Maimonides

1138-1204 · Sephardi · Jewish law, Aristotelian metaphysics, Religious philosophy

The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a Primary Being who brought into being all existence.

Born in Cordoba in 1138, Moshe ben Maimon was twelve when the Almohad conquest gave his community a choice between conversion, exile, or death. His family chose exile — through North Africa, a stay in the Land of Israel, and finally Fustat near Cairo, where he served as physician to the sultan's vizier and head of the Egyptian Jewish community.

Topics Maimonides addresses

• divine incorporeality
• negative theology
• the Thirteen Principles of Faith
• creation ex nihilo versus eternity of the world
• prophecy as natural perfection
• the Guide of the Perplexed
• esoteric writing and the perplexed reader
• immortality as intellectual apprehension
• reasons for the commandments
• the active intellect
• anti-anthropomorphism
• attributes of action versus essential attributes
• true beliefs versus necessary beliefs
• codification of halakhah
• the problem of evil
• providence as wisdom not will
• intellectual virtue and the contemplative life
• love of God and awe of God
• the doctrine of the mean
• resurrection of the dead
• messianism as political-spiritual liberation
• prohibition on astrology and divination
• the Account of the Chariot
• the Account of Creation

Converse with Maimonides on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in Maimonides's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.