Q&A: A Question from Today’s Lecture
A Question from Today’s Lecture
Question
I very much enjoy the lectures. Thank you.
Is Maimonides’ definition in the first commandment, “…to know that there is a God,” the essence of what he writes in Chapter 1, Law 1 of the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah: “…to know that there is a First Existent”?
And therefore, before you can accept that there is a God who commands, you must know that there is a First Existent—and that He is the one who commands.
By virtue of His being the First Existent, He is the commander. Without the premise of the Existent, it is impossible to arrive at the other commandments, and therefore Maimonides defined the first commandment this way, because without it there is no basis for the other commandments.
1. What is the logical problem with this?
2. What does the word “to know” mean according to Maimonides? To think? To be consciously aware? To arrive at a logical conclusion? To agree even when there are no proofs?
Best regards
Answer
I completely agree that before I can be commanded, I need to reach the conclusion that there is a First Existent. My question is how this itself can be defined as a commandment. After all, this is a factual conclusion, and it is also circularity (a commandment to recognize the existence of the commander).
“To know,” as I understand it, means to know—that is, to reach the conclusion that this is the truth. How does one know? Each person in his own way. For some, it will be through philosophical reasoning, and for others because of a primary intuition. We will deal with this later in the series.