Q&A: Intelligibles and Conventions in Maimonides and Absolute Morality
Intelligibles and Conventions in Maimonides and Absolute Morality
Question
Hello Rabbi,
While studying the Torah portion of Genesis, I was reminded of the terms coined by Maimonides: intelligibles and conventions. There, Maimonides presents Adam and Eve’s being naked as belonging to the realm of conventions—that is, a social convention that such a thing is shameful—but not an absolute intellectual truth, which would belong to the intelligibles. According to Maimonides, before eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve knew only truths (the intelligibles), and not what is proper or disgraceful (the conventions).
If so, from the fact that Adam and Eve did not know that being naked was something bad (because that belongs to the conventions, and they did not recognize conventions before eating from the Tree of Knowledge), we can infer that conventions are not truths that exist in the world. For otherwise, Adam and Eve would have known them according to Maimonides. In other words, conventions are not evaluated in categories of truth and falsehood according to his view, because otherwise they would have been known even before eating from the tree. And if that is so—if conventions are not truth (and “do not murder,” etc., are also conventions!)—does it then follow that Maimonides did not actually believe in absolute morality? After all, it would seem to follow from his words that the statement “it is always and in every case permissible to murder” is not false, but rather a claim one can discuss and hold different opinions about. Yet of course, according to the outlook of the Torah, that is not the case, since there is what is permitted and forbidden, and a person is judged for his actions in relation to that moral truth.
If so, how should one understand these words of Maimonides?
I hope my question is clear enough. Many thanks and may there be good tidings!
Answer
Maimonides is not dealing there with morality but with manners and accepted norms. See column 177.
Discussion on Answer
The contradictions in Maimonides on this issue were already raised in that column and afterward. But דווקא here there does not seem to be a contradiction. What is called “intelligibles” there is a philosophical matter (the first two commandments), something one can arrive at through reason, and revelation and tradition add no extra value to it. The rest of the commandments are “conventions and accepted norms,” and that is not only “conventions” in our usual sense. We are not talking about conventions. It must be so, because if we were talking about conventions, there would be no need for revelation and commandment. That would just be our own agreement with ourselves.
The Sabbath, for example, is neither conventions nor intelligibles. Still, it comes out that the prohibitions of murder and theft and honoring parents do have added value through revelation, and we would not fully understand them on our own. In my view this is certainly correct, because all these commandments add a religious layer on top of the moral layer, which is entirely in the category of intelligibles.
But see Guide for the Perplexed II:33: “But the rest of the commandments are of the class of the conventions and the accepted norms, not of the class of the intelligibles.” That includes moral commandments.