Worship of the Heart: A Study in Maimonides' Philosophy of Religion (review)

298 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:2 APRIL 199 7 Ehud Benor. Worship of the Heart: A Study in Maimonides'Philosophyof Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Pp. ix + 262. Paper, $16.95. Prayer is not often presented as having much to do with philosophy. The latter is an autonomous human activity, while prayer depends upon a divine being for its efficacy. Benor, however, wants to place prayer at center stage and to understand dialogic prayer with God as the linchpin in Maimonides' philosophical program, specifically, as the link between theoretical contemplation (the summum bonum for Maimonides) and practical, political activity. In arguing for this position, Benor opposes Guttmann and Fox, who held an incommensurability thesis concerning traditional modes of prayer and Maimonides' intellectualist-contemplative ideal. Benor's position coheres with holistic ones, such as Twersky's, which attempt to bridge the gap between Maimonides' halakhic (legal) writings, especially the Mishneh Torah, and his philosophical magnum opus, The Guide of the Perplexed. Benor's commensurability thesis is also directed against those he sees as evincing little awareness of the specific problematic that confronts Maimonides. For Benor, Maimonides must be seen as responding directly to Plato and Aristotle, for whom a real conundrum exists concerning the grounds for motivating the philosopher to return to the practical realm (the cave). Thus, any interpretation that does not take seriously the problems that arise from trying to bridge the gap between theory and practice, metaphysics and morals, is insufficiently attentive to the particular philosophical context in which Maimonides worked. Interpretations that present the Maimonidean prophet as moving directly, easily, and seemingly without effort, from the contemplative mode to a practical one, and, further, that ground such transformation upon the specific nature of the object of contemplation and theoretical insight, must be subject to criticism. For Benor, the just-mentioned view of the practical turn in Maimonides' theorizing is too facile, and in response he takes issue with some recent interpretations. Leaman has argued that for Maimonides the very contemplation of God entails imitation of divine (moral) attributes, while Altmann argued that imitation of God is but the practical side of the intellectual love of God, and follows from such theoretical insight. For both Leaman and Altmann, thus, there simply is no problem about the commensurability . For them, practice follows straightaway, especially given that the insight of the contemplative, the would-be prophet, is an insight into the moral nature of God. But for Benor, this theoretical insight cannot ground imitatio, for the simple reason, Humean in its way, that (theoretical) reason is inert and cannot motivate action. For Benor, even though the object of contemplation is the source of all value, the grounds for action must be located elsewhere. Benor locates the seat of action in the heart, the desiderative element (the will?). This, however, should not lead one to think that Maimonides is an arationalist in ethics and politics. The passage from Guide 3.51 that undergirds the title of the book makes this very clear. The "worship of the heart" referred to there, which for the rabbinic sages indicates prayer, is Maimonides' description of his own contemplative ideal. But the crucial point here is that in identifying and understanding divine contemplation as BOOK REVIEWS 299 prayer Maimonides radically transforms the theoretical interpretation of the former, and does so in such a way as to provide a means whereby the philosopher in going about his characteristic activity is perforce motivated to undertake practical, political activity. How precisely is this transformation from contemplative to practical activity supposed to work? For Benor, "the philosopher must already have achieved practical excellence if his or her supreme theoretical achievement is to have the practical consequences of the Maimonidean ideal of imitatiodei" (56). In brief, for Maimonides moral perfection--perfection of character and rectification of desire--is a prerequisite to intellectual perfection, and never absent from it; and given this, "the practical turn [i.e., imitatio]... [must] be understood not as a result of intellectual apprehension but as its completion" (194 n.93 ). Indeed, for Benor, the very theory/practice dichotomy is attenuated. Since intellectual apprehension entails, and is entailed by, love of...