![]() As one distinguished scholar has recently protested, it is nothing less than “perverse” to interpret Maimonides as “meaning that the existence of God is unknowable when he in fact prides himself on having demonstrated the existence of God in four different ways.” 3 2 If Maimonides really held that humans cannot apprehend metaphysical truths about the deity, how could he have demonstrated (or even thought he could demonstrate) the existence of God? If he does demonstrate it, then humans evidently do have knowledge of metaphysics. For scholars, like myself, who argue that Maimonides holds severe views about the limitations of human knowledge of divine science and metaphysics, these demonstrations are the strongest conceivable counterevidence. In recent years, however, the same demonstrations have assumed a second kind of significance. Taken at his word, Maimonides’ proofs for the existence of the deity, like Aquinas’s five ways, have traditionally been read as models of medieval natural theology: of the power of human reason to independently establish revealed truth. Qat'i) except among those who do not know the difference between demonstration, dialectics, and sophistic argument.” 1 By contrast, he claims to establish belief in the existence of God “through a demonstrative method as to which there is no disagreement in any respect” (I:71:182). It is well known that Maimonides rejects the Kalam argument for the existence of God because it assumes the temporal creation of the world, a premise for which he says there is no “cogent demonstration (burhan ![]() This kind of intellectual punishment has a parallel in Plato's Laws, where freethinkers are sentenced to spend five years living in the center of the city, studying physics and metaphysics with city elders. It is possible that the Guide itself is the punishment for freethinking as defined by the Mishneh Torah. In the Mishneh Torah Maimonides does not suggest a punishment in this world for freethinkers, but in the Guide he punishes freethinkers with more study, especially metaphysical inquiry. That is to say, the Guide in a sense covers precisely the topics whose inquiry is forbidden to Jews in the Mishneh Torah. However, what is prohibited in the Mishneh Torah is not only permitted in the Guide, but the terms of the prohibition can be used as an outline of the structure of the Guide. This paper argues that Maimonides's Mishneh Torah presents a consistent rejection of open philosophical inquiry. This prohibition apparently includes a ban on reading or thinking about the topics of the Guide of the Perplexed. ![]() In one passage of the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides explicitly forbids Jews from philosophical inquiry or even freethinking. ![]()
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