חדש באתר: NotebookLM עם כל תכני הרב מיכאל אברהם

Q&A: Attributes of God

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This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

Attributes of God

Question

With God’s help,
Rabbi, in your lectures you argue that Maimonides takes the approach of abstraction through negation, not annihilation.
If God is categorically different from us, how can we grasp anything about Him? After all, our concepts do not apply to Him.
Why is this not like talking about sweetness in terms of length? Two different things. True, sweetness is a definition, but even the very idea of sweetness does not apply to Him, so even abstraction by negation does not help me at all in speaking about the essence, because the idea of sweetness simply does not apply to Him, for that matter.
Thank you!

Answer

Even with human beings, we do not really grasp anything. We deal with phenomena, not noumena. It seems to me that Maimonides’ idea is that even to negate something of someone is still some kind of statement about him, and that can also be said about one whose essence we do not grasp. But here I am defending a thesis—the negation of attributes—that I myself do not accept. I do not see any problem with describing Him in positive attributes.
Talking about length in terms of sweetness is not similar to this, because there we positively know that it is irrelevant. We know what length is and what sweetness is. With regard to the Holy One, blessed be He, we have no positive information, only at most an absence of information.

Discussion on Answer

Avia (2018-05-27)

When you claim that there is a division with respect to phenomena, the question is whether when I use an analogical term, is that a statement that says something about the cause/the essence, or is it a statement that says something on the level of the outcome? Let me illustrate: for example, when I say that the moon shines and the sun shines, I have said two different things, because if I used the same concept causally—how they shine—I was not speaking about that, but in terms of the result, there is light before my eyes. My question is whether, when you speak of positive content, you also mean on the level of essence, or only on the level of result. It seems to me that this is Maimonides’ distinction, since he says: He knows, but not by knowledge; He is able, but not by ability. That is, a categorical distinction between cause and effect. On the level of essence, there is no knowledge.
Second point: according to your claim that one can say positive content about God, even if I argue that the relation between sweetness and length is different because we have positive content regarding both of them—when I am speaking about an entirely different dimension, a supreme being that is not dependent on causes, as opposed to the universe, which is causally dependent—then God’s existence is categorically different from ours, since He is His own cause and is the source of every idea we try to conceive. So is it not a mistake to speak in positive terms?

Michi (2018-05-27)

I cannot define an essential statement. When you say about someone that he is good, is that an essential statement? What is there in it beyond the fact that there is something in him that causes him to behave well? That too, in my opinion, can be said about the Holy One, blessed be He.
As for the second question, I already answered it. Are you asking whether I meant what I wrote? Surprisingly, yes.

Avia (2018-05-27)

In light of that, Maimonides too agrees that one can state positive attributes, since he himself says, “He knows, but not by knowledge; He is able, but not by ability”—that is, he too distinguishes between noumena and phenomena.
And it seems that the whole reason he objects to this is because of a possible misunderstanding—that people may fail to distinguish between the essence and the appearance. If so, then there is no concrete disagreement between the Rabbi and Maimonides.
Do you agree?
* Guide for the Perplexed, Part I, Chapter 57.

Michi (2018-05-27)

I am not dealing here with interpreting Maimonides’ words, and in order to propose such an interpretation one would have to examine everything he says there, which I have not studied. I explained my own position briefly here.

Avia (2018-05-27)

1. According to Kant, is there a connection between noumena and phenomena?
2. What attributes can be said of Him—any attribute?

Michi (2018-05-27)

1. Of course. The noumenon generates the phenomenon. The properties of the table in itself, when they encounter my consciousness, receive a cognitive representation (visual and/or otherwise). A different noumenon would generate a different phenomenon (within the same consciousness, of course).
2. I have not made an orderly list, but His attributes are written in the Torah: “The Lord, the Lord, a compassionate and gracious God…” especially good, wise, and so on. I cannot think of any attribute that cannot be ascribed to Him and would require the theory of negation for that purpose. There are attributes that are not true of Him (such as not omnipotent, finite, evil, etc.). But it is hard for me to think of attributes that are true of Him only in the negative sense.

Avitar Nakhshoni (2018-05-29)

Clearly there is a distinction between phenomenon and noumenon; the question is:
can anything nevertheless be grasped in the essence itself, or not?
In your lectures (on the negation of attributes), you try to argue that when I negate attributes from the divine essence, I get something, and I am asking: in which part? In the phenomenon or in the noumenon? If in the noumenon, I would be happy to hear an explanation.
And when you argue that from the outset one can characterize God with positive attributes, am I capable of grasping something in the essence itself?
If so, how? After all, no abstraction will suffice to grasp something that lies outside definitions.

Michi (2018-05-29)

Introduction.
There is a misunderstanding here of the Kantian distinction (common among interpreters of Kant, but in my opinion they are mistaken). It is not correct to say that one cannot grasp the thing in itself. Of course one can, except that this grasp is formulated in terms of properties (the phenomenon). When you see a red object, you have grasped something in the object itself, but that something appears to you as the color red. This is not an inability to grasp the noumenon. This is what it means to grasp a noumenon. There is no grasp without its being pictured in terms of properties. On the other hand, to ask me to say what I grasped in the noumenon in words is really to ask for a phenomenal description of that grasp. There is no description of what I grasped in the noumenon as such—not because it is impossible, but because it is undefined. A description of something always refers to its phenomenon.

And now to Maimonides.
As I understand him, Maimonides wants to argue that even if you negate properties from the phenomenon of something, sometimes some sort of grasp of its noumenon still emerges. But to ask to formulate that in words is really to ask for a phenomenal description of it, which is of course an oxymoron. After all, we are dealing with a grasp of the noumenon that has no phenomenal translation; otherwise there would be no need for the theory of negating attributes.
I will note again that I tend to think there is not much to this. I do not think that negating attributes leaves a grasp of the noumenon, for various reasons, but here you asked for an explanation of what Maimonides means. It seems to me that this is what he means.

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