Maimonides: Life and Thought by Moshe Halbertal (review)

Habertal’s carefully constructed study, published originally in Hebrew in 2009, is a momentous addition to a decade’s flourishing scholarship that began with the 800th anniversary of Maimonides’s death in 1204. In earlier works, Habertal laid the groundwork for the importance of recognizing the esoteric strain in medieval Jewish philosophy and now develops this motif further, providing compelling analyses to support his interpretation of Maimonides as a radical, creative and transformative thinker.

Throughout, Halbertal reiterates two major transformations in Maimonides’s corpus that are presented in the introduction: the publication of the Mishneh Torah, an unprecedented work that transformed Jewish law by providing an “unambiguous, comprehensive and exhaustive halakhic text” (1); second, a “substantive shift in Jewish religious consciousness” (2–3), reflected in Maimonides’s struggle against anthropomorphism, placement of the natural order at the center of divine presence, and emphasis upon the redemptive power of philosophy.

Chapter 1 provides a short yet insightful intellectual biography of Maimonides. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on Maimonides’s early works devoted primarily to halakhah (Jewish law)—The Commentary on the Mishnah (CM), the Book of Commandments, and Perek Helek—that demonstrate his creativity and independence as a thinker early on. Here Maimonides formulated a systematic philosophy of halakhah according to which revelation at Sinai did not include the entire contents of the law. On this innovative model, controversies over interpretation of halakhah reflect genuine differences, allowing for additions and human influence. Drawing on his own expertise in legal philosophy, Halbertal presents Maimonides’s thirteen articles of faith articulated in Perek Helek as deductive principles, and expertly teases out the nature of this exegetical deduction.

Ethical issues such as immortality of the soul, resurrection of the body, the nature of pious action, and the intellectualist conception of human mind are examined in chapter 3. Whether Maimonides really believed in resurrection (an article of faith) has long been disputed, and Halbertal adverts to the view that Maimonides most likely did not. Here Halbertal introduces the distinction between necessary and true beliefs: the former are critical to establish social order while the latter are those “proclaimed by philosophers” (148). Revelation is a necessary but not true belief. Emphasizing the human capacity to know, Maimonides treats the contemplative life as the peak of human perfection. Halbertal emphasizes that Maimonides was not an accommodationist in the sense of believing that science and religion (Torah) can coexist peacefully: for Maimonides “engaging in science is the pinnacle of religious experience” (163).

Chapters 4–6 provide a comprehensive, philosophically nuanced, and legally astute understanding of Maimonides’s major halakhic work Mishneh Torah. Halbertal distinguishes in chapter 4 between a moderate and radical reading of MT: the former sees it as an accomplished representation of the halakhah, the latter as the halakhah itself. Halbertal suggests that Maimonides’s true position is the radical one he conveys to his close disciples, but that as “the master of concealment and ambiguity,” Maimonides “had good reason to conceal that stance” (194). Chapters 5 and 6 contain discussion of complex philosophical issues in MT that reappear in the Guide, including eternity of the world, prophecy, magic and idolatry, and messianism.

Chapters 7–9 are devoted to the Guide of the Perplexed (Guide). Rather than jump headlong into the interpretative fray that surrounds the alleged esotericism of the Guide, Halbertal introduces four interpretative dimensions: the skeptical, mystical, conservative, and philosophical. Halbertal sees his main purpose in these chapters as providing “the basic kernel of the religious transformation effected by this work” (280). Referring to the aforementioned distinction between necessary and true beliefs, Halbertal suggests the question is one of scope: the more radical one’s reading of the Guide’s hidden meaning, the greater the number of merely necessary beliefs (284). But why would Maimonides have tipped his readers off to his strategy, if he really meant to conceal his true beliefs: why go out of the way to advertise his method, if silence would render his esoteric meaning more properly concealed? Halbertal...