Ethics of Maimonides

10. The Human Face: Anticipating a Future that Is Prior to the Past

10 The Human Face Anticipating a Future That Is Prior to the Past Cohen’s essay on Maimonides’ ethics culminates in the exaltation of Jewish messianism and its sublimity, stressing the social and humane dimensions of Maimonides’ concept of messianic times. Toward the end of this work, Cohen grounds his Platonic reading once again in the traditional sources of Maimonides’ rabbinic code and his commentary on the Mishna. Cohen thereby evokes the universality of human cognition and the eternal validity of the equality and unity of mankind. Jewish messianism—by holding on to the purity of these ideals in the midst of a history full of corruption, violence, and human pain—burdens its adherents with the task of bearing witness to the unending struggle for the reign of human justice in the world. (See 166.) The temporal world— and the world to come. Maimonides ’ distinction between this world and the world-to-come is crucial to Jewish critical thinking, since any identification of the status quo with some ideality, according to Cohen, must lead to political quietism, violating the revolutionary character of prophetic messianism . However, the very concept of messianic times lends itself to the temptations of proclaiming the messianic reality before it has been attained. A strictly transcendental concept is needed. Cohen proposes the ethical concept of the world-tocome as a counterbalance to the temptations of messianism. 166. The removal of sensualism from the World Beyond corresponds to the idealization of the temporal world in the messianic era. The distinction between these two corresponding states, the denial of their being identical, establishes the ethical correlation between the two. The yearning for the messianic redeemer has not lost its universal human significance, despite all political terrorization and persecutions of Israel; however, skepticism or mysticism has turned the idea of the messianic future into utopianism . [RoR 247–48, 310–11; RdV 289, 361.] Maimonides discerns the same old eudaemonia in the utopianism of Arabic political theories; This World and the World to Come: The Powers of Messianism 180 Maimonides’ description of messianic times, however, stresses the perfection of the human condition , attainment of universal justice , and the ceasing of war, poverty, and of all political struggle . Maimonides’ idea of the messianic future—although to be realized in this world—thus transcends the various states of empirical reality of past and present: The sages and prophets did not long for the days of the Messiah that Israel might exercise domination over the world, or rule over the heathens , or be exalted by the nations , or that it might eat and drink and rejoice . . . but rather they longed for the days of the Messiah so that Israel be worthy of life in the world to come. In that time there will be neither famine nor war, neither jealousy nor strife. Blessings will be abundant, comforts within the reach of all. The one preoccupation of the whole world will be to know the Lord. “For the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”1 Messianism implies that the past and the present must be measured by, and, in fact, be predicated upon the future. Predicating the past upon the future means to actively anticipate that future. In his Logik des reinen Erkenntnis (Logic of [Maimonides 1984–1996, Hilkhoth Teshuvah 8:6; and note paragraph number 151 in chapter 8 of this book.] actually, Sir Thomas More was also a stoic eudaemonist. [ErW 584; ArG 1:301; 2:114. “Utopia”— literally, ou-topia, “no-place”—is the name given by Sir Thomas More to the imaginary island in his political fiction of the same name (1516), whose perfect laws and politics are contrasted with the evils of the social and political status quo.] Maimonides could take advantage of an ethicized Beyond, defined in terms of the ideal state of self-perfection , as a model for the messianic era, by presenting the messianic era as the preparatory stage for that Beyond. To aspire to one’s qualification for and ascertainment of selfperfection is tantamount to recognizing the messianic idea. 167. We would like to pursue yet another direction concerning the principle of self-perfection, stressing the messianic era and its own substantive significance vis-à-vis the World Beyond. Although the Beyond, too, is ultimately geared toward the sublimation of human nature, self-perfection relates to humanity, as the human condition presents it. This historical dimension of the human condition is particularly represented in the messianic idea; the...