot (attributes), although Maimonides rejects the notion that divine attributes attach to anything but God's actions. All it could mean to say that God has the attribute of loving-kindness is that if human beings were to do the sort of thing God does, they would be exhibiting loving-kindness. Furthermore, righteousness is not easily separated from loving-kindness as they relate to God. The creation of living beings and the provision for their survival are not differentiated from one another in 1.54 but are both manifestations of God's graciousness insofar as the beneficiaries have no claim to these benefactions. In 3.53 the two are assigned respectively to loving-kindness and righteousness, but the division seems arbitrary at best and is no doubt driven by the fact that there is no counterpart in God to the phenomenon of righteousness in man as Maimonides somewhat awkwardly defines it, namely, as doing justice to one's own soul.

38 Davidson, Herbert, Maimonides: The Man and His Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 365 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 540, insists that Maimonides means to salvage for God some measure of “personality.” It would seem, however, that in 1.54 what Maimonides is most at pains to do is to avoid the ascription to God of anything like “personality.”

39 Maimonides makes it clear in the parable of the palace in 3.51 that those who enter the inner sanctum and make “another effort” to be in the presence of the ruler do not all reach the same level of apprehension. All those who make a further effort to cement their bond with God after apprehension are, however, eligible to proceed to imitatio dei.

40 This service is reminiscent of one definition of piety proposed in Plato's Euthyphro (13d–14b)—namely, as the assistance that human beings render to the gods in their production of a magnificent work (pankalon ergon – 13e). Although the magnificent work the gods produce with the help of human assistants remains unnamed, it is likely that it is human virtue. See Weiss, Roslyn, “The Piety of Socrates and Maimonides: Doing God's Work on Earth,” Expositions 1 (2007) 141–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Maimonides distinguishes between ability and desire, thereby leaving open the possibility of having one but not the other.

42 The same difficulty arises in 3.20, where obedience is attributed to divine overflow; see 3.8, where obedience is said to be on account of our form, and disobedience on account of our matter.

43 Harvey, “Political Philosophy,” 198–212, opposes Pines, “Limitations,” 82–109 (see n. 48). Harvey, who is convinced that for Maimonides intellectual excellence is the supreme perfection, maintains, against Pines, that the political life is a “by-product” of the achievement of intellectual perfection. Kogan, “What Can We Know?” 134, goes a step further, contending that the conduct that “accords with” the theoretical apprehension of those who have attained the fourth and highest perfection “is not merely the by-product of the fourth perfection, but part of it.” A similar view is proposed by Kaplan, “‘I Sleep,’” 145: contemplation and the physical imitation of what is contemplated “blend together in a perfect harmony; they are two sides of the same coin.” Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought, 92, regards “perfect practical activity” as “the natural complement of perfect theoretical apprehension.” As I have argued, whereas it is true of God that his governance is a by-product of intellection, or part of it, or its natural complement, human loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment in dealing with others, by contrast, require effort and are not automatic concomitants of intellectual perfection.

44 The “truly” on 638 may signal a refinement or correction of an earlier statement. On 636 Maimonides asserts, in the name of the prophets, that “the perfection for which one should be praised and that one should desire is knowledge of Him, may He be exalted, which is the true science.” On 637, Maimonides qualifies this assertion, citing as the “noblest ends” those that surpass apprehension of God and include apprehension of his ways, ways that “ought to be known and imitated” [italics added]. But on 638 it becomes clear that one is not truly to be praised until one acts on one's knowledge.

45 Consider, too, these remarks by Maimonides regarding moral perfection: “For all moral habits are concerned with what occurs between a human individual and someone else. This perfection is . . . only a disposition to be useful to people; consequently it is an instrument for someone else” (3.54:635).

46 An interesting alternative is proposed by Hartman, Maimonides, 197–98. Hartman contends that the relationship of prophets to the community in the ascent to apprehension differs from their relationship to it in the descent following apprehension. During ascent, prospective prophets are “to view the community as a herd of cattle”; they are at that time “struggling to transcend the political leader's dependency on the community.” But, Hartman says, whereas “disdain for the community characterized the prophet during his ascent; in exact contrast love for the community becomes his characteristic quality during his descent.” I question, however, whether the prophet's view of the community shifts at all in the descent stage: there is, after all, no talk of the prophet's putative love of community but only of devotion to God (“it is My purpose that there should come from you” [637] [italics added]).

47 In the Introduction to Part 1 (16) Maimonides justifies his writing of the Guide by citing ’Aḇot 2.17: “Let all thy acts be for the sake of Heaven.” See, too, אגרות הרמב״ם (Maimonides's Epistles) (ed. and trans. Yitzhack Shailat; 2 vols.; Jerusalem: Ma'aliyot, 1987) 1:301: “For, as God lives, I have been zealous on behalf of the Lord God of Israel, seeing a nation lacking a true comprehensive book of its laws and lacking true and clear opinions, so I did what I did for the sake of God alone.”

48 In his later years, Pines, “Limitations,” 82, 94, 100, came to believe that Maimonides ranks the political life above the intellectual, primarily because human beings, he thinks, are, in Maimonides's view, incapable of intellectual apprehension of God (as well as of the separate intellects and possibly of the heavens as well). Pines quotes 3.9:436–37: “Matter is a strong veil preventing the apprehension of that which is separate from matter as it truly is. . .. Hence whenever our intellect aspires to apprehend the deity or one of the intellects, there subsists this great veil interposed between the two.” Halbertal, Maimonides: Life and Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 356, sees in 3.54 a description of “the philosopher's return to worldly life after coming to recognize that all he can know about God are His actions in the world as it exists.” Stern, Matter and Form, 316, similarly attributes to Maimonides a rather dismal view of human intellectual ability—he contends that human beings have no criterion by which to distinguish intellectual from imaginative apprehension—yet Stern, 308, resists the conclusion that political activity is therefore for Maimonides the highest human aspiration: “From the beginning to the end of the Guide, Maimonides is faithful to the ideal of intellectual perfection.” So, too, Harvey, “Maimonides on Human Perfection,” 9: “Maimonides’ profound consciousness of the limitations of human knowledge does not lead him to despair of science, but rather to the awe of God, and this awe—far from discouraging him in the quest for consummate intellectual knowledge—is seen by him as a necessary condition for that knowledge.” In my view, the implication of the discussion of lightning flashes in the Introduction to Part 1 of the Guide is that, although there is, to be sure, a veil, or, as it is called here, a “dark night” (7), the veil can part, the darkness can be illuminated—for some, for just a moment; for others, for a longer stretch of time; for most, never. Even though matter hinders our apprehension, some people, sometimes, can escape the fetters of the body and exercise their intellects as if disembodied. Note that at 3.51:628, where the death of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam is discussed, Maimonides says of “the other prophets and excellent men” that “they are beneath this degree” [viz., the one attained by the three children of Amram], but that for all of them “the apprehension of their intellects becomes stronger at the separation [i.e., at death],” “the impediment that sometimes screened [them] off having been removed.” Striking in this passage is the use of the comparative, “stronger,” implying that the difference between what is experienced at death and what is experienced in life is only a matter of degree. Also of note is the “sometimes”: the impediment that is removed permanently at death is, Maimonides says, removed sometimes even in life.

49 The assimilation to God's ways through the exercise of loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment as found in 3.54 is surely not unrelated to the narrowly political governance discussed in 1.54 to be exercised by Moses in accordance with the thirteen divine attributes (Maimonides refers back in 3.54 to his earlier discussion in 1.54 of “Make known to me now Thy ways”). Presumably, not all men who might be in a position to act with loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment will be in Moses's position as “governor of a city,” and certainly not in the position of governor of “this nation” that is “Thy people” (Exod 33:13). See Hartman, Maimonides, 263, n. 53.

50 These individuals are, as Kogan puts it in “What Can We Know?” 135, “a certain kind of person.” Gilad Bareli, “ ” (“On the Fear of God in Maimonides”) Iyyun 45 (1997) 385–86, speaks of the transition from propositional knowledge about God to a direct apprehension of his ways that is then reflected in the way individuals live their lives.