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

114 SHOFAR Summer 1998 Vol. 16, No.4 who believe in a higher authority who ought to be charged with the burden of proof; "the mere claim to possess access to a higher moral authority will not do" (p. 153). She also argues persuasively on behalf of Kaplan's often criticized tendencies toward optimism and honesty. This book will be an important resource for those who wish to ground their Jewish feminist inquiry in the liberal Jewish community and in particular in the Reconstructionist world. It gives new life to the often underappreciated thought of Mordecai Kaplan and provides a potential blueprint for a methodological approach to Jewish feminist theology. As Krafte-Jacobs points out, the book has limited goals. It is a necessary step toward a fully grounded liberal Jewish feminist theology, but does not create it. It also will not appeal to those Jewish feminists who believe that the halakhic system makes room for their understanding offeminism, or for post-modem feminists who challenge the sanctity of the foundational symbol-sources of God, Torah, and Israel that ground this work. But for many feminists in between those poles, this is an important and ground-breaking work. Rebecca T. Alpert Religion and Women's Studies Temple University Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason, by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein. SUNY Series in Philosophy. Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1995. 278 pp. $64.50 (c); $21.95 (p). Recent years have seen a number ofcomparative studies of Maimonides and Aquinas. However, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein claims that these two medieval giants have "far greater kinship" (p. 5) than other scholars have acknowledged and that, by juxtaposing them, we can also illuminate aspects oftheir respective positions on a variety ofquestions that are occluded when we read them in isolation, questions about "the limits of reason, language, interpretation, and the relation between knowing and acting." As her focus she chooses the problem of providence, a problem that she argues was a central medieval locus for these questions, and in order to understand Maimonides' and Aquinas' views on this subject, Dobbs-Weinstein also argues that we must take into account their scriptural commentaries as well as their "pure" philosophical treatises and discussions: Maimonides' interpretation ofJob in Guide III: 23-24 and Aquinas' Literal Exposition on Job. In making this last tum, Dobbs-Weinstein follows other recent Maimonidean and Thomistic scholars who draw on the authors' biblical exegeses for a full understanding of their philosophies. Book Reviews 115 The somewhat disjointed structure of this dense, intensely written book reflects these multiple aims and motivations. The first two chapters address Maimonides and Aquinas as philosophical scriptural exegetes and their respective interpretations of Job. There then follow four detailed chapters on philosophical themes: the origin of the universe (creation vs. eternity), matter and its relation to evil, the perfection of the human soul, and the relation between philosophical ethics and divine law. Each ofthese chapters consists ofexposition, for the most part self-contained, first of Maimonides, then ofAquinas. There is relatively little discussion of specific historical influences, of the authors' respective relations to particular (Greek or Arabic) sources, or of differences that may reflect their respective Judaeo-Arabic and Latin philosophical traditions (for one notable exception, see p. 114). Apart from the suggestion that Aquinas' metaphysics of the good is an advance over Maimonides, there is also little attempt to evaluate their respective positions. Dobbs-Weinstein does, however, raise some interesting criticisms ofother recent (mainly Maimonidean) scholars, e.g., Herbert Davidson on creation and Alfred Ivry on matter. Only in the last chapter does she return to Job and Maimonides' and Aquinas' commentaries and what they have to say about providence. This chapter contains, in its concluding section, a short but thick discussion ofMaimonides on divine attributes and Aquinas on divine names, but it is unfortunate that Dobbs-Weinstein does not pursue some of the important questions her approach raises about how an author's stance as scriptural commentator affects his philosophy, how Scripture itself should be read as a philosophical text, and why or how these authors used their commentaries to complement their standard philosophical writing. While a comparative app~oach is undeniably valuable...