FEEDBACK IS GOOD

This week, I got an e-mail from a reader, who disagreed with my portrayal of certain elements of Rambam. While I strongly disagreed with some of his views, I greatly appreciated the feedback (do you know how lonely it is to type a shiur all alone in an office, mail it out week after week, and get nothing back?) I would greatly appreciate any feedback you have (why the shiurim haven’t been interesting for you, topics that would be more interesting, ways of presenting it better, specific questions about topics we’ve covered, WHATEVER). Thanks for your time in doing so.

MOVING FROM PHILOSOPHY TO PRACTICAL MATTERS

The first 24 chapters of this third part of the Moreh Nevukhim have dealt with fairly philosophical matters—we’ve spoken about cosmology (how the Universe works), about the Ma`aseh Merkavah prophecies in Yehezqel (which were his vision of God’s relationship to the world), about providence (how and whether God is aware of/ oversees what goes on to people, particularly in the context of an unchanging, perfect God), and the book of Job. While I personally have found all of this inherently stimulating, I certainly have the impression that many subscribers have lost their feel for this discussion.

WELL IT'’S TIME TO COME BACK!

As with almost any theoretical discussions, Rambam is about to bring the theory into the realm of practice. He is about to apply the ideas we have seen already to the world of mitsvot, a topic that (I hope) is relevant to us all. Rambam is about (to give a little foreshadowing) to insist that mitsvot have a reason to them, a reason that we can figure out (or, perhaps, that there are several reasons, and we can figure out at least one of them). It will take him a few chapters to set up the discussion in the way that he wants, but after that, he will spend about 20 chapters going through the various types of mitsvot, giving his view of why (or one reason why) God commanded them. Several of his claims in these chapters are justifiably famous, and his reasons are always stimulating, so that this should be an enjoyable endeavor even for those who are not philosophically minded.

KI MIDEI DABBERI BO, ZAKHOR EZKERENU OD

I remember years ago hearing Rabbi Willig give a teshuvah derashah at YU [this may seem like a digression, but it is not], and he mentioned—I forget why—Rabbi Solovetichik, ztllh"h. Upon mentioning him, he cited the pasuq that I put at the head of this section, and recalled, briefly but movingly, the Rov’s teshuvah derashot (derashot teshuvah? teshuvah droshos?). In beginning these chapters of the Moreh Nevukhim, my mind is perforce drawn to the figure of my late rebbe, Prof. Isadore Twersky, ztllh"h, with whom I had my first exposure both to the Moreh in general and to these chapters in specific. For a musmakh of YU (meaning I was not terribly ignorant in Jewish terms), it was an eye-opening experience, and it gave me access to a book I probably would not have understood as deeply or as richly as I did thanks to his guidance. Yehi zikhro barukh.

TYPES OF ACTIONS

Rambam introduces the chapter by discussing the four different categories of action he can envision. We’ll get to those in a moment, but I want to point out that Rambam’s whole point in this chapter is to stress that unless actions are performed with a purpose in mind, and a valuable purpose at that, they are worthless, or very nearly so. Applying that logic to God, he firmly denies the position of the Ashariyya (who we’ve seen before) who think that God acts with no underlying logic whatsoever. While Rambam sympathizes with the issues that led them to that position, he rejects it firmly. Once he has asserted God’s purposefulness (in a way that is, on some level, logically penetrable), he can move to mitsvot, make the same claim, and begin the project of trying to explain the mitsvot.

The four categories of action are futile, frivolous, vain, and good (note that 3 out of the 4 categories are negative). Futile actions are those that have no purpose whatsoever—if someone acts with no real intention in mind, but just for the sake of acting, Rambam terms that futile. An example might be an incident that happened to me yesterday—I was leaving YU, planning to take the Harlem River Drive downtown; however, since I am so programmed to go back to Riverdale from YU, I made a left off Amsterdam to the entrance road to the George Washington Bridge (which has an exit for the Henry Hudson Pkwy North). I had no reason to do it (indeed, I didn’t even consciously intend to do it—in Eastern philosophy, that’s a mindless act, and is the type of thing that much of their energies go to avoid); for Rambam, that was a futile act (and not just for Rambam; it took me about 15 minutes to get back to where I wanted to go).

Frivolous acts are done with a purpose, but the purpose isn’t of any significant worth. Here, Rambam notes that there is a question of judgement (a dirty word in America today) in categorizing acts as frivolous or not. There are acts, Rambam notes, that have an important purpose in mind, but that the ignorant would see as frivolous. Interestingly, exercise is one of his examples, and he mentions wrestling, boxing, and suspension of breathing (which I think was seen as a kind of aerobic exercise).

Vain acts are those which are unsuccessful. For example, if a person works on a business deal for a while and it falls through, his acts in that venture were in vain. Here, Rambam does not mention the question of judgement, but I would note that our perception of failure often depends at least as much on ourselves as on the facts of a situation. While a particular business deal fell through, the relationships forged, the experience gained, or whatever, can often make the act less vain than it outwardly seems. Indeed, I remember reading (somewhere) that many successful entrepreneurs had significant failures first, which taught them important lessons. So perhaps vanity, too, is in the eye of the beholder.

Good (or excellent) acts are those which aim at a high purpose and succeed. This category, aside from how it might affect our judgement of our own actions, is also the only category that can sensibly be applied to God. It would be ridiculous, Rambam says, to view God as acting futilely, frivolously, or vainly, since that would contradict the necessity of God’s perfection.

THOSE WHO SEE GOD AS FRIVOLOUS, VAIN, OR FUTILE

Rambam notes, however, that there are people (we know that they are the Ashariyya) who say that all of God’s actions are simply a function of His Will. By this they mean that God does not have any reasons for what He does. (This is much different from saying we cannot understand all of God’s reasons, as we’ll see in a moment). Rambam points out that they go so far as to say that the transparency of our corneas is not so that we could see, since had God Willed it, humans could see without any transparency in their corneas. In other words, by emphasizing God’s omnipotence, these thinkers came to deny the value of seeking order in the world.

Rambam rejects this view on the grounds that it imputes to God the tendency to act futilely (I prefer the word capriciously). He notes some verses in Scripture that seem to support this view, verses that stress the power of God’s Will, such as Kol asher hafets Hashem `asah, Whatever God has willed, He did, etc. Nevertheless, he strongly emphasizes that there are other (and more) verses that speak of the goodness of Creation, a goodness that could only apply to a well-ordered world.

I would personally note that the position of the Ashariyya is not necessary even in their own terms. That is, even if we granted their assumption that God created everything according to His Will, and that there were many other ways to have done so, that does not mean that we cannot discover some order in the world as it is, order that provides insight into God’s plan in this version of the world. To say that the cornea isn’t the only way to give us sight is true; but we can productively discuss why God chose to provide sight through the cornea instead of other ways, and so on.

STEVEN HAWKING AND THE ASHARIYYA

Rambam notes that what pushed the Ashariyya to their extreme position was the problem of the eternity of the world. In brief—I won’t get technical about this--- Aristotle and many others had believed that the world was eternal. Part of that view is that the laws of Nature are eternal as well, so that God has no ability to affect the world (as we’ve mentioned before). Since the Ashariyya believed that God had created the world, they thought they were required to deny the notion of laws of Nature (since once Nature has laws, it seems to limit God’s ability to perform miracles).

I would just note that the position of those who believe in the eternity of the world is still out there today, although it’s no longer phrased in those terms. Many physicists, on the cutting edge of figuring out how the world works, assume that the laws of Nature are absolute, thus leaving no room for miracles. Steven Hawking, in his best-seller A Brief History of Time (which I tried to read, and find it impossible to believe that anybody other than physicists actually read and understood it), finishes one chapter by saying, in effect, that he has shown that while God may exist, there is very little room for Him to do anything other than create the world as it is. It was to avoid this kind of thinking that the Ashariyya formulated their views.

Again, however, noting the orderedness of the world does not mean it could not have been otherwise, nor does it mean that God did not exercise Will in creating the world in time. Rambam simply points out that his view is that of the philosophers—there is cause and effect in the world, we can understand the way the world works in meaningful ways, etc.—except that he views the world as having been created.

The way to understand this, I believe, is that in creating the world God established Laws of Nature, but that those aren’t the only possible Laws there could have been. Embedded in those laws (as we’ve discussed before) is the possibility of things we call miracles, but are actually embedded in the system from the beginning of time (for a rationalist like Rambam, most others have an even more extreme view of miracles' ability to disrupt the Laws of Nature). In any case, it means that belief in creation in time does not need to lead to the radical views of the Ashariyya, who have an active, but capricious, God. Rather, we can know that God has purposes in what is done, and that an examination of the results of God’s actions can yield meaningful insight into what those purposes were.