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| Artwork: Lifelink , by Terese Nielsen |
Foreword
I was planning on just posting the article I wrote and leaving it at that. But the more I thought about it, the more I deemed it important to provide the background information about why and for whom I wrote this article, to tell you how it was received, and to share my thoughts on its rejection. I think it’s especially important to provide this context because I’d really like to hear your feedback on the article.
Here's the backstory. A few months ago, I was contacted by two editors from a kiruv (Jewish outreach) organization. After introducing themselves, they told me about their new project:
We are looking for credentialed philosophers to write one or two articles from the following seven themes (or another if you prefer):
Is there a God? Where did the Universe come from? What is the meaning of life? What happens to us after we die? What is consciousness? Is there free will? and What are good and evil?
They specified the following criteria, in this language:
- Length: 800-1200 words
- Audience: Mostly millennials but accessible to all who have never studied philosophy
- Style: Deals directly with the issue in a universal way (no proofs from any scripture), must use examples from contemporary culture
- Tone: Serious, but fun and a bit sassy (70/20/10)
Despite my personal stance on kiruv and my not being a “credentialed philosopher,” I told them with genuine excitement that this project sounds right up my alley, and that I’d be delighted to write an article or two in July.
I chose “What is the meaning of life?” as the subject for my first article because it's a topic I’ve addressed on many occasions throughout my high school teaching career, but I hadn’t yet written it up in any form. I welcomed the somewhat restrictive assignment specifications because it would be way too easy to let an article like this to get out of hand if I had the freedom to write it as I saw fit.
Below is the final draft of the article. The only difference between this and the version I submitted is the presence of a single paragraph in brackets towards the end – a paragraph which they liked but felt would be better saved for the sequel. I chose to include that paragraph here because, as you might have inferred from the title of this blog post, a sequel will not likely be forthcoming.
After you read the article, I’ll tell you how it was received. I'll share my own thoughts on the feedback I received and then I'll ask you for your feedback.
The Purpose of Life (According to Maimonides)
Introduction
All religions are expected to answer the question: “What is the purpose of life?” It should come as no surprise that this question is taken up by Maimonides (a.k.a. Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, or Rambam, 1138-1204 C.E.), in his Guide for the Perplexed. [1]
For those who have only heard the “traditional” Jewish answers to this question, Maimonides’s answer might come as a shock. Best to sit down and buckle up!
The Purpose of the Universe
Maimonides’s treatment of this topic takes place in the context of an even larger question: What is the purpose of the universe as a whole?
He begins by challenging the notion that the universe was created for the sake of human beings. He argues that the universe is far too vast to be necessary for the human species, which is like a mere drop in the sea. (See the recent images taken by the Webb telescope released by NASA in July 2022.) And if a person claimed that all the planets, stars, and galaxies in the universe aren’t necessary for humans but nonetheless benefit us, the burden of proof would be on that person to explain how. (If Maimonides were playing chess, this is the first place he’d say, “Check.”)
Next, he refutes the common religious answer to our initial question, namely, that the purpose of man is to serve God. He writes: “Even if the universe existed for man's sake and man existed for the purpose of serving God, as has been mentioned, the question remains: What is the purpose of serving God? God does not become more perfect if all His creatures serve Him and comprehend Him as far as possible, nor would He lose anything if nothing existed beside Him.” In other words, God is perfect and has no needs; therefore, the purpose of the universe and of man cannot possibly be for His sake. (“Check again.”)
At this point, it would seem there is only one move left for the religious individual to make: the universe exists for us, we exist to serve God, and our service of God is not for His sake, but for our sake. Maimonides serves this view up, then smacks it down: “It might perhaps be replied that the service of God is not intended for God's perfection, but for our own perfection; it is good for us and perfects us. But then the question might be repeated: What is the purpose of our perfection?” (“Check yet again.”)
And
this is where he drops the M-bomb (short for “Maimonides bomb”). Ready for it? According
to Maimonides, life has no purpose. (“Checkmate.” Mic drop.)
The Purpose of Life (or Lack Thereof)
Many of us were taught that each person was given a special mission to accomplish which is their purpose in life, but Maimonides doesn’t buy that. Nor does he buy the other common answers, such as “God created the universe because He wanted to bestow His kindness” or “God created us in order to reward our service,” both of which run into the problems mentioned above.
But before you tip over your king and careen into the nihilistic void, allow me to unpack Maimonides’s nuanced position.
Think about how we relate to the question, “What is the purpose of X?” We ask this question when the utility of an entity is not readily apparent. Consider the following scenario. You see me holding an unfamiliar gadget. You ask me, “What is that for?” and I answer: “Oh, this? This thing has no purpose.” You might reply, “Then what’s the point? What good is it?” In other words, you assume that if it has no purpose, then it is not good.
But that conclusion isn’t necessarily warranted. In truth, there are two possibilities for why (or how) something “has no purpose.” One possibility is that the entity is, indeed, useless. Its existence lacks justification. It is a means to no end whatsoever. The other possibility is that its existence is an end in and of itself. It doesn’t need any purpose outside of itself to justify its own existence because its existence is intrinsically good.
That is the sense in which Maimonides would say that life has no purpose: because existence is good, in and of itself.
The Basis in Torah
This view is borne out in the opening chapter of Genesis. The phrase “and God saw that it was good” appears six times in the account of creation. If the Torah had withheld this declaration of goodness until after the creation of man, one might be justified in concluding that man is the purpose of the universe. But that's not what the Torah says. God creates light and deems it "good." He separates the seas and dry land and deems this "good." He creates vegetation and trees and deems them "good." And the luminaries, and the fish, and the birds, and so on.
Maimonides understands this to mean that each and every component of the universe is good simply by virtue of its existence. And when the account of creation ends with “God saw everything that He had made and behold! it was exceedingly good” (Genesis 1:31), this means that the universe has no purpose outside of itself. According to Judaism, existence in accordance with the will and wisdom of the Creator is the only standard by which goodness is measured. [2]
Now we can rephrase the answer to our original question in a more uplifting way. What is the purpose of life? To exist! To live! Life is inherently good! You don’t need any special, personalized mission to imbue your life with value because your life has intrinsic value!
And that is the end of the story … almost.
The Anomaly of Humanity
On Day Six, God creates the land animals and declares them to be good. Then He creates man and woman but does not declare them to be good. Why not? The answer lies in the essential difference between humans and all other phenomena in the universe. What is that difference? Free will.
We are the only creations that have free will and who can choose to disobey God. The Sages express this in the Tamludic dictum: “Everything is in the hands of heaven except for the fear of heaven” (Berachos 33b), which Maimonides explains to be a reference to free will. All other creations in the universe are “programmed” to exist in line with the will and wisdom of the Creator, without any possibility of deviation, and are therefore good “by default.” We humans can deviate. We can choose to live like animals, neglecting our unique capacity for abstract intellection, or we can attempt to live like angels, neglecting our physical and psychological needs. Both paths run contrary to our design, and therefore lead to self-destruction.
Rather, we humans must choose to live in line with the will and wisdom of the Creator. God does not declare man and woman to be good because this goodness isn’t guaranteed. The sociologist, Eric Hoffer, wrote: “Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.” We must learn what it means to be human, and to consciously align ourselves with that ideal to the greatest extent possible in order to thrive.
[This is where the Torah comes into the picture. Gersonides (a.k.a. Ralbag, 1288-1344 C.E.) defines Torah as “a God-given regimen that brings those who practice it properly to true success.” Perhaps it would be more accurate to translate “true success” as “true human flourishing” – to find fulfillment by living in line with our true nature as truth-seeking beings devoted to seeking knowledge and practicing kindness, righteousness, and justice on earth, in harmony with ourselves and our fellow human beings. How the Torah serves this function is a topic for another article …]
The Purpose of Your Life
And this is where the notion of individual purpose finds its place. According to Maimonides, there is no extrinsic purpose to any individual’s life as an individual. We all share a common mission: to live in a manner which actualizes the human potential inherent in our nature. However, this actualization will play out differently based on our strengths, weaknesses, and individual differences, as determined by nature and nurture.
For example, Moses, Rabbi Akiva, and I belong to the same species and aspire to the same standard of human “goodness,” but since each of us possesses a different set of potentialities and lives in a different set of circumstances, each of us will have a different path of “goodness” to follow.
Here the maxim “know thyself” takes on additional significance: to live a “good life” we must know ourselves as humans, but we must also know ourselves as individuals, so that we can actualize our individual potentialities in accordance with the blueprint of universal human nature.
Conclusion
Let us conclude with a summary of the main points. What is the purpose of life? According to Maimonides, life has no purpose – not because it is pointless, but because existence in line with the will and wisdom of the Creator is inherently good. This is true for everything in the universe, including for us, but unlike the other creations, we must learn what it means to be human and deliberately choose to live that way in order to live good lives. And because each of us is different, we must acquire enough self-knowledge to actualize our individual human potentialities, thereby making each of our lives worth living.
[1] Although the main ideas presented in this article can be found in Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed 3:13, I have incorporated insights and examples gleaned from various other texts and teachers.
[2] Some might object to this entire line of reasoning, saying: “The whole notion of ‘intrinsically good’ is a cop-out! You can’t just say that something is good for no purpose. If a thing is good, then it must be good for something – not in and of itself!” To this objection I would reply by pointing out that ALL value systems, Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and secular, right and wrong, must have at their foundation something which is regarded as an intrinsic good. The alternative is an infinite regression of desire: a series of means with no end. For example, if you ask the average person, “Why is it good to go to school?” they might say, “So I can get a job.” “Why is getting a job good?” “So I can make money.” “Why is money good?” “So I can buy things.” “Why is buying things good?” and so on, until eventually, you will reach something which is regarded as good in and of itself. In some societies, that intrinsic value might be pleasure. In others, it might be accomplishment. In others, it might be status. No one answers these “Why?” questions with infinite “so that”s all the way down; everyone’s answer will have a terminus, and that terminus will be conceived of as an intrinsic good. Mortimer J.Adler observed that one of the most common answers in our society is “happiness,” which is deemed to be intrinsically good. Adler supported this observation by pointing out that it is impossible to complete the sentence: “I want to be happy because _____.” To sum it up: this answer is not a cop-out because everyone will have something which occupies the slot of intrinsic value. According to Maimonides’s understanding of Judaism, that intrinsic value is “existence in line with the will and wisdom of the Creator.”
Afterword
After sending in my rough draft, I received an email from one of the editors (who is a rabbi) saying, “Thank you very much for this excellent article.” I asked a few questions about matters of style, which he answered. The only suggestion he had about the substance of the article was to omit the paragraph about the role of Torah, saying that “a separate piece on ‘What is Judaism?’ would do very well.” I made these cosmetic changes and then submitted my final draft.
After not hearing back from either of my contacts for a week, I emailed them to ask whether there are other changes I should make. The editor who initially contacted me apologized for the delay (explaining that her response had been sitting in her draft folder), and then went on to say:
Even though we personally enjoyed it, our editor in chief flagged it and shared the piece with the Rosh HaYeshiva and they got back to us and said that they feel the article is "confusing and misleading." Unfortunately the whole approach doesn't work for them. We do sincerely thank you for your time and effort and will of course be remunerating you for it.
I would have appreciated it if the editor in chief and/or the Rosh HaYeshiva had elaborated on what they meant by “confusing and misleading,” but I wouldn’t expect them to take the time to provide detailed feedback to a total stranger about a piece they decided not to use. Of course, this left me with two options: (1) to speculate about what they might have meant, and (2) to solicit feedback from other people.
My speculations are straightforward: I suspect they deemed the article “misleading” because they fundamentally disagree with what I wrote, and they called it “confusing” because since they couldn’t openly denounce the Rambam for his views, they instead placed the blame on my presentation of his views.
What, exactly, do I think they found so disagreeable? It could be any of several points: that the universe wasn’t created for man, that man doesn’t exist to serve God, that God doesn't need us for anything, that God did not create the universe in order to bestow His kindness to man, that the Torah is “merely” a means of making us good rather than the standard by which goodness is measured, that Olam ha’Ba isn’t mentioned anywhere in the article, that no distinction is made between Jews and non-Jews, that I say nothing about spirituality, etc.
But if I had to bet money on which sentence they found to be the most objectionable, it would be this: “Many of us were taught that each person was given a special mission to accomplish which is their purpose in life, but Maimonides doesn’t buy that.” Since I was writing for an audience of laypeople, I didn’t refer to this notion by its commonly used Hebrew term “tafkid” or by the related term “tikkun.” I cannot definitively say how, from where, or when this belief originated, but I do know that it was popularized by the Hasidic movement to the point where it can now be described as “mainstream.” For example, here’s an excerpt from the book “The Garden of Emunah” (2006) by Rabbi Shalom Arush, a Breslov Hasid, translated into English by Rabbi Lazer Brody:
Each of us comes to this earth for the express purpose of fulfilling a mission. Longevity depends on the task we have to complete. One’s death – even in a sudden tragedy or accident – is always the result of Hashem’s personal decision. Some live for twenty years and others for one hundred years, but we all eventually leave this earth at the precise moment that Hashem decides. A mind-boggling set of Divine considerations influences the circumstances of a person’s life and longevity – the person’s deeds, former lives, public edicts, and other criteria that defy our understanding.
Some souls come to this earth for a short and specific tikkun, and then return to the upper worlds. Such souls are usually remarkably special people, with little or no evil inclination, gentle, kind, and pleasant. Therefore, don’t be surprised when you hear of young upright people that die suddenly; they’ve simply completed their tikkun – their soul correction and mission on earth. (p.44)
As you can see from just this short excerpt – and certainly from the rest of the book – the notion of a Divinely ordained mission in life is inextricably bound up with many other fundamental doctrines: hashgachah pratis (individual Divine providence), sachar v’onesh (reward and punishment), tzadik v’ra lo (“Why do bad things happen to good people?”), bitachon (trust in God), and more. To question, challenge, or deny the notion of an individual purpose in life is to threaten these foundational beliefs. And that’s essentially what I did by presenting the Rambam’s view in the manner that I did.
Of course, I knew I was doing this when I wrote the article. I knew that their readership would be unlikely to hear this idea from anyone else, and I know how powerful this idea can be. In fact, the first time I heard this answer given in this exact way was at a Q&A with high school students held by my Rosh ha’Yeshiva. I still remember the feeling that reverberated through the room when he said, “life has no purpose,” and then went on to explain the ideas in this article. (You can listen to the recording by clicking here and skipping to 24 minutes; note that my Rosh ha’Yeshiva had laryngitis at the time.) I wanted to replicate that experience as much as I could in my article because I know that it will resonate with others the same way it resonated with me and with all the other students who were present at that Q&A.
This is also why I left the reader “an out” by underscoring that this is the view of Maimonides. I did not claim that this view is unanimous. I included the phrase “according to Maimonides” in the title. I repeatedly stressed throughout the article that this is all “according to Maimonides.” I did this so that if someone felt threatened, they could dismiss it by saying, “That’s just the Rambam's view.”
And this is why I think it is
misleading to call my article “misleading.” It would be misleading if I misrepresented
the Rambam’s view. To my knowledge, I didn’t do that. I could be wrong, though,
which is why I’m sharing this article and the feedback publicly. If I’ve
misunderstood the Rambam’s position, then I’d like to know how – especially on
such a fundamental issue as the purpose of life.
To reiterate: I can see how a
person might consider this article “misleading” if they felt it would lead the
reader astray from (what they maintain is) the truth. But “confusing”? I
thought I did a decent job of presenting this idea clearly, which is another
reason I’d like feedback. I would especially like to hear feedback from someone
who says: “I completely understand what you are saying and you presented these
ideas very clearly, but I think you are 100% incorrect.” At least that way I’ll
know that the reader isn’t biased by their agreement with what they've read.
And so, my readers and listeners, what do you think? Do you find this article to be confusing and/or misleading? If so, why? What other thoughts, questions, and critiques do you have? I'm all ears.
______________________________
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