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Some Remarks on the Source of Maimonides’ Plato in Guide of the Perplexed I.17

Some Remarks on the Source of Maimonides’ Plato in Guide of the Perplexed I.17 In Guide of the Perplexed I.17, Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) explains that people of the ‘religious law’, as well as ‘philosophers and learned men of the various communities’, should refrain as much as possible from teaching ‘the multitude’ not only divine science but also the ‘greater part of natural science’.1 When forced to discuss these subjects, he continues, whether to address the elite few or to transmit ideas to qualified students in the future,2 philosophers and sages, and especially people of the law, ought to present difficult notions in an indirect manner, using ‘riddles’, ‘metaphors’, and ‘similes’.3 As an example of this type of figurative repre- sentation, Maimonides refers to the image of matter as female and form as male, which he attributes to Plato and his predecessors: ‘Thus Plato and his predecessors called matter [al-m~dda] the female [al-unth~] and form the male [al-dhakar].’4 While Maimonides relates this literary figure in Guide I.17 to ‘Plato and his predecessors’, he himself uses it in several chapters of his work as well. In fact, it proved to be quite fruitful in his conceptualization of matter, which he considers passive, potential, deficient, and receptive of forms, the source of corporeal desire and the cause of pain, death, and 49 S. Berger, M. Brocke and I. Zwiep (eds), Zutot 2003, 49-57 © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in The Netherlands. 1 I wish to thank Steven Harvey and Angela Jaffray for many helpful references, com- ments, and suggestions. See Moses Maimonides, Dal~lat al-H~’ir§n, S. Munk, ed., with cor- rections and additions by I. Joel (Jerusalem 1930/31) 29; The Guide of the Perplexed, English trans. by S. Pines (Chicago 1963) 42. See also Guide, preface to part I, for the need to conceal natural science as well as divine science. For a discussion of Maimonides’ esoteric method, in relation to the Greek and Arabic background, see most recently S. Klein- Braslavy, King Solomon and Philosophical Esotericism in the Thought of Maimonides (Je- rusalem 1996) [Hebrew], with full bibliography. 2 Although this explanation of the need to write or teach philosophy is not stated explic- itly in Guide I.17, it is implicit there and elsewhere, e.g. in Guide, preface to part I, I.31-34, I.71, preface to part III. 3 See again Dal~la, 29; Guide, 43f. 4 See again Dal~la, 29; Guide, 43. For the possible referent of ‘predecessors’, see below, n. 26. destruction.5 The metaphor of matter and form plays an important role especially in his discussion of evil in Guide III.8-12, and is applied frequently in his explication of relevant biblical texts. Thus Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he explains, are symbols of form and matter; Adam was punished because, contrary to the purpose of creation, he was ruled by matter and the corporeal desires of matter.6 The evil woman in Proverbs, similarly, is a representation of matter, which ‘is in no way found without form and is consequently always like a married woman who is never separated from a man and is never free’.7 But while the ‘harlot who is also a married woman’ is ‘the cause’ of all ‘bodily pleas- ures’,8 the ‘woman of virtue’, he explains, is ‘good matter’, for by satis- fying basic material needs in an appropriate way she can help the human form to achieve its true perfection.9 Following the example of Maimonides, later Maimonidean philoso- phers and exegetes extended the metaphor and applied it in new ways, in exegesis as well as in literature.10 To give a few examples, David Qimchi (d. 1235) associates Eve in Genesis with the material intellect; Samuel ibn Tibbon (d. 1232) relates the woman ‘more bitter than death’ in Ecclesi- astes to matter and the evils caused by matter; and Samuel’s son Moses (fl. 1244-1274) provides a catalogue of five different male/female 50 Zutot 2003 — Philosophy and Science 5 See especially Guide, preface to part I, I.6, I.28, II.26, III.8-12. The misogynistic impli- cations of his imagery have been discussed recently by M. Kellner, ‘Philosophical Misogyny in the Middle Ages: Gersonides vs. Maimonides’, in A. Ravitzky, ed., From Rome to Jerusa- lem: Essays in Memory of Joseph Sermoneta (Jerusalem 1998) 113-28 [Hebrew] and A. Melamed, ‘Maimonides on Women: Formless Matter or Potential Prophet?’ in A. Ivry, et al., eds, Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism (Harwood 1998) 99-134. 6 See Dal~la, 311; Guide III.8, p. 433, citing Gen 3:16. For the explication of the Garden of Eden in general, see Guide, preface to part I, I.1-2, I.6-7, I.17, II.30; and see S. Klein- Braslavy, Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Stories of Man/Adam (Jerusalem 1987) (He- brew), with bibliography. 7 See Dal~la, 310; Guide III.8, p. 431. On this interpretation of Proverbs, see also Guide, preface to part I, as well as Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin, preface to chapter Heleq. 8 See Dal~la, 8; Guide, preface to part I, p. 13. 9 See Dal~la, 312; Guide III.8, p. 433f. 10 For the use of male/female images and allegories in Hebrew literature, a subject that deserves further research, see most recently M. Hus, Don Vidal Benveniste’s Melitzat ‘Efer ve-Dinah (Jerusalem 2003) (Hebrew), with bibliography. analogies in the preface to his commentary on Song of Songs.11 So popular was this image that Solomon ben Abraham ibn Adret (1235- 1310), a legal authority who banned the study of philosophy in 1305, cited it to illustrate the pernicious effect of philosophy on Judaism. Expressing the fear that the allegorization of biblical narratives could lead not only to doubts about their historicity but to the undermining of biblical law, he complains about the preachers’ philosophical sermons, in which they identify Abraham with form and Sarah with matter.12 The ultimate source of Maimonides’ Plato was identified already by Salomon Munk in the notes to his 1856 French translation of the Guide of the Perplexed, and his reference has been recited, with slight modifica- tions, by later translators. To provide the exact source citations, Munk referred to Plato’s Timaeus 49a (‘a third kind ... that it should be the receptacle, and as it were the nurse, of all becoming’).13 Shlomo Pines, in the preface to his English translation of the Guide, referred to Timaeus 51a (‘Wherefore, let us not speak of her that is the mother and receptacle of this generated world, which is perceptible by sight and all the senses, by the name of earth, or air, or fire, or water’),14 whereas Michael Schwarz, in his new Hebrew translation of the Guide, refers to Timaeus 50d (‘Moreover, it is proper to liken the recipient to the mother, the source to the father, and what is engendered between these two to the offspring’).15 But it is clear, as it was to these translators, that Maimonides, who refers to ‘male’ and ‘female’ rather than ‘father’ and ‘mother’ and speaks of ‘matter’ rather than the ‘receptacle’, did not cite literally from Plato’s work as he might have known it in an Arabic trans- 51 The Source of Maimonides’ Plato in Guide of the Perplexed I.17 11 See e.g. L. Finkelstein, ed., The Commentary of David Kimhi on Isaiah (New York 1926) appendix, lix; J. Robinson, Samuel ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard 2002) par. 90, 629-654; Moses ibn Tibbon, Commentary on Song of Songs, ed. L. Silbermann, (Lyck 1874) 9. 12 See Teshuvot ha-Rashba, ed. H. Dimitrovsky (Jerusalem 1990) 412f. 13 See Munk, Le Guide des Égarés I (Paris 1856-66) 68, no. 4; Plato, Timaeus, R.G. Bury, trans. (Cambridge 1989) 112f. 14 See Pines, The Guide of the Perplexed, Translators’ Introduction, lxxvi; Plato, Timaeus, trans. Bury, 118f. 15 See Schwarz, Moreh Nevukhim le-Rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon (Tel-Aviv 1996) 35, no. 6; Plato, Timaeus, 116-119. lation or summary.16 Nor did he cite indirectly from the Arabic rendering of Galen’s synopsis of the Timaeus, the surviving Arabic of which likewise refers not to ‘male’ and ‘female’ but to ‘father’, ‘mother’ [al- wâlida] and ‘nurse’ [al-murdi‘].17 Despite the source-seeking efforts of Munk, Pines, and Schwarz, therefore, the question remains open: what was the source of Maimonides’ Plato in Guide of the Perplexed I.17? This question, although difficult to answer with any certainty, is of some importance, for it pertains not only to Maimonides’ sources but to the larger problem of the transmission of Plato in Arabic. In contrast to Aristotle, whose writings were translated literally into Arabic and expli- cated line by line, Plato was treated less systematically: his work dissemi- nated not in complete editions and commentaries but in second-hand references, doxographical summaries, and pseudepigraphical sayings.18 Although there are medieval references to Arabic translations of Plato, even if they refer to complete renderings rather than summaries or epitomes, these translations were rare already in the tenth century and are completely nonexistent today.19 Because of this diffuseness in the Arabic Plato, Maimonides could conceivably have drawn from any number of sources; and until all relevant texts in the Arabic tradition have been examined, it will be uploads/Science et Technologie/ some-remarks-on-the-source-of-maimonides-x27-plato-in-guide.pdf