Q&A: The Value of the Commandments According to Maimonides?
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
The Value of the Commandments According to Maimonides?
Question
Maimonides, in Eight Chapters, says that one should study mathematics and logic, etc., in order to strengthen the intellectual faculty and thereby understand the “beings that do not change” — God (since according to him the ultimate purpose is the attainment of God).
1) Doesn’t it follow from this that there is no value to observing all the commandments, since in the end only the intellectual faculty brings a person to this recognition? And what value, then, is there in observing all the commandments?
Answer
Why are you assuming that this is the only goal? But I don’t deal with these speculative ideas of Maimonides.
Discussion on Answer
Rabbi, do you have an answer to his words from Eight Chapters ☝🏻
“And whatever is of no use for that ultimate purpose — such as arithmetic, books on conic sections and devices, extensive inquiry into geometry, and the use of scales (mathematics, etc.), and many similar things — the intention in them should be to sharpen the mind and train the intellectual faculty in the ways of demonstration, until a person acquires knowledge of demonstrative inference as distinct from other kinds, and this will become for him the path by which he may arrive at knowledge of the truth of the existence of God, may He be blessed.” And before that he wrote: “Let him keep before his eyes constantly one goal alone, namely: the attainment of God, may He be blessed, according to man's capacity to know Him.”