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Volume 10, No.1 Fall1991 151 mained silent about these appalling occurrences because either they believed the 55 rationale that the inmates were really vicious criminals deserving such punishment or they feared that they would be imprisoned or killed if they opposed the 55 on behalf of the inmates. Recognizing the danger of even acknowledging the frightening appearance of the inmates, the townspeople learned to avert their eyes from this disturbing sight and not to register any emotional reaction to it on their faces or in their eyes. Their lack of response to the suffering they saw in effect confirmed the subhuman status the 5S had conferred on its victims. Amid this bleak enumeration of crimes of commission and omission, Horwitz also reports the far rarer instances of people who tried to help the inmates. At considerable risk to themselves, two local families hid three of the escaped Russians. More common were the furtive acts of leaving food along the paths where prisoners marched to their external work assignments. Although one local man was interned in Buchenwald for publicly condemning the shooting of prisoners at Gusen, those engaging in small acts of kindness towards the inmates were not usually punished. Horwitz contends that merely exhibiting a sympathetic facial expression to the inmates could strengthen their will to survive. Finally, Horwitz depicts how after the war most of the local population either wanted to repress the memory of the camps or blamed the crimes perpetrated there on Germany. Thus, he ends his book by reminding us of the extent of the responsibility Austrians bear for the Holocaust. Lawrence Baron, Director Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies San Diego State University Moses Maimonides, by Oliver Leaman. London: Routledge, 1990. 190 pp. $49.50 (c); $15.95 (p). Having written several works on noted Islamic thinkers, Professor Leaman now turns his attention to_Maimonides. That Leaman is known primarily for his work in Islamic thought is not without consequence, for in this book he portrays Maimonides as falling "squarely within the tradition of philosophy as it developed in the Islamic world ..." (p. 1). Reading The Guide of the Perplexed as a genre solidly within the literary tradition of the falaslfa, Leaman excoriates those who, following the Straussian line, would insist upon uncovering the esoteric meaning behind the exoteric superstructure of the Guide. According to Leaman, both Islamic philosophy and Maimonides have "fallen foul of the orientalist obsession with refusing to ac- 152 SHOFAR knowledge that people in the Islamic world actually say what they mean when they talk and write" (p. 4). Leaman therefore hopes to rectify this "orientalist turn" by treating The Guide as "serious philosophy"; in contradistinction to those orientalists (interestingly unnamed) who bury their insights in scholarly minutiae and linguistic arcana, Leaman offers to "go back to the text." It is ironic to note in passing that Leaman's "text" consists of Pines' translation and not the original languages. What are the philosophical issues which Leaman finds of paramount importance in The Guide of the Pe1pLexed? He rejects as "ridiculous" (p. 17) the claims of those (e.g., Strauss) who suggested that a major theme in The Guide is Maimonides' attempt to reconcile his being a Jew with being a philosopher. In fact Leaman suggests that "it is misleading to regard Maimonides as a specifically Jewish philosopher" (p. x). In that light it would be interesting to see exactly how Leaman interprets those passages in which Maimonides states that this is precisely his concern. Rather, Leaman emphasizes philosophical issues having to do with language and meaning, that is, the "problem of reconciling two different ways of describing the same thing" (p. 17), as evinced in such topics as divine predication, law, prophecy, divine omniscience, etc. Discounting entirely any suggestion that there is a hidden doctrine in The Guide, Leaman proposes to examine the philosophical arguments embedded in the text. Does Leaman succeed in this task? His book addresses those issues which are often studied by Maimonides scholars: divine predicates, prophecy, creation, Kalam, divine knowledge, human knowledge, resurrection, morality , and "persisting problems." For the most part Leaman's exposition is clear, even accessible to a beginning student. But what is lacking is the...

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