PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, I WILL, BE-EZRAT HASHEM, BE ON VACATION. I WOULD APPRECIATE YOUR USING THIS TIME TO CATCH UP ON SHIURIM YOU MAY NOT HAVE HAD A CHANCE TO READ AND/OR THINKING ABOUT THE MATERIAL AND RAISING ISSUES FOR ALL OF US TO DISCUSS. WHILE I DO NOT INTEND TO CHECK MY E-MAIL FROM NOV. 22-DEC. 2, I WOULD LOVE TO RETURN HOME TO FIND A LIVELY DISCUSSION AND/OR CHALLENGING QUESTIONS TO FUEL FURTHER THOUGHT.

THE QUESTION OF PURPOSE

Rambam in this chapter is concerned with whether or not we can define the ultimate purpose of all of creation. More specifically, he wants to prove that we cannot, so that he can separate the spheres (which we have discussed more than enough until now) from humanity, at least in terms of their purpose. I believe he wants to do this, because it will help him discuss the question of whether God knows all the specific events that happen here on Earth or not, but we’ll have to see.

In any case, the logical presentation that Rambam makes feels fairly convoluted, so that I will not follow the text particularly carefully, except to raise the points I find most interesting.

TWO VERSIONS OF CREATION

Rambam in this chapter (and elsewhere) keeps alive two versions of how the world might have been created, and it’s worth spending a moment on those two. In his discussion of creation (in Part II), Rambam had said that the notion of Aristotle (the world has existed eternally) is logically just as possible as the traditional notion, that the world was created from nothing at some point in time. He says that he only adheres to the second view because it’s easier to read the Biblical verses that way, and there is no compelling proof of Aristotle’s position.

It is not clear, though, which Rambam actually believed. For various reasons, scholars have debated this issue for a long time. Some think Rambam meant what he said (always a strong position in my book). Others, however, think Rambam actually believed Aristotle’s position. This would mean that God is the Creator in the sense that the world’s existence relies fundamentally on His support in some unexplained way, and in that He might have fashioned the subcelestial world in a specific way. If Rambam believed this view, he would have had to stress that God has greater power than ordinarily believed in Aristotelian circles, power, for example, to perform miracles. One scholar has even suggested that Rambam was honestly ambivalent on the question, which would explain why he brings up both positions repeatedly.

CREATION AND PURPOSE

The importance of the issue for the present discussion lies in the different possibilities of purpose depending on creation. If the physical has always existed, it is less clear that there is an ultimate purpose to creation—God does not need to have had a purpose in bringing forth physical elements, since they have always been there. For that point of view, then, Rambam can easily deny the notion of an ultimate purpose to any of this existence.

LOCALIZED AND ULTIMATE PURPOSE

There is one glitch in that presentation, in that Aristotle himself refers to the purpose of some elements of existence; he says, for example, that plants exist in order to provide food and sustenance to animals and people—apparently, then, he did see a purpose. Here, Rambam differentiates between a localized purpose and an ultimate purpose. Since systems want to be self-perpetuating, to say that a part of the system’s purpose is to reproduce and sustain other parts of the system is not really a statement of purpose at all. It merely moves the issue to the next level, the purpose of the system as a whole, where Aristotle has nothing to say.

FOR BELIEVERS IN CREATION EX NIHILO

For those who believe that God "chose" at some point to create the world, it would seem reasonable to suppose that there was a purpose to that action—especially since Rambam himself denigrates purposeless actions. If so, however, perhaps human beings should be striving to understand God’s purpose in creating the world, so they can better fulfill that purpose.

Rambam rejects that, based on the claim that we can never get to God’s logic for creating the world. Let’s suppose, for example, that humanity was the center of Creation, and its ultimate purpose. Why did God create humanity? Not for His sake—since, of course, God has no needs (that’s part of being perfect in Rambam’s view). And if it’s for our sake ( a popular traditional view), well, why did God care about our needs? Ultimately, it always comes down to His decision, which we can never fully fathom. If so, there is no point to seeking the ultimate end to creation; rather, we should just do what we can to fulfill ourselves, which Rambam will discuss in later chapters.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ULTIMATE AND LOCAL PURPOSE

As we mentioned, Rambam notes that there are localized purposes that we can recognize. He agrees, for example, that plants are created to provide nutrition for higher forms of life (and, presumably, he would agree to that all along the food chain, although perhaps not the corporate food chain). He also agrees that individual members of a species are (at least partially) meant to procreate and assure the species’ continuity.

The first type of purpose allows Rambam to distinguish the lower and higher realms in terms of the centrality of humanity to the Universe. You remember—I hope—that part of Rambam’s denial of the problem of evil was his pointing out that people are not as central to the world as they think they are. Here, too, he points out that while plants and animals might be here to serve us, that is not true of the spheres (which he explicitly calls the angels—as I suspected was true earlier, but wasn’t positive about). The spheres, made of physical matter that is more perfect than ours, cannot be thought of as serving man, since we are a lower form of Creation than they are. In fact, this world (including people) receives the benefits of the spheres, since it is those spheres that insure the smooth workings of this world (you’d have to refer back to Rambam’s reading of ophanim and hayyot to know why). To say, then, that they work for our benefit, Rambam says, would be like saying that the king rules for the sake of the citizens, since they benefit from his rule.

Aside from moderns disagreeing with Rambam’s analogy—we now tend to think that governments do, in fact, exist for their citizens’ sake—Rambam’s point raises an interesting question about angels in general. Midrashim tend to portray angels as simple divine messengers, with no real will of their own, and just the purpose of their specific mission. In that sense, it seems possible that they are created for our benefit, in that they serve as conduits of Divine information to human beings (since we cannot communicate directly with God because of the chasm between us).

Rambam, however, is denying that—in his view, the spheres might have some purpose of their own, independent of our existence and known only to God Himself (or perhaps to the spheres/angels as well). I believe he is attached to this notion because it helps him explain the problem of evil better. If not all of Creation is human-centered, not everything that happens is directed at us. That view only works if we are not the center of the Universe—and will also help detach God’s Providence from all the creatures of this world without damaging the notion of God’s concern with the central parts of Creation.

An aside. I have the impression that historians of science and intellectual history believe that the adoption of Copernicus’ view of the Universe (that the Earth orbits the Sun rather than vice verse), involved a huge change of perspective for humanity, in removing them from the center of Creation. Although I personally still am attached to the notion that we are the center of Creation, it’s interesting that Rambam was already denying our centrality several hundred years before Copernicus. I try not to be one of those Jews who proves that Judaism knew all the truths of science before scientists discovered those truths, but this seems a particularly interesting and prescient example.

CREATION AS TOV OR TOV ME’OD

The last piece of this chapter I want to take up is a discussion Rambam has of the recurring term in the Creation story that God saw something created "and it was good." Rambam defines the word tov, good, as meaning that it conformed to its intended purpose, which only works if we believe these objects had a purpose, a contention he spent this lengthy chapter denying. With the notion of local purpose in hand, Rambam can say that’s what tov means, that the objects created conformed to the way God had wanted to create them, and fulfilled their specific purpose in the ecology. Tov Me’od at the end of creation, then, means that all of the parts of Creation were doing their appointed jobs (in that local sense).

Two points of mine. First, the possibility that the world could have formed itself other than as God wanted (which is implicit in Rambam’s notion, since otherwise why would God react by seeing it was tov) is extremely interesting, and backed up by a Midrash that Rashi quotes. Noting that the pasuq refers differently to God’s command to the Earth to produce fruit bearing trees (God says "fruit-trees making fruit of its kind") than to how it actually came out ("trees making fruit of its kind"), Rashi says that the earth sinned in producing trees that did not fully fulfil God’s command. According to Rashi, God meant the trees themselves to be the fruit, as tradition says about the etrog plant, that its "tree" and its "fruit" taste the same. Instead, fruit trees generally have two distinct parts, the bark and the fruit.

While Rambam does not mention that Midrash, his explanation of the word tov suggests that it was possible for that to happen. Both sources suggest a certain layer of freedom in the way the world works, then, independent of human choices. We are used to thinking that while we have free choice, the rest of the world conforms exactly to the Divine plan. Although he doesn’t say so, Rambam seems to recognize the possibility of the world violating the Divine Will in some way, which I find extremely interesting.