Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 137 for this excellent contribution; I look forward to his forthcoming study on modal theories in Medieval Islam. PARVIZ MOREWEDGE Bingharaton University Idit Dobbs-Weinstein. Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Pp. x + 278. Paper, $21.95. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein offers a comparative study of Maimonides and Aquinas intended to uncover hidden aspects of their thought. What, in sum, is easily overlooked is a fundamental point of agreement and an equally fundamental point of disagreement between them. Both Maimonides and Aquinas maintain that human reason affirms its own limitation , while simultaneously pointing beyond itself. For them, reason is demonstrative knowledge whose scope isjustifiably restricted. Since reason is central to human perfection , human beings cannot attain their proper end on their own. Thus external intervention is necessary in both the intellectual and ethical life of human beings. In the intellectual sphere, the intervention comes from prophetic knowledge for Maimonides and faith for Aquinas, each complementing reason. In the ethical sphere, the intervention is an external sanction provided by the Torah for Maimonides and by divine law (and grace) for Aquinas. Thus, there is in Maimonides and in Aquinas a necessary interconnection between reason and revelation and between ethical action and divine direction. The fundamental divergence, on the other hand, centers around a metaphysics of the Good, which Aquinas develops alongside a metaphysics of Being and which is by and large absent from Maimonides. Although this divergence is in part credited to the influence of a Christian versus an Islamic philosophical tradition, Dobbs-Weinstein traces it to Maimonides's adherence to Neoplatonic elements, on the one hand, and to Aquinas's deviation from Aristotelian philosophy, on the other. The Book of Job presents the entry into a comparative study, since in their commentaries Maimonides and Aquinas lay out a similar order of discourse. While in its scriptural context the issue concerns divine providence, in a broader sense it is the possibility of a relationship between God and human existence in the created world. Thus, Dobbs-Weinstein undertakes an elucidation of interconnected metaphysical, epistemological, noetical, and ethical issues, dealing with such topics as the existence of God (Chap. 3), the material world (Chap. 4), the structure of human existence (Chaps. 4 and 5), the nature of human perfection (Chap. 5), the human capability of knowledge and ethical action (Chaps. 5 and 6), and the relationship of human existence to providence (Chap. 7). These discussions, each of them virtually an independent study, are preceded by the question of interpretation in both Maimonides and Aquinas (Chap. l) and by an outline of their respective exegeses of Job (Chap. ~). But what is of interest are the contrasts Dobbs-Weinstein extracts. For instance, Maimonides and Aquinas differ in their understanding of divine law. They differ on whether human perfection comprises a speculative or a practical end ~38 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35: ~ JANUARY ~997 and on whether it is accessible to all or only to a select few. The function of the intellect and the will in relation to each other is another point of divergence, as is their respective account of limits in human virtue. But these are related to two other philosophical differences concerning matter and the soul. Unlike Maimonides, Aquinas maintains that the soul, qua intellect, is a selfsubsistent , immaterial being. But in its powers it is intellective in that it is directed towards the order of being and appetitive in that it is directed towards the order of good; likewise, it is active in relation to being and passive in relation to the good. This account leads Aquinas to argue for an essential relation between intellect and will, for locating evil in free choice, for a view of human perfection that is both speculative and practical, for multiple agent intellects, and for individual immortality available to all human beings--conclusions that do not readily derive from Maimonides's premises. In the thought of Maimonides, matter is necessarily related to evil and marks a discontinuity between the lunar and sublunar spheres. In the thought of Aquinas, by contrast, there is no such discontinuity, nor is matter the source of...