A Philosopher's Afterlife: Maimonides, The World-to-Come, and the Problem of Righteous Ignoramuses
In this class, we will examine how Maimonides' 13 Articles of Belief address a central dilemma: The Mishnah asserts that all Israel has a share in The World to Come, and the Tosefta extends this to all righteous individuals. Yet Maimonides contends that immortality is achieved through intellectual and spiritual attachment to God. How, then, can righteous people who lack philosophical or spiritual mastery be assured a place in The World to Come? The talk will lay out how the 13 Articles of Belief make a more inclusive outcome a real possibility of the promise of The World to Come to all who make the effort and commitment.
About the Books:
A landmark new translation of the most significant text in medieval Jewish thought.
Written in Arabic and completed around 1190, the Guide to the Perplexed is among the most powerful and influential living texts in Jewish philosophy, a masterwork navigating the straits between religion and science, logic and revelation. The author, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, commonly known as Maimonides or as Rambam, was a Sephardi Jewish philosopher, jurist, and physician. He wrote his Guide in the form of a letter to a disciple. But the perplexity it aimed to cure might strike anyone who sought to square logic, mathematics, and the sciences with biblical and rabbinic traditions. In this new translation by philosopher Lenn E. Goodman and historian Phillip I. Lieberman, Maimonides' warm, conversational voice and clear explanatory language come through as never before in English.
Maimonides knew well the challenges facing serious inquirers at the confluence of the two great streams of thought and learning that Arabic writers labeled 'aql and naql, reason and tradition. The aim of the Guide, he wrote, is to probe the mysteries of physics and metaphysics. But mysteries, to Maimonides, were not conundrums to be celebrated for their obscurity. They were problems to be solved.
Maimonides' methods and insights resonate throughout the work of later Jewish thinkers, rationalists, and mystics, and in the work of philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Newton. The Guide continues to inspire inquiry, discovery, and vigorous debate among philosophers, theologians, and lay readers today. Goodman and Lieberman's extensive and detailed commentary provides readers with historical context and philosophical enlightenment, giving generous access to the nuances, complexities, and profundities of what is widely agreed to be the most significant textual monument of medieval Jewish thought, a work that still offers a key to those who hope to harmonize religious commitments and scientific understanding.
A Guide to The Guide to the Perplexed: A Reader’s Companion to Maimonides’ Masterwork
In this volume, noted philosopher Lenn E. Goodman shares the insights gained over a lifetime of pondering the meaning and purpose of Maimonides' celebrated Guide to the Perplexed. Written in the late twelfth century, Maimonides' Guide aims to help religiously committed readers who are alive to the challenges posed by reason and the natural sciences to biblical and rabbinic tradition. Keyed to the new translation and commentary by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. Lieberman, this volume follows Maimonides' life and learning and delves into the text of the Guide, clearly explaining just what Maimonides means by identifying the Talmudic Ma'aseh Bereshit and Ma'aseh Merkavah with physics and metaphysics (to Maimonides, biblical cosmology and theology). Exploring Maimonides' treatments of revelation, religious practice and experience, law and ritual, the problem of evil, and the rational purposes of the commandments, this guide to the Guide explains the tactics Maimonides deployed to ensure that readers not get in over their heads when venturing into philosophical deep waters.
Lenn E. Goodman is the co-author of the new translation/commentary of Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed along with his friend Professor Phillip Lieberman. Goodman is also the author of A Guide to the Guide to the Perplexed. Both books are published by Stanford University Press.
A well known exponent of Jewish philosophy, Goodman is the author of The Holy One of Israel (Oxford University Press, 2019); Judaism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation (Routledge, 2017); his Gifford Lectures, Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself (Oxford University Press, 2008); Judaism, Human Rights and Human Values (Oxford University Press, 1998); God of Abraham (Oxford University Press, 1996, which won the Gratz Centennial Prize in 1997). His book On Justice: An Essay in Jewish Philosophy (Yale University Press, 1991) appeared in an updated edition in the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008).
Goodman’s translation and philosophical commentary on Saadiah Gaon’s Arabic translation/commentary of the biblical Book of Job appeared in the Yale Judaica Series (1988). His original work in Jewish philosophy was the focus of a volume in Brill’s Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers.
His work in general philosophy includes In Defense of Truth: A Pluralistic Approach (Humanity Press, 2001); Religious Pluralism and Values in the Public Square (Cambridge University Press, 2014); and (with D. G. Caramenico) Coming to Mind: The Soul and its Body (University of Chicago Press, 2013).
Goodman is also well known for his ongoing studies of Islamic philosophy and culture. He is the author of Avicenna (Cornell University Press, 2006; Italian translation, 1992) and Islamic Humanism (Oxford University Press, 2003; Turkish translation 2006). He was the first winner of the American Philosophical Association Baumgardt Memorial Prize and was honored with Vanderbilt’s highest research award, the Sutherland Prize.