Ethics of Maimonides

4. Religion as Idolatry: How (Not) to Know God

73. In the context of our discussion , the doctrine of so-called negative attributes demands a more elaborate analysis, in order to clarify the significance of Maimonides’ God-concept for ethics, to the benefit of which it exclusively applies. It is only from the perspective of this doctrine that the entire Maimonidean philosophy emerges as a unified system; even the structure of the Guide appears coherent only as a result of such an analysis. His entire philosophy distinguishes itself from scholasticism whose technical argumentation is executed artificially for its own sake. 4 Religion as Idolatry How (Not) to Know God In this fourth chapter Cohen discusses the specificities of Maimonides’ negative theology. Emphasizing the correspondence between Maimonides ’ theory of negative attributes and the docta ignorantia of Nicolas of Cusa, and in a critical turn against Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence , Cohen offers a detailed analysis of Maimonides’ theory of attributes in relation to the Platonic Good as the non-foundational origin of human knowledge. Drawing upon the difference between negative and privative propositions as well as upon the proposition of infinite judgment, Cohen proposes a reading that corresponds with his own Logik der reinen Erkenntnis: The negation of privation inherent in Maimonides ’ theory of knowing God necessitates a reading of divine actional attributes as imperative grounds for human action. “Negative Attributes”: (No Mere) Technicality (See 73.) The doctrine of negative attributes. The medieval discussion of negative divine attributes throughout Muslim, Jewish, and Christian literature often took on an extremely technical character.1 The original motive for this doctrine lay in the embarrassment caused by the many anthropomorphic images in the Koran, as well as in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures . The purity and transcendence of God, to be sure, is itself not anchored in Scripture—to the contrary , Scripture abounds with anthropomorphic imagery.2 Only in the wake of the Philonic doctrine of ethics of maimonides 78 divine unity, incorporeality, and simplicity—as given in the biblical injunction “You shall not make for yourself a molten/sculptured image”—did anthropomorphic imagery become a problem for medieval religious thinkers.3 Muslim theologians of the rationalist school of the Kalam were the first to adMaimonides , on the contrary, always focuses his attention on the actual, vital meaning of the concepts , despite his scholarly competence in dialectics. The actuality of his concepts lies in ethics, and this intrinsic vitality lies at the root of the inexhaustible originality of his mind and of his work. dress the issues partly by way of allegorical and metaphorical interpretation , partly by developing a theory of “negative attributes.” The attempt to avoid multiplicity in God’s essence while holding on to the three essential attributes of omniscience , omnipotence, and life resulted in the negation of divine attributes : “God is omniscient but not through knowledge as his attribute ; God is omnipotent but not through power as his attribute, and so on.”4 The majority of pre-Maimonidean Jewish medieval thinkers followed this technique—such as Saadya, Joseph ibn Tsaddik, Judah ha-Levi, Bahya ibn Pakuda, and ibn Daud.5 Maimonides, however, proves the most radical in his denial of essential attributes.6 Maimonides explicitly denies that life or existence should be counted among the positive divine attributes. But Cohen’s point is rather that Maimonides explicitly subordinates the entire doctrine of divine attributes to the epistemological task of Knowing God in terms of divine actional attributes. And in this, Maimonides distinguishes himself as the ideal proponent for Cohen’s ethical reading of the Jewish tradition.7 The Specter of the Late Cohen: Rosenzweig’s Seminal Misreading 74. Since the discussion of the socalled negative attributes is concerned with the concept of God, we broach the entire problem of how religion relates to ethics. The doctrine of negative attributes as a locus classicus of Jewish philosophy is apt to clarify and resolve the problem of this relationship, if we were to succeed in demonstrating more incisively and plausibly the following: that Maimonides in (See 74.) Religion and Ethics. Cohen later speaks of the “distinctive nature of religion,” proposing a definition of religion in which the correlation of God and man is understood in radically subjective terms.8 Guilt and atonement are central terms in Cohen’s existentialist grounding of the correlation between God and man in terms of subjectivity.9 Nonetheless, Cohen leaves unimpaired the ethical, religion as idolatry 79 “messianic” purpose of that correlation . Even the distinctive...