Q&A: Maimonides and Platonism
Maimonides and Platonism
Question
Hello Rabbi, after spending some time reading on this important site, I wanted to ask you about morality and commandments.
I understand that you advocate Platonism, and from that it follows that there are objective values that obligate us. Following that, it seems that you also interpret the commandments as law-like, something along the lines of Leibowitz’s claim, if I understood correctly. So from within this whole conception, do you also interpret Maimonides as representing Platonism?
I’m saying this mainly regarding the last column on Maimonides and the conventional beliefs. The distinction between conventional beliefs and intelligibles seems to contradict the distinction between heard commandments and rational commandments. Seemingly there shouldn’t be any heard commandments: if something is intelligible then it is true in any case, and if it is conventional then it will always be relative. You want to answer that there is always a moral principle that guides the conventional beliefs. Why not simply define that as relativism? And in general, why do conventional beliefs have any value in relation to intelligibles? That seems to me like comparing two things that are not of the same kind.
In any case, my question is not necessarily about Maimonides but about your own view. As for Maimonides, I don’t have a good enough answer to the fact that he says there are heard commandments and rational commandments, except to say that your explanation is the simple explanation, but at a deeper level there really are no conventional beliefs at all, because those values are constantly changing.
I would also be glad if you could direct me to somewhere in your books where you wrote about this view of yours at length (commandments, conventional beliefs, etc.).
Thanks,
Matan
Answer
First, I don’t think it is correct to identify what you described here with Platonism. Many would tell you that objective values do not have to exist as Ideas. But I myself do in fact think they do.
I didn’t really understand what you wrote about the conventional beliefs and Maimonides. The distinction between heard commandments and rational commandments is between things that are understandable and things that are not. Both conventional beliefs and intelligibles can be understandable.
I haven’t written about this. When the trilogy that is now being edited comes out, the third book will address it.
Discussion on Answer
These gaps make it hard for me (I no longer remember the discussion).
Why not say that what we see is subjective and relative? Because we see it. The same applies to moral values.
I didn’t understand the second part. If you want to continue, please spell out what the claims were and what you want to comment on.
I’ll try to spell it out and ask more broadly.
1. Is it possible to deny the existence of the forms and entities of the moral Ideas alone, while keeping all the other forms intact (horseness, divinity, and so on)?
2. Is it possible to give validity to a relativistic Idea? Is it possible to claim that there is an Idea that is entirely about relativity alone?
3. As for Maimonides, what is your opinion? When he argues in the Eight Chapters that there are commandments that are more understandable through reason, and therefore the perfected person does not desire them, unlike transgressions about which it does make sense to cite the sayings of the Sages praising those who struggle with their impulse—seemingly all this contradicts the rule that there are conventional beliefs and intelligibles. From the second distinction, that of conventional beliefs and intelligibles, I understand that there is nothing that is not understood by reason. The rational commandments belong to the rational domain, where desire is irrelevant (although you mentioned several times that a heretic will be ideologically influenced to try to argue that there is no God, but that is a discussion at the level of claims and proofs), whereas the conventional beliefs deal with the relativity between people and society. That is how I understand the term conventional beliefs. According to this: a. it makes no sense to say that there are true Ideas and forms apart from the correct relativity and the correct act that must be done in each period, and apart from the intelligibles (which, if I understand correctly, is the Aristotelian survival of the soul). b. seemingly Maimonides’ words in the Eight Chapters that I mentioned are contradicted, because either it is better not to desire at all, or it is better that desire exist in the proper measure—but clearly his answer there to the philosophers’ question doesn’t work so well. All these commandments should have to be of the same type.
1. It’s possible. And it’s also possible not to.
2. I didn’t understand. An Idea that says everyone should do whatever he wants? Then what do we need the Idea for? With friends like these, who needs enemies?
3. I don’t recall him saying that a person does not desire them. Adultery is a conventional prohibition for everyone, and a person desires it. So too theft. If Maimonides says this, I’d be glad to see the quote. It seems implausible to me.
I already wrote that I don’t think it is correct to identify the distinction between conventional beliefs and intelligibles with that between heard commandments and rational commandments. Conventional beliefs are not heard commandments. They are understandable once the social agreement has been formed (like not walking around naked). And they are certainly not heard commandments. Heard commandments are commandments that are not social conventions but instructions from the Holy One, blessed be He, and they have a reason, except that it is not all that clear to us. Beyond that, there is also no identity between moral commandments and rational commandments. The moral ones are a subset of the rational ones. There are non-moral reasons by means of which different commandments can be explained.
Once we clarify these questions, we can move on to the discussion about the Ideas.
2. I meant that the Idea itself changes all the time and is never fixed.
3. Regarding Maimonides’ words in the Eight Chapters, chapter 6: “The bad things that the philosophers regard as bad are those about which they said that one who does not desire them is better… such as bloodshed, theft, and robbery… and these are what some of our Sages called rational… But the things about which the Sages said that one who restrains himself from them is better and receives greater reward are the heard commandments, and this is correct, for were it not for the Torah they would not be bad at all.”
From Maimonides’ dichotomous distinction at the beginning of the Guide on the sin of the first man, and likewise from his remarks on the two tablets of the covenant (the first two commandments are the intelligibles, and all the rest of the commandments, like the rest of the Torah, belong to the conventional beliefs), it seems that he adopts only the distinction between conventional beliefs and intelligibles. I understand that the conventional beliefs swallow up the whole realm of the commandments, including the rational ones, since now in conclusion they are social norms—for example, “You shall not murder” to a certain extent. And in general, just as it is preferable not to desire murder, as he wrote in the Eight Chapters, on the other hand it is also preferable not to cling to the opposite extreme of murderous nonviolence; Maimonides charts the middle path.
In other words, it is hard to be convinced by Maimonides in chapter 6 that the rational ones are not social conventions. Theft, fraud, murder, and all the examples there are subject to different interpretation in every generation. “You shall not murder” is supposed to function as the optimal middle path with our murderous and non-murderous traits; Maimonides emphasizes this in Guide of the Perplexed III:34 and says that the Torah is suited to the path of the majority—his intention is that most Torah commandments have a general middle path, but there will be particulars that are harmed. In fact, I was persuaded by certain people who argued that the ideal person even abandons the middle path, since emotions are irrational in the doctrine of Maimonides and Aristotle (based on the first chapter of Maimonides’ Eight Chapters, and also in Aristotle’s words—I don’t have a good quote right now but I can get one). According to this, the consideration standing before the ideal leader is solely a pure intellectual consideration. Personally I don’t hold this view; I think emotional reactions such as fight-or-flight and also Freudian transference can teach us many scientific and rational things, but the principle seems right to me.
In short, I understand the moral ones to be a subset דווקא of the conventional beliefs.
I’d be glad to hear your response.
2. The Idea is circumstance-dependent. Obviously.
3. I don’t see in Maimonides here that desire is irrelevant to intelligibles. Where did you see that? I don’t see any point in getting back into the discussion about the distinction between conventional beliefs and intelligibles; it was already discussed at length after the column that dealt with them.
This discussion jumps from place to place, and I really don’t understand where it’s going or why.
Regarding your first point, the Ideas: after all, you argue in your articles that we only make infinite progress toward the good measure. How can that be defined as objective? It is only from our point of view and not from the standpoint of truth, so this definition of correct behavior will always be subjective. And again, why not simply say that values are relative?
As for the conventional beliefs, what I meant was that the distinction as I understand Maimonides is a dichotomy between concepts that can be clarified, like physics and metaphysics, and concepts that help us organize things, like the commandments and morality.
But you also connect Maimonides’ intuition here (if I understand correctly), and argue that just as Maimonides decides on issues like whether the world is eternal by saying that our intuitive intellect tends to say the world was created, so too it helps us decide moral questions. But what does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai? I agree with everything you said about the analysis of intuition and with the need to subject it to criticism, but why assign it to every field?
Is all this connected to your view of the commandments as law?