The Institute of Asian and African Studies The Max Schloessinger Memorial Found

The Institute of Asian and African Studies The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation O print from JERUSALEM STUDIES IN ARABIC AND ISLAM 32(2006) Joel L. Kraemer HOW (NOT) TO READ THE GUIDE OF THE PERPLEXED THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES JSAI 32 (2006) HOW (NOT) TO READ THE GUIDE OF THE PERPLEXED * Joel L. Kraemer University of Chicago For the discourse (kal am) in this treatise has not come about by chance (ittif aq), but by great accuracy and exceeding precision, and with care not to fail to explain anything dicult. Nothing is said in [this treatise] out of context except to explain something in its proper context. You therefore should not pursue [this treatise] with your fancies, thereby harming me and not bene ting yourself. You ought rather to study everything that you need to know and keep it in mind always. 1 For those who wish to get clear of diculties it is advantageous to state the diculties well; for the subsequent free play of thought (eÎporÐa) implies the solution of previous diculties, and it is not possible to untie a knot which one does not know. But the diculty * I wish to thank James T. Robinson and Ralph Lerner, who read previous versions of this paper and made valuable suggestions. I rst met Franz Rosenthal in 1962, when I applied for graduate work in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Yale University. I took the train from New York to New Haven and met him in his oce at the Hall of Graduate Studies. He was forty-eight but already gray, and I always thought of him as a sheikh. He had studied Arabic in Berlin with Paul Kraus, and when I later wrote about Kraus I thought of both when I said: He never wavered, and his life trajectory never departed from its course. He was ultimately committed from start to nish to a passion, a labor of love|to philology, meaning the study of ancient texts, editing, translat- ing, interpreting, as a way of discovering new knowledge about human civilizations. He was devoted single-mindedly to learning, craving no other ambition. He was an authentic scholar in the great tradition of Orientalism. This was the single road he traveled in his life's journey. (Kraemer, \Death of an Orientalist.") The last time I saw Franz Rosenthal was shortly before he died. I turned the conver- sation to pleasantries by recalling seminars in his oce but could not remember the room number. He said that he had forgotten as well. For many years he fretted over his failing memory, but this time he was at peace. He then said, Sic transit gloria mundi, with his typical humorous self-deprecation. He was tired and had to rest. He died a few days later and these were the last words I heard from him. 1 The Guide of the Perplexed, Admonition of this Treatise, trans. S. Pines, p. 15. The word for \admonition," was .iyya, meaning also instruction, last will and testa- ment, bequest, is cognate with Hebrew s .awa-a (with metathesis), the word Samuel Ibn Tibbon used in his translation. I have used the Munk-Joel edition (Jerusalem 1930/31) for the text of the Guide. 350 How (not) to read The Guide of the Perplexed 351 (aporÐa) of our thinking points to a knot in the object; for in so far as our thought is in diculties, it is in like case with those who are tied up; for in either case it is impossible to go forward.2 Textual problems Readers of the Guide tend to assume that its Arabic text is etched in stone and that Shlomo Pines' translation is based on an immaculate text and re ects its perfection. The text of the Guide is, alas, imperfect. Issachar Joel, who redacted Salomon Munk's 1856{66 edition, was aware that it was not a critical edition and hoped that J udische Wissenschaft would produce an editio major by 1935.3 This was about seventy-seven years ago and no scholar or institu- tion has met the challenge. Munk's edition was based on very few manuscripts (the ones he could access), and he \corrected" the Judaeo- Arabic text somewhat to conform with Classical Arabic.4 Surviving draft copies of pages from the Guide have many correc- tions, deletions and additions. A fair copy has not survived, as far as we know, but even if we had such a copy at our disposal, we probably would nd in it corrections as we do in the fair copy of Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah, completed in 1168. When Maimonides composed the Mishneh Torah (circa 1168{78) and thereafter, he contin- ued to correct the fair copy of the Mishnah Commentary. After he died, his son Abraham went on correcting, as did his descendants down to the 2 See Leo Strauss's epigraph, \The Literary Character of The Guide for the Per- plexed," p. 38, from Aristotle, Metaph. iii, B, 1 (995a27{30), trans. W.D. Ross, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes. And see Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. W.D. Ross, II, p. 221. Strauss quoted the passage in Greek and gave no textual reference. 3 Salomon Munk, a German Orientalist residing in Paris, produced a magni cent edition accompanied by translation and commentary. This was undertaken after the onset of his blindness, so that he worked with assistants. It was dedicated to Monsieur le Baron and Madame la Baronne James de Rothschild. At the same time, Munk published his pioneering M elanges de Philosophie Juive et Arabe (1859). See Alfred Ivry, \Solomon Munk and the Science of Judaism." Issachar Joel was helped by the great Arabist D.H. Baneth, who also put him in touch with the publisher, Dr. J. Junovitch. 4 Such attempts to \correct" Middle Arabic texts and make them conform to the rules of Classical Arabic were made also by P.K. Hitti in his edition of Us ama b. Munqidh, Kit ab al-i,tib ar, by the editors of Ibn Ab  Us .aybi,a's ,Uy un al-anb a- f  t .abaq at al-at .ibb a-, in the Thousand and One Nights and in other works. See I. Schen, \Us ama Ibn Munqidh's Memoirs: Some Further Light on Muslim Middle Arabic (Parts I{II)." 352 Joel L. Kraemer Nagid David II (1335{1415).5 We know from Maimonides' precept and practice that he wrote at least two drafts before writing a fair copy and carefully redacted ev- erything.6 He sometimes wrote draft copies rapidly when pressed for time, and early drafts were occasionally copied by scribes before they had been corrected by the master, and were circulated in this defective form. When queried on dicult passages, he occasionally had to explain to questioners that the texts they had received were incorrect, viz. not the latest version.7 Unravelling a knot According to Maimonides' philosophic theology, the movements of the heavens prove the existence of a Mover, although we lack scienti c knowl- edge about the nature of these movements. Maimonides discussed this theme, inter alia, in Guide, II, 24, where he stated, as I shall show, that our inability to acquire scienti c knowledge of the movements of the heavenly spheres does not mean that we cannot infer from them the existence of their Mover. He asserted this in a sentence that was, I believe, distorted at an early moment in the history of the text. Samuel Ibn Tibbon, having received a faulty copy of the Guide to translate, surmised that there must have been a lacuna, and proposed an emendation by restoring the missing words. His emendation was accepted by Salomon Munk, who observed that Ibn Tibbon's reading (le con) was justi ed by other passages of the Guide, where Maimonides said explicitly that the movement of the heaven proves the existence of a First Mover.8 5 Maimonidis Commentarius in Mischnam, Introduction, I, p. 35. Abraham lled in missing words, phrases and entire lines; see I, p. 48, line -4; II, p. 136, line 1; III, p. 119, line -15. In certain cases, he followed his father's instructions. 6 See Maimonides' criticism of the anonymous author of a responsum in Iggeret ha-Shemad, saying that this man \wrote a rst draft of these momentous things without thinking to revise them because he considered his discourse indisputable and in no need of review;" Letters, ed. Shailat, pp. 33{34. 7 An autograph manuscript of several chapters of the Mishneh Torah contains deletions, corrections and marginal additions. See Samuel H. Atlas, A Section from the Yad Ha-H . azak .ah of Maimonides, based on Bodl. MS Heb. d.32, 2794. See also Sassoon, Maimonidis Commentarius in Mischnam, Introduction, I, p. 32. 8 Le Guide des  egar es, II, p. 194, n. 4 (on p. 195). In his text and translation, however, Munk adhered to the manuscripts and to al-H . ar z . Munk did not mention that Ibn Tibbon rst suggested his emendation in a marginal note on the passage, al- though he was familiar with the notes from manuscripts of uploads/Litterature/ how-not-to-read-the-guide-of-the-perplexed.pdf

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