Rambam: On Becoming Acquainted with Truth (Lessons 1-2)

Introduction

Artwork: The Thinker, by Stephen Younts

"I wanted to know more about the Rambam's view of Torah, so I started reading the Guide for the Perplexed." 

I've heard this sentiment expressed on a number of occasions from a wide range of individuals: frum laymen, baalei teshuvah, yeshiva bochrim, secular intellectuals, and even semichah students. They are aware that the Moreh ha'Nevuchim is considered to be the Rambam's "philosophy book" and, figuring that this is the best way to familiarize themselves with (quote unquote) "Maimonidean philosophy," they jump right in.

Thankfully, my rabbeim in yeshiva always cautioned us against "dabbling in the Moreh." In addition to hearing this explicitly from my rabbeim on a number of occasions, I was also privy to certain experiences which drove this point home.

One time, in my first year of yeshiva, a bunch of us were arguing about how to interpret a certain passage in the third section of the Moreh. Just then, my rebbi walked in. He looked at the open copies of the Moreh on the table, then looked at us and said, "There isn't a single person in this room who understands what the Rambam is saying here." He then proceeded to show us the full extent of our ignorance and our overestimation of our collective intellectual prowess. This made a big impression on me an early stage in my learning. 

Another time, a magid shiur had to physically destroy a tape recording of one of his own shiurim after realizing that he had made a huge mistake in his interpretation of the Moreh - a realization which was induced by consulting the Rosh Yeshiva. Seeing that one of my rabbeim was prone to such errors definitely made me wary about venturing into the Moreh on my own. 

My favorite cautionary admonitory anecdote is something I heard from a friend. When he was in yeshiva high school, he expressed to his rebbi his desire to learn the Guide for the Perplexed. His rebbi responded, "You're not even on the level to be perplexed." Nuff said.

I've noticed one thing in common among the people I've met who decide to start reading the Moreh on their own: they all seem to either skip or disregard the Rambam's introduction, in which he specifies the type of student for whom he wrote his treatise. If these readers paid attention to the Rambam's own warnings in his introduction, they would either abandon their project at the outset, or at least go about learning the Moreh under the guidance of their rabbeim. 

This issue was brought to mind this weekend after speaking with yet another person who decided to start read the Moreh on his own. When I asked him whether he thought he met the prerequisites stated in the introduction, he didn't seem to know what I was talking about. 

On the basis of that conversation, I decided that perhaps it was time to reread the Rambam's introduction myself. Initially, I planned to compile all of the excerpts which should deter a person from a willy-nilly perusal of the Moreh. However, when my chavrusa and I began rereading the introduction, we discovered that it offered something beyond that. We noticed that the Rambam's introduction to the Moreh serves as a primer on how to become acquainted with truth, à la "Say to wisdom, 'You are my sister,' and call understanding a friend" (Mishlei 7:4). That might sound kind of weird, and might not make sense right now. Hopefully, you'll see what I mean as we go along. 

I've decided to conduct a "walk-through" of the Rambam's introduction to the Moreh which will span several blog posts. My goal here is not to attempt to write a full commentary on the Rambam's introduction, but rather, to extract useful ideas (or "lessons") about the nature of truth and how to approach it - with the secondary goal of highlighting why the Moreh should not be read by those who aren't ready. I'm not even going to include the entire introduction - only those parts which contribute toward this end.

Without further ado ...

Lesson #1: Desire for Truth ≠ Readiness for Truth

Rambam prefaces his formal introduction with a dedicatory epistle to the student for whom the Moreh was composed. He begins with a brief history of their relationship: 

My honored pupil R' Yosef, may the Rock guard you, son of R' Yehuda, may his repose be in Paradise. When you came to me, having conceived the intention of journeying from the country farthest away in order to read texts under my guidance, I had a high opinion of you because of your strong desire for inquiry and because of what I had observed in your poems of your powerful longing for philosophical matters. This was the case since your letters and compositions in rhymed prose came to me from Alexandria, before your grasp was put to the test. I said however: perhaps his longing is stronger than his grasp.

The Rambam here acknowledges that even though R' Yosef exhibited a "strong desire for inquiry" and a "powerful longing for philosophical matters," he knew that it is possible for a student to have a strong desire for a certain area of knowledge, but to not be on the level to acquire that knowledge. The Rambam expands on this point later on (Moreh 1:34) when he enumerates the five obstacles which prevent the masses from learning metaphysics:

Man has in his nature a desire to seek the ends; and he often finds preliminaries tedious and refuses to engage in them. Know, however, that if an end could be achieved without the preliminaries that precede it, the latter would not be preliminaries, but pure distractions and futilities. 

Now if you awaken a man - even though he were the dullest of all people – as one awakens a sleeping individual, and if you were to ask him whether he desired at that moment to have knowledge of the heavenly spheres (namely, what is their number and what their configuration, and what is contained in them), and what angels are, and how the world as a whole was created, and what its end is in view of the arrangement of its various parts with one another, and what the soul is, and how it is created in time in the body, and whether the human soul can be separated from the body, and if it can, in what manner and through what instrument and with what distinction in view, and if you put the same question to him with regard to other subjects of research of this kind, he would undoubtedly answer you in the affirmative. He would have a natural desire to know these things as they are in truth; but he would wish this desire to be allayed, and the knowledge of all this to be achieved by means of one or two words that you would say to him. 

If, however, you would lay upon him the obligation to abandon his occupation for a week’s time until he should understand all this, he would not do it, but would be satisfied with deceptive imaginings through which his soul would be set at ease. He would also dislike being told that there is a thing whose knowledge requires many premises and a long time for investigation … 

Speaking as both a teacher and a student, I know how easy it is to feel that wanting to know something automatically qualifies one to learn it. We feel that the desire to know means that we deserve to know. Sadly, this is not the case. While it is the rebbi's job to keep the student on track with what is developmentally appropriate, the student should, over time, cultivate the self-knowledge and humility to say, "I'm not ready for this yet." 

Lesson #2: Training in Logic is a Necessary Prerequisite

The Rambam continues with his account of how R' Yosef excelled in his preparatory studies: 

When thereupon you read under my guidance texts dealing with the science of astronomy and prior to that texts dealing with mathematics, which is necessary as an introduction to astronomy, my joy in you increased because of the excellence of your mind and the quickness of your grasp. I saw that your longing for mathematics was great, and hence I let you train yourself in that science, knowing where you would end. When thereupon you read under my guidance texts dealing with the art of logic, my hopes fastened upon you, and I saw that you are one worthy to have the sodos (secrets) of the prophetic books revealed to you so that you would consider in them that which perfect men ought to consider.

Rambam writes in several places about how the study of mathematics and natural sciences - particularly astronomy - are necessary prerequisites for the study of metaphysics. Nevertheless, it was R' Yosef's study of logic which clinched the deal, and finally prompted the Rambam to transmit sodos to R' Yosef. 

We could digress here into a lengthy discussion about why the study of logic is a necessary prerequisite to metaphysics, and we can speculate on why the Rambam made his decision to teach R' Yosef on that basis, but I want to focus on a much simpler point: how many of us bother to master logic before venturing into metaphysics? How many of us can say that our thinking consistently follows the rules and principles of logic? And if we aren't sufficiently fluent in the science of logic, how can we even begin to study the deepest sodos of Torah and the universe?

To Be Continued ... 

I hope you can see what I'm trying to do here. The picture will become even clearer when we get to Lesson #3: Encountering Truth by Accident, and Lesson #4: Truth as Lightning.

That's all for now, but there's plenty more that will have to wait until next time.