The Problematic Passage in Guide for the Perplexed 2:24

1. La Mise en Scène

The passage that concerns us appears at the culmination of a series of carefully reasoned arguments. Part 2 of the Guide for the Perplexed opens with Maimonides undertaking to demonstrate the existence of God. In order to keep the question of the eternity or creation of the world open, he proceeds on parallel tracks.¹ On the hypothesis of the eternity of the world, he offers four philosophic demonstrations for the existence of a first cause of the universe, and on the hypothesis of its having come into existence after not existing, he reasons that its coming into existence entails an agent that brought it into existence. A full demonstration of the existence of God requires that the cause of the universe be shown to be one and incorporeal, and Maimonides establishes the unity and incorporeality of the first cause on both tracks.

Of the four demonstrations constructed on the hypothesis of eternity, he marks the one that argues from the motion of the heavens to a first mover as the demonstration par excellence.² The remaining demonstrations do not refer, except perhaps by implication, to the motion of the spheres, and two of them outdo the demonstration from celestial motion by arriving at the even stronger conclusion that the universe has a cause of its existence. Nevertheless, when Maimonides combines the parallel tracks, one on the hypothesis of eternity and the other on the hypothesis of creation, into his complete demonstration of the existence of God, it is the argument from celestial motion that he calls on to represent the eternity track. He reasons: The celestial region and its motion are either generated-destructible or eternal. On the former hypothesis, it must have a cause that brought it into existence and maintains it in motion. On the latter hypothesis, the demonstration from motion establishes the existence of a first cause that keeps the celestial region in motion. On each hypothesis, the first mover can moreover be shown to be incorporeal and one. Either way, the existence of a single incorporeal first mover of the sphere is therefore established.³

A little later in Part 2, he turns to the issue of creation—the proposition that the universe came into existence after not existing—and eternity. The divide between the two separates thinkers who maintain that God is a voluntary cause and can intervene in the world from those who maintain that God is a necessary and unchanging cause and the universe is governed by necessary and ineluctable laws: the theists, if you will, from the deists. A voluntary God, Maimonides posits, goes hand-in-hand with creation; a God who acts out of necessity and inalterably goes hand-in-hand with eternity. The implications that the two alternatives have for God are, he makes clear, far more significant than creation and eternity themselves.

His springboard is again the causal relationship between God and the celestial region. He contends: The supposition that the nexus between God and the heavens is eternal entails many more philosophical and scientific doubts than the supposition that the celestial region was created. In accordance with a rule he derived from the Principles of the Universe attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias, whenever a full-fledged demonstration is not possible, the thesis affected by the fewest doubts (aqalluhā šukūkan) is to be accepted. The rule has a solid philosophic credential: Averroes also cites it from Alexander and applies it when treating an entirely different philosophic issue.⁴

In the chapter containing the problematic passage, Maimonides completes his proofs for creation by arguing that astronomical calculations are possible only on the assumption of epicyclical or eccentric spheres. The epicyclical theory locates the planets on the surface of secondary celestial spheres that rotate around fixed points on the surface of primary spheres, which, in turn, rotate around the earth. The eccentric theory locates the planets on the surface of spheres that rotate around points that travel around the earth. One or the other theory, or a combination, had to be posited in...